Stills in the Hills, Homebrewed Hooch in the Age of Prohibition

The Museum: The White River Valley Museum of Auburn, Washington has earned a reputation for being small but mighty, daring but educational, low-budget but highly productive. This brave little community museum seeks your help to create its next exhibit, Stills in the Hills: Homemade Hooch in the Age of Prohibition.

Several times a year the Museum works with local historians and scholars to develop temporary exhibits that engage and challenge visitors with exciting “big city style” titles ranging from: Suffer for Beauty, A Look at Women’s History as Revealed Through Undergarments, to DEAD, Unearthing the Shift in Funerary Practices from Home to Mortuary. Stills in the Hills will follow in this provocative tradition—this is not your mama’s old timey local history museum!

Along with temporary exhibits this Museum has permanent displays on subjects such as railroading, hops farming, tribal history, and Japanese immigration and internment.  All are designed to intrigue the mind and whet the appetite for further investigation.  At this Museum visitors get to walk into imaginative settings, hear oral histories and period music and find that history is relevant to their lives

About the Exhibit: Stills in the Hills takes an in-depth look into what prohibition was like for Washingtonians , highlighting local reflections on the “Noble Experiment”.  This exhibit doesn’t tell your usual prohibition story—the  tales of back alley glamour, where everyone’s a Fitzgerald and looks like Clara Bow. Instead, Stills in the Hills examines prohibition on the home front and what the dry years were like outside of the “buzzing” metropolises.

When you visit Stills in the Hills you will enter into a 1915 kitchen scene where it becomes apparent that the woman of the household has money problems (her husband drinks up his wages each Friday night). Today she is preparing to march in a Prohibition rally as a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Oddly, she might find herself along side a member of the KKK, local unions, or 7th Day Adventists—all supporters of Prohibition.

Following this introduction, visitors will explore scenes of saloons closing and speakeasies opening, local entrepreneurs discovering the value of home brewing and explore a pile of still parts confiscated by the local sheriff who was dedicated to enforcing the law—often working at cross purposes with local politicians and law officials. Such is the story of prohibition in Washington.

Stills in the Hills opens August 15 and will be on display through November 4, 2012.

What Your Pledge Supports: Education

People who have a sense of their past have been found have stronger future planning and visioning skills. People who have a sense of place have been found to have greater self confidence and self awareness. The White River Valley Museum’s goal is to give everyone opportunities to grow and develop in these ways.

To that end, the Museum keeps admission and  program costs low for everyone in the community. Regular admission is $2 for adults, $1 for children and seniors and FREE every Wednesday and 4th Sunday. Additionally, with a small staff the Museum provides FREE and low cost fieldtrips for over 6,000 students per year.

Cost for developing, mounting and  exhibiting the Stills and the Hills are upwards of $6000.  Through donation from local community members and businesses we have achieved over half our goal and are looking to the Kickstarter community to help us fully fund this exhibit!

Our Kickstarter campaign funds directly support: 

•          Object Loan Fees
•          Photo and Media Licensing Fees
•          Curatorial Costs
•          Artifact Transportation Costs
•          Manufacturing Exhibit Labels and Signage
•          Purchase of Exhibit Props
•          Upkeep of Environmental and Temperature Controls
•          Graphic Design and Marketing Expenses
•          Specialized Exhibit Lighting
•          Docent Training
•          Programming and Lecture Costs

 Reward Example: 11"x14" poster