About Siuslaw Pioneer Museum

Del Phelps
President, 2021-2023

I am a proud descendent of 1888 homesteaders Jonathon and Charlotte Phelps. I graduated from Mapleton High School in 1953 and worked many summers in the Phelps mills on Indian Creek. After the Davidson family purchased the Phelps Mill in 1954, I continued to work for them as head sawyer, head planer, and then mill superintendent until 1999. Other volunteer services have included the Siuslaw School Board, Florence City council, and Lane County Budget Committee. I became a licensed realtor in 1998 (to present) and helped develop Florentine Estates. I was president of the Siuslaw Pioneer Museum from 2005-2017 and worked hard to facilitate the success of the museum and its move to Old Town in 2006. I am beginning another term as president now and am looking forward to working with a great group of board members.

Craig Sanders
Vice President, through 2023

My wife Jeanni and I moved to Florence in 1994 after looking up and down the coast for the “perfect town.” After 26 years we are still here. This must be that “perfect town” we were looking for. I was a licensed building contractor from 1973 until 2008 when I started working for Hoagland Properties Inc., owners of the award-winning Old Town Inn and River House Inn in Florence, and retired as company president in March of 2019. I have been a member of the Rotary Club of Florence since 2009 and served as club president in 2017 – 2018. My current hobbies are golf and woodworking. My wife and I also enjoy traveling in our RV with our cat Opie.

I became a Siuslaw Pioneer Museum board member in March, 2020, and have served on the building committee and website committee. I am currently VP of the museum board and look forward to seeing a new website early this year.

Steve Skidmore
Secretary, through 2023

As have many Oregonians, I, too, have taken the circuitous route to our lovely corner of the Pacific Northwest. Born in Port Neches, Texas, I moved at a young age to Ponca City, Oklahoma, and graduated from high school there. I went to college at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, graduating with a degree in history in 1970, and then to graduate school at the University of Oklahoma in Norman where I earned a master’s degree in library science in 1974.

After working professionally in libraries in Oklahoma and Illinois, I became the library director of the Siuslaw Public Library in Florence and Mapleton. I believe that Florence is the ideal place to live and feel blessed to have found this wonderful community. Since 2013, I have been involved in a number of volunteer activities, including the Siuslaw Pioneer Museum having served as president, vice president, and secretary/treasurer of the museum board of directors.

John Barnes
Trustee, through 2023

I was born and raised in Florence, graduating from Siuslaw High School in 1969. I joined the Air Force in 1970, studied forestry at Oregon State University and started my professional career with Idaho State Parks in 1980. Eventually I moved back to Oregon and served as the Cultural Resource Coordinator for the Oregon Department of Forestry researching and documenting pioneer homesteads, old logging camps, and Native American sites. Following retirement in 2014, I moved back to Florence and volunteered as one of the museum’s docents.

Annie Schmidt
Trustee, through 2023

I was born and raised in Kentucky. Think the “Hillbilly Elegy” book and movie setting, but moonshine was the worst my parent’s generation had to deal with. My stepfather’s military deployment led to his assignment in Germany after I graduated high school in 1957. I attended the Munich Branch of the University of Maryland for two years.

I met Gary Schmidt at a summer language institute in Salzburg in 1958 and that changed the trajectory of my life. He proposed after one week and returned the next summer to marry me and take me back to Seattle. We both graduated from the University of Washington, attended graduate school at the U of O, and returned to Germany to attend the University of Munich where we stayed and taught for the next 27 years. We returned to Florence at the beginning of 1994 to retire to the house we’d built at the end of the ‘70s on Lake Woahink.

Since then, I’ve done fundraising for the Florence Events Center; was executive director of the Western Lane Community Foundation (WLCF); volunteered in the Siuslaw Pioneer Museum library, and was a founding member of the Last Resort Players which changed my life! That led to further participation in the Museum as a Heritage Player, Mrs. O. W. Hurd, née Lily Cox, which I continue to do. I was also able to help arrange financing for the purchase of the current building while I was executive director of the WLCF. I have had a strong connection with the Museum for the entire 26 years that I’ve lived here.

Cathy Dupont
Trustee, through 2023

I was born in Cloquet, Minnesota (up in the sticks), and graduated in Education from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. I earned my master’s degree from the University of Northern Illinois while living in St. Charles, Il, with my husband Bob and our three boys. In 1996, he had to medically retire, and we needed to find an area away from the bitter cold winters and overly humid summers of Chicago. Some friends of ours had recently moved to Florence to be near relatives and invited us to come for a weekend to see “Paradise on the Pacific.” We came, loved it, sold our Illinois home, and moved here and have never looked back.

I continued to teach Communications/Speech at local community colleges as I had done in Illinois, and fit in several years of substitute teaching at Siuslaw High School. For a couple of years, I was the community educator for domestic violence for the Women’s Center. After finally retiring from education, I was able to spend more time volunteering at the Women’s Center and other organizations in various roles and positions over the years, and performing with Last Resort Players which lead to my character as pioneer Christina Kyle with the Heritage Players of the Siuslaw Pioneer Museum.

Amy Graham
Co-Treasurer, through 2023

My husband and I moved to Florence in 2006 after coming here for a visit. We fell in love with the town.

I currently work for Hoagland Properties as the COO and vice president of the board. My current hobbies are photography and crafting. My family is number one in my life. My husband and I have five children, two sons- in-law, one daughter-in-law, and among them two “significant others” and two beautiful granddaughters.

I became a Siuslaw Pioneer Museum board member in 2022. In the past I have served on the Florence Chamber of Commerce board. As a board member of the museum, I look forward to seeing more committee members getting involved in preserving the history of our beautiful town.

Dorothy Hosking
Co-Treasurer, through 2023

I was born and raised in Coos Bay, Oregon. My great grandfather, John Lamont, arrived in Coos county in 1871 and homesteaded in the Coaledo and Bandon areas. My third great uncle, Michael Troutman Simmons, was one of the founders of the state of Washington. My other great grandfather, William H. Hosking, was from St Just in Penwith, Cornwall, UK. He settled in Washington. How his son came to settle in Coos county is another fun story. This history has greatly influenced my search for information on the pioneers of Oregon.

I worked with the Genealogical Society of Douglas County for about 10 years as President and researcher. After moving to Florence in 2021 I became involved with Rotary and Soroptimist in addition to my work with two Cornish organizations. I am also a proud member of SNOB (Society of Native Oregon Born!).

My passion is researching family histories and crocheting blankets for my 36 grand, great, and great great grandchildren.
I became a Board member in March 2023 and look forward to helping to maintain and strengthen the Museum.

Jesse Beers
Trustee, through 2023

I was born and raised in Western Oregon, lived up Indian Creek for the first few years of my life and then we moved to the “big city” of Mapleton where I lived my elementary years before moving back up Indian Creek when I was in Middle School.

I graduated from Mapleton High and moved on to another “big city,” Monmouth, OR, for college at Western Oregon University. After I graduated with a degree in sociology/psychology and a minor in health, I came back to work for my tribe. I am an enrolled citizen of the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians. On my mother’s side sha’yuushtl’a uhl quuiich’axan hiich (I am a Siuslaw and Lower Umpqua person) whose ancestors have been on these lands and waters since time immemorial.

Before Euro-American contact, our tribes managed all this area, then were confined under the Coast Reservation, to live on the North Fork of the Siuslaw River. After the southern portion of the reservation closed in 1876, my family ran the stagecoach up and down the beaches transporting people and goods before the railway mostly put them out of business.

They worked to get lands back through termination era and through our restoration, and I am thankful for all their hard work and lessons imparted. I try to use all those lessons as I serve my tribe today in the role of cultural stewardship manager, working where our culture and natural resources mix; which, as we believe, is one in the same.

On my off time I help manage our family’s ranch up Indian Creek. On my father’s side, after fighting and winning, for the North during the Civil War, they settled a ways up Indian Creek in the 1880’s—somewhere far away from most populations and the violence they had witnessed.

My grandfather was able to purchase and consolidate much of our family’s property into a trust. I am thankful to them for the opportunity to grow up managing land and learning a strong work ethic. I have deep roots in this region and look forward to being a voice on this board for all of those roots, some of which are housed in this museum.

My partner Maree and my two children purchased and live on the old Phelps Mill site that you may have some familiarity with from our museum’s board president Del Phelps’ bio.