Presented by Sarah Baker Munro, Author & Historian

Oregonians were hit hard when the Depression struck in 1929 and didn't realize much relief until 1933. Franklin Roosevelt's programs to put people back to work became known collectively as the New Deal. The New Deal created a flurry of building that left a lasting impact on the state. The variety of programs improved transportation by building roads, bridges, and tunnels; developed recreational facilities in state parks and the national forest; expanded infrastructure and utilities by constructing dams and providing electrification; and created art, murals in post offices and paintings in schools. The New Deal created such landmarks as Timberline Lodge and improved Crater Lake facilities. This talk will provide an overview of New Deal projects still visible in Oregon and explore the significance the program holds for our current generation.

About the Speaker:
Sarah Baker Munro has been active with Friends of Timberline since 1975. She co-wrote a catalog of the lodge published in 1977 and authored Timberline Lodge: The History, Art, and Craft of an American Icon, published by Timber Press in 2009. A second edition is forthcoming. She wrote a history on Timberline that was published by Arcadia Press in 2016. In 2004, Sarah co-sponsored a symposium at the Portland Art Museum on Labor Arts and curated an exhibit on the New Deal in Oregon at the Oregon Historical Society. She contributed to the exhibition catalog, The New Deal in the Northwest: The WPA and Beyond, for Tacoma Art Museum's exhibit Forgotten Stories: Northwest Public Art of the 1930s.

Sarah graduated from Pitzer College in Anthropology and Art History and completed an MA in Folklore at the University of California at Berkeley. She was the Director of the Hoover-Minthorn House Museum in Newberg, the boyhood home of Herbert Hoover, 31st President of the United States from 2012 - 2018. Currently, she is working on a Multiple Property Documentation Form for the State Historic Preservation Office

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