Darrington historians, UW students create mudslide archive

Darrington historians, UW students create mudslide archive

The Darrington Historical Society, with help from graduate students at the University of Washington, has spent two years gathering images, articles and documents that tell the story of the Oso mudslide, a tragedy that still is shaping lives in the Stillaguamish Valley.

People pass by the gouged hillside on their way to work or while running errands.

Years later, when the historical society started trying to gather photos and information, they discovered that people had moved away, died or forgotten bits and pieces.

There are more stories of courage and kindness that the historical society likely never will be able to document, now that so much time has passed.

The natural instinct with an archive is to gather every document possible, but that takes away the focus, Morris said.

Three graduate students — Rick Stewart, Brittni Kilborn and Mantra Roy — started working with the historical society in 2014.

The students were master's degree candidates in the library and information science program.

Other things the team has gathered include geological studies, 911 audio, videos, news articles and emergency planning documents.

The ultimate goal is to create a narrated website where people are guided from a welcome message into a chronology of events from the mudslide on March 22, 2014, until the new stretch of Highway 530 opened in September 2014.

Visitors can follow the tour guide — in this case the prompts on the welcome page — or interact with exhibits on their own.

To control the amount of information, historians and students decided to keep this archive focused on Darrington.

A lot of folks have suggested gathering oral histories, where people share their story on a video or audio recorder.

The archiving team tries to view the Oso mudslide through the lens of a historian, but the reality is that people are living the history they're chronicling.