PORT TOWNSEND — The Jefferson County Historical Society will offer behind-the-scenes tours of its stored collection from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. next Sunday in connection with a celebration of its first 140 years.
The tours will be after Friday’s big birthday bash at the Northwest Maritime Center, 431 Water St.
That free celebration will begin at 4 p.m. with party favors for the first 140 people to arrive and cake and champagne for a toast.
While Barbarian Fine Cuisine provides food for the party, guests will be able to browse a newly launched online collection, visit an oral history listening station, enter a raffle for two nights at Kalaloch Lodge during an annual West End Weekend, war birthday hats featuring images from the historical society collection, sign a giant birthday card for well-wishes, look into the Native American education trunk visit a photo booth.
After speeches honor the organization’s special guests at 5:30 p.m., the First Friday lecture at 7 p.m. will feature David Brownell, historic preservation officer for the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe.
He will talk about the village of qatay (Kai Tai, Kah Tai) and the history, archaeology and ethnography connecting the S’Klallam people and the city of Port Townsend.
Then on Sunday, visitor can go to the Jefferson County Research Center at 13692 Airport Cutoff Road and take tours of treasures not now on display.
The rare open house will include a walk-through of the collections storage space and face time with the collections manager and archivist. Visitors can see more of the historical society’s collection up close, learn about collection care and hear about plans afoot to repair the collection building.
Tours will be 30 minutes in length and will begin at 1 p.m., on the hour and half-hour. The last tour will begin at 3:30 p.m.
On average less than 10 percent of the items in any museum’s collection are on display at any one time, organizers said, because of space and the special care many artifacts require.
While it is unusual to be able to tour all of the collection, the Research Center is open to the public five days a week.
Visitors can digitally search hundreds of thousands of objects and archival documents and get help from volunteers.
The center also offers workshops and classes.
For more information, see www.jchsmuseum.org/Sites/ResearchCenter.html.
