2011 John L. Cotter Award for Excellence in NPS Archeology

Doug Wilson. NPS photo.

Dr. Douglas Wilson is the 2011 recipient of the John L. Cotter Award for Excellence in National Park Service Archeology. Dr. Wilson is an archaeologist for the Pacific West Regional Office of the National Park Service, based at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site in Vancouver, WA. The completion of this five-year research project is an exemplary example of how NPS efforts to facilitate archaeological research necessary for a proposed undertaking at a park can result in a multi-disciplinary anthropological research design with testable results, while still addressing park management issues and scientific objectives.

The archaeological data recovery efforts at the Station Camp site were the results of the proposed realignment of U.S. Highway 101 to create an interpretive space for the Station Camp Unit of the Lewis and Clark National and State Historical Park (LEWI). This interpretive area was planned to commemorate the encampment of the Lewis and Clark Expedition during November 1805, the history of the indigenous Chinook Indians, and the important salmon cannery town established by P.J. McGowan. Two components of the Station Camp site were explored: a fur trade period component (ca. 1792-1830) associated with the Lower Chinook Indians’ Middle Village (qiiqayaqilxam) and a late19th century to early-20th century cannery and fishing village called McGowan.

In addition, Dr. Wilson incorporated a battery of scientific techniques into the research design in order to establish the site’s chronology and tease additional data from the artifacts, including Carbon-14 dating, ground penetrating radar, magnetometry, and isotope analyses. The research will be the basis for park interpretive developments at Station Camp / Middle Village. The $2 million project - a partnership between the Chinook Nation, the State of Washington, and the National Park Service - is scheduled for completion in 2011.