In the summer of 1978, young artist Michael Schlicting stopped by his hometown of Neskowin expecting to stay only long enough to say “hey” to the family. But then, his parents pointed out that his grandparents’ old place — the former two-room Neskowin schoolhouse — was empty and maybe he’d like to stick around a bit?

Schlicting, having no place he had to be and not a lot of plans on the horizon, put up some sandwich boards on Highway 101, hung some art on the old building’s walls, and by summer’s end, figured he just might stick around. 

As Schlicting marks 47 years in the schoolhouse — christened Hawk Creek Gallery that first summer — he’s also celebrating the discovery of a history he’d almost given up on finding.   

Not too long after he moved into the schoolhouse, Schlicting began searching for historic photos of the place. His efforts led to no more than the typical class photos shot everywhere — students posed on schoolhouse steps.  “Wonderful and charming,” Schlicting said. But not exactly the big picture he’d hoped to find. 

Then came social media and in the click of a keystroke, Schlicting found not just photos of his little old schoolhouse, but of an entire town — enough to fill a book.

This summer, Schlicting and members of the nonprofit Neskowin Historical Foundation will celebrate the launch of Neskowin: A Book of Found Photos, a 320-page coffee-table book spanning 100 years that grew out of Schlicting’s decades-long search.

The idea for the book took hold about three years ago after Schlicting, who grew up in the Tillamook County town of about 300, made a plea on Facebook for old photos of the schoolhouse. His grandparents had remade the 30-by-40-foot structure into their home in the 1960s, and Schlicting has continued the transformation over the years.

Sponsor

“It had a varied hundred-year history, which is relatively rare on this part of the coast,” he said. Still, after his decades-long quest, Schlicting wasn’t sure he’d dredge up much more than the photos already widely available around town — Proposal Rock, the golf course, the old general store. “Great visual narratives” of the town set between Cascade Head and Nestucca Bay, but again, Schlicting wanted more.

As it turned out, Jim Affolter, whose family settled in Neskowin in the 1870s, had what Schlicting was seeking. Affolter’s father had been a bit of a photography buff as a young man. And Affolter had his dad’s photo albums.

“Grandma saved everything,” said Affolter, a retired schoolteacher. “She made scrapbooks … and there were three or four of photo albums that predated the war, and the more that I knew about the area, the more I was just fascinated with these pictures, and I would comb through them, particularly my dad’s photo album.”

He found photos of the old country store, cottages, and campgrounds and one of the garage after a snowstorm — the time on the coast when everyone is a photographer — with three men out front in long wool coats and derby hats that looked to Affolter exactly like gangsters, “like something out of Chicago 1935.”

Affolter took the albums to Schlicting, whose first reaction was: “Amazing.”

“There are photos that everyone has, but there were these photos of Neskowin from the late ‘30s and ‘40s of people playing in the ocean, of kids playing football on the beach,” Schlicting said. “In one, the kids are all dressed up and one is combing his hair as the girls are looking at him. Just these cool slice-of-life images … like something out of the American Graffiti movie. It was those kinds of photos, and the ones that went back to the 1880s: Grandfathers and great-grandfathers clearing valleys to create their farms and seeing those crude cabin/barn structures they lived in, and over the years, the same farms, just like what you see today — beautiful barns and pastures.”

Affolter recalls, “That’s when Michael just looked at me and said, ‘Jim, we have something here.’ That was the genesis of the book.”

Sponsor

It was also the start of the  Neskowin Historical Foundation, which includes board members Stephen Dow Beckham, Professor Emeritus of History at Lewis & Clark College, and Cameron Nagel, former publisher of Northwest Palate magazine.

From there, things happened rather quickly, Affolter said.

The group continued Schlicting’s requests for historical photos, reaching out to friends, historical societies, and on social media. Sometimes, the photos trickled in; other times, they came in torrents, the bulk from a handful of families, Schlicting said.   

Combined, the photos, news clippings, plat maps, and scrapbooks revealed an unexpected duality of Neskowin: the vacationers who came for summer getaways, even as the settlers worked to clear the land and build their farms. The discovery was so obvious it even prompted an unofficial tagline of sorts, “And you thought you knew Neskowin.”

“Looking through these albums, there were so many photos of just life at the beach, people frolicking in the water and digging for clams,” Schlicting said. “People would come over from the valley and set up these very elaborate camps. But what was interesting was that from the very start, Neskowin was both a farming community and a resort.”

The influx of documents also illuminated local lore, some well-known, but not necessarily in full. Many know that postmistress Sarah Page named Proposal Rock after her daughter was engaged at the spot. But her involvement in naming the actual town isn’t nearly so well known. Originally dubbed “Slab Creek,” for the timber and slabwood washed up from a shipwreck, the town was renamed by Page after a chance conversation, according to a letter printed in a 1925 edition of The Morning Oregonian.

In the letter, Page reported asking for the name change after hearing Native Americans using the term “Neskowin.” When Page asked what it meant, she was told, “Plenty fish, plenty fish.”

Sponsor

“I had never fancied the name of Slab Creek, so I at once sent the name of Neskowin to the government office and it was adopted,” Page wrote. “Since then it has always borne that name.”

The foundation members’ research also revealed “that the Pages moved from Neskowin after a child of theirs drowned in the creek,” Schlicting said.

The launch date of Neskowin: A Book of Found Photos isn’t certain, though Schlicting hopes to see it sent to the printer by late July. The price has also not been set but is likely to be in the $100 range, he said. Preorders can be requested at the Neskowin Historical Foundation website.

It’s not a book heavy in text, but the photo captions tell the story, Schlicting said. “At the turn of the 2000s, one of the teachers had a several years’ project where the kids would interview the older people still around, sort of an oral history of the area. So, there’s some very charming anecdotes of growing up, going to school in Neskowin.”

Proceeds from the book will go to the foundation to pay for its publication, but the group is also talking about doing smaller publications with narrower focuses, such as horseback riding on the beach or the history of the Neskowin Beach Golf Course.  

“There is a massive amount of information that didn’t make the book that we wished we’d had earlier,” Schlicting said. “So, we want to have a mechanism for these images. We want to have everything organized, and people can go to the site and say, ‘I want to see the golf course in 1935.’ We want it to be a searchable database for photos, ephemera, oral and written histories, going forward. We want people to submit their Neskowin stuff as they come across it.” 

It’s been a long road since the day when Schlicting looked at Affolter and spoke those prescient words. Today, as they finally near the end — at least of this project — there is a sense of timeliness not necessarily apparent at the beginning, Schlicting said. “All of us are in our late 60s, 70s, or 80s…. If someone tried to put this together in the future, it would be much more difficult.”

Sponsor

In a way, it really was now or never.

“If we don’t do this now, it won’t get done,” Affolter said. “We have the expertise, we have the historians, the artists. We have the photos of our parents and our grandparents, so that kicks in our memories and stories. It’s time-consuming, but it’s kind of a labor of love.”