A $10,000 federal grant will help Maryhill Museum of Art near Goldendale celebrate the 2016 centennial of the Columbia River Highway, a public works project championed by the museum’s founder, Sam Hill.
The grant, awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, is designed to support museum programs associated with the centennial, including the ongoing exhibit “Sam Hill and the Columbia River Highway” and an upcoming exhibit “The Historic Columbia River Highway through the Eyes of Young Artists.”
“I am delighted that the museum received this award in support of our programs and outreach celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Historic Columbia River Highway,” museum Executive Director Colleen Schafroth said in a news release announcing the grant. “This is a unique road that the museum’s founder Sam Hill played such a pivotal role in helping to create. We are thrilled to join other museums and organizations in the community to present programs celebrating this regional landmark.”
Hill, an attorney, entrepreneur and railroad executive who saw good roads as a key to the Northwest’s development, is credited with pushing the Oregon Legislature to build the 74-mile highway. He went so far as to construct 10 miles of road at his own expense to demonstrate the possibility of the larger effort. A section of that experimental road still exists today as Maryhill Loops Road near the museum. The Oregon Legislature visited those roads prior to approving the Columbia River Highway in 1913.
It was completed in 1916 and became part of U.S. Route 30 when the U.S. highway system was introduced a decade later. It fell into disrepair and was bypassed by Interstate 84 shortly thereafter.
