(Excerpted from: Whitman Mission National Historic Site: General Management Plan, September 2000. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service.)

The first excavation was conducted by Tom Garth, an archeologist who worked at the park between 1941 and 1950. Because of the war, most of Garth’s work occurred between 1947 and 1950. By 1950, the First House, Mission House, Emigrant House, Gristmill, and Blacksmith Shop had been examined, although very little evidence of the Blacksmith Shop was discovered. More than 2,000 artifacts were unearthed and preserved from these excavations including medical supplies, china shards, and metal fragments. Garth’s excavations also exposed the mission building foundations revealing the building materials and methods of construction, and verifying in many cases, the eye-witness descriptions of the site. Garth also found evidence of the occupation by the Oregon Volunteers in 1848, adding to an understanding of the Post-mission Period.

The second major excavation was conducted by NPS Regional Archeologist Paul Schumacher between 1960 and 1961. The primary goals of that effort were to discover the Blacksmith Shop and the grave of Alice Clarissa Whitman. Although Schumacher did find fragments associated with the Blacksmith Shop in 1961, he failed to find any definite outline of the structure. In spite of this, the excavation did reveal enough information for the park to replace an earlier circular outline of the building, with a square outline, which remains today as an approximate location for the building.

Using historical research to guide investigations related to the location of Alice Clarissa Whitman’s grave, Schumacher concentrated on and around the Great Grave near the old county road. The 1960 excavation failed to find the grave. The following year another attempt to locate the grave focused along the base of Memorial Hill. Schumacher found human remains in this location, but they were not the remains of Alice Clarissa Whitman. In 1968, a marker dedicated to Whitman’s only child was placed near the location of the 1961 excavation where it remains today.

Schumacher also conducted limited investigations of the Oregon Trail and Whitman’s original irrigation ditch.

Altogether the archeological investigation and historical research conducted at the site between 1941 and 1961 provided the basis for treatment and interpretation of the mission site and strongly influenced development of the Mission 66 master plan for the park.