The Nolan Center isn’t old enough to drink but that will not stop its supporters from raising a champagne toast to celebrate the building’s 20th birthday.
The party is set for 6 to 8 p.m. Monday, Oct. 14.
“It’s really a cultural hub for our community,” Nolan Center Director Jeanie Arnold said of the multi-purpose waterfront building that houses the Wrangell Museum and also serves as a movie theater, stages community theater productions, provides space for conferences and is home for multiple community events and dinners every year.
Admission to the birthday party is free, though the Friends of the Museum will be there to accept new members into the nonprofit support organization.
Partygoers are asked to bring a sweet or savory dish, Arnold said. The Friends of the Museum will supply the champagne, and beer and wine also will be available for people at least a year older than the building.
A highlight of the evening will be a presentation by underwater archeologist Jenya Anichenko, who will talk about ongoing research into the 1908 wreck of the salmon packer ship Star of Bengal, which went down near Coronation Island on the outside waters west of Prince of Wales Island.
Anichenko, who lives mostly in Anchorage and Sitka but who researches shipwrecks around the world, is working with Wrangell’s Gig Decker and a nonprofit called UCHART, Underwater Cultural Heritage Archaeological Research Team.
“Our goal is to find underwater shipwrecks,” Decker said.
Anichenko’s presentation at the birthday event “will give people an idea of what’s the story and what they are finding,” Arnold said.
The nonprofit is not interested in finding riches, Decker said, but rather finding the truth about accidents and sharing historical items with museums.
The Star of Bengal had 138 men on board when it went down in a storm; 111 died, mostly Chinese, Japanese and Filipino cannery workers returning home after the salmon season had ended. Most of the crew got off the boat and were rescued, Decker said.
The UCHART team, including Anichenko, plans to dive on the wreck in March. “We want to try finding if there is any evidence that the Asians were locked in the holds when the ship went down,” Decker said.
Another piece of the story the group hopes to find is the strongbox that held everyone on board’s valuables. Such a piece of history would be a significant addition to the Wrangell Museum, he said.
In addition to salmon packing and steamships, the museum tells the area’s history starting with the Tlingit culture and continuing through British, Russian and U.S. control, along with logging, mining and fishing history.
The Nolan Center opened its doors to the public on July 1, 2004. But celebrating the 20th birthday on that day would have been “right smack in the middle” of summer tourists, Arnold explained. So they decided to delay the party until after the last cruise ship.
It was a busy tourist season at the museum. The total number of guests on organized tours (4,000) and walk-ins (1,581) surpassed last year, Arnold said.
In particular, the gift shop recorded a substantial increase in sales this summer, almost $78,000, up from $57,000 last year. The numbers most likely will be much higher next year when Wrangell is on the itinerary for as many as 45,000 cruise ship passengers — more than double this summer’s count.
In addition to an open house at the museum the evening of the birthday party, the gift shop also will be open, Arnold said.
Much of the community facility’s construction cost was covered by the James and Elsie Nolan Trust; the Nolans owned Wrangell Drug for decades. James was a member of the territorial and state legislatures, serving as state Senate president from 1955-1957. James Nolan’s life was as varied as the building named in the couple’s honor: Wrangell city council member, fisherman, U.S. deputy marshal, head of the Wrangell chamber of commerce.
The trust continues to help fund operations at the center.
Additional construction funding came from the Rasmuson Foundation, established by the Alaska banking family who helped build the state at the same time as James Nolan, and from the federal government and multiple Wrangell residents committed to seeing a museum in town.
Before the Nolan Center, the museum was in temporary housing below the old high school gym. The museum started in the 1960s at the old school building, built in 1906 in front of where the Irene Ingle Public Library now stands.
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