The Port of Kalama last week hosted a grand opening celebration of its new Kalama Transportation Interpretive Center and administrative offices.

The new facility not only houses the Port of Kalama operations team with much-needed space for a growing list of new business and community projects, but celebrates Kalama’s place in Pacific Northwest history as a transportation and commercial hub. The center is designed to replicate a traditional waterfront warehouse of the 1800s and will house cultural artifacts, memorabilia and life-sized replicas of the past.

Port officials expect the new administrative facility and museum to further develop Kalama as a destination not only for businesses looking to grow, but day-trippers and tourists. Exhibits track Kalama’s early inhabitants and the settlers that followed over the next 100 plus years including renowned Oregon Trail writer Ezra Meeker. Displays illustrate how Kalama’s particular landscape gave birth to a booming transportation system impacting the area both culturally and economically and ultimately transforming the area into its position today as an internationally-connected community.

The Kalama Interpretive Center will not only tell the story of how Kalama was settled, but treat visitors to display models and replicas, including:

 

• Handcrafted canoe carved from a cedar log by Cowlitz artisan Robert Harjeu.
• Prairie Schooner covered wagon, like the one used by Ezra Meeker to cross the Oregon Trail.
• Railroad ferry boat Tacoma, reputedly the second largest in the world in its day.
• Actual 1929 Model AA Ford Truck.

Interpretive materials featuring the area’s first settlers and transportation technology of the day.

"Kalama has such a rich history and this Interpretive Center will illuminate how really distinctive our past is and how our roots in commerce and transportation have created what we are today," said Port Commission President Alan Basso. "Those assets continue to draw international business to the region. Much of what made Kalama replete and thriving in the past still holds true today. Kalama remains an ideal place to do business and our growth continues in such a positive way."

Kalama’s new administrative offices and transportation interpretive center.
Photo/Port of Kalama