Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center

Where the town of Maxville used to be. Photo by Alai Reyes-Santos. 2023.

Gwen Trice’s ancestral hometown and historical preservation project: The Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center currently seeks to honor the rich history of African American, Indigenous, and immigrant loggers in the Pacific Northwest, as well as serve as a site to connect with the region’s ecology and recognize Nimiipuu (Nez Perce)’s land stewardship in the region since time immemorial. Maxville, about 13 miles north of the town of Wallowa in the state’s upper right-hand corner, was once home to about 400 residents. Maxville was a timber town, but, unlike most timber towns, it was home to both African American loggers and white loggers. In the early 1920s, the loggers and their families came to Maxville from the South and the Midwest, even though Oregon’s exclusion laws prohibited “free Negroes” from moving to the state to live and work. The African American families in Maxville lived in segregated housing, attended segregated schools, and played on a segregated baseball team—but they worked side by side with white workers felling timber. Today the Maxville Heritage Interpretative Site is recreating arqueological findings to tell the story of the community, and creating programming that enables people to connect with the land and all the life forms sustained by it.

(edited excerpt from https://www.maxvilleheritage.org/our-story)