What would happen if a similar disaster struck Clatsop County’s archives?

At the time, Smith was researching local history and writing tour scripts for an underground museum in Astoria, Oregon, while his wife, Annie, volunteered at the Flavel House Museum, operated by the Clatsop County Historical Society (CCHS). He knew the society held an extraordinary amount of historical material, much of which had never been digitized.

Smith approached CCHS Executive Director Mac Burns to ask what the organization was doing to protect its archives. Burns agreed that digitization was needed, but the society lacked the funding and personnel to tackle such an enormous undertaking.

“That conversation really started the whole thing,” Smith recalls.

From a Local Effort to a Regional Resource

Smith and Annie began researching funding opportunities and preservation technology, eventually discovering the Internet Archive, which offered a way to make historical collections publicly accessible without building and maintaining their own online platform.

With initial funding secured and equipment acquired, the CCHS Digital Scanning Center became operational in June 2019.

Seven years later, the center has digitized more than 4,500 historical items across dozens of online collections, attracting nearly 750,000 views from around the world. It also provides digitization services at no cost to 21 other regional organizations, including museums, libraries, and historical preservation groups.

All of this is happening in Clatsop County, a rural Oregon coastal community with just over 40,000 residents.

“The Aberdeen fire was the spark,” Smith says. “But the willingness of CCHS staff to embrace the idea, combined with the support of donors and volunteers, is what made the program possible.”

The Mystery of a Backyard Gravestone

The value of accessible historical records became especially clear when an unusual discovery turned up in a Surf Pines resident’s backyard.

A landscaper had unearthed an old gravestone bearing the name Susanna E. Moisio, born in 1879 and deceased in 1956. Nobody knew why it was there, and the homeowners’ initial research had turned up little.

Smith began searching historical directories, school records, and other documents already digitized in the CCHS archive. Those records helped him identify Susanna’s family, including her husband, Arvid, a Finnish immigrant who worked in Astoria’s shipbuilding industry. Additional research connected Smith with family descendants, while old neighborhood directories revealed that Susanna’s son and daughter-in-law had lived just a few houses from where the gravestone was found.

Eventually, the mystery began to unravel. Susanna had been buried at Ocean View Cemetery in Warrenton, but her original gravestone had apparently been replaced. Her descendants believed the old marker had been given to a family friend for landscaping.

“The important part is that the digitized historical directories and records allowed me to begin solving the mystery from my own computer,” Smith explains. “Without those resources, the research would have been considerably more difficult and time-consuming.”

Making Room for More History

Despite the center’s success, one significant preservation challenge remained: Some of the historical materials awaiting digitization were simply too large for its existing equipment.

Its existing flatbed scanner accommodates documents measuring approximately 24 by 36 inches. But CCHS and partner organizations such as the Clatsop Community College hold oversized maps, blueprints, engineering drawings, and maritime charts that exceed those dimensions.

“These documents tell fascinating stories about the development of the Columbia River, our maritime industries, transportation systems, and the communities that grew around them,” Smith says.

Until now, digitizing oversized documents required multiple scans and digital stitching, assuming the originals could be handled at all. For fragile historical materials, every additional handling step presents another challenge.

With support from an Oregon Cultural Trust grant and private donor funding, CCHS purchased a Contex HD Ultra X 4290 large-format scanner from Large Document Solutions.

After researching professional large-format scanning equipment, Smith selected the Contex system for its high-resolution CCD imaging technology, scanning speed, and ability to accommodate oversized historical materials. With a scanning width of up to 42 inches, the scanner will allow the center to capture many large maps and drawings in a single pass, streamlining digitization while minimizing handling of fragile originals.

For an organization operating with limited staff and volunteers, those efficiencies are especially valuable. “The faster we can safely process historical materials, the more we can preserve and make publicly accessible,” Smith explains.

At the time of the interview, the scanner had not yet arrived, but the team was eager to begin digitizing collections previously beyond its in-house capabilities.

The Next Chapter

The scanner purchase is part of CCHS’s broader Voices & Maps of Clatsop initiative, which aims to expand preservation capabilities while creating opportunities for students and volunteers to develop archival skills. As the center prepares to digitize larger historical materials, Smith is also thinking about who will continue the work in the years ahead.

“When Annie and I first began working on this project in 2018, our immediate concern was protecting historical records from being lost,” Smith says. “Today, we’re thinking much more broadly about preserving our region’s history, making it available to the world, and training future generations to continue the work.”

Explore the Clatsop County Historical Society and its digital collections.

Explore Large Document Solutions’ selection of large-format scanners.