Murals depict Quincy history
CHERYL SCHWEIZER | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 1 year, 10 months AGO
A mural depicting the old-school method of harvesting potatoes can be found on the side of the Lamb-Weston facility in Quincy. In this case “old school” is the mid-1970s.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald
Repairing a street in old Quincy is the subject of a mural at the Salad Bar Cafe, 10 B St. SE in Quincy.
Traditional dance is celebrated with a mural at the intersection of Central Avenue South and F Street SE in Quincy.
The town baseball team poses for a picture in pre-World War I Quincy in a mural at the intersection of Central Avenue South and F Street Southeast. Back in the day, every town had a baseball team.
Wheat harvest in the early years of the 20th century required a lot of horses and a lot of hands. The harvest near Quincy is depicted in a downtown mural.
Senior Reporter Cheryl Schweizer is a journalist with more than 30 years of experience serving small communities in the Pacific Northwest. She began her post-high-school education at Treasure Valley Community College and enerned her journalism degree at Oregon State University. After working for multiple publications, she has settled down at the Columbia Basin Herald and has been a staple of the newsroom for more than a decade. Schweizer’s dedication to her communities and profession has earned her the nickname “The Baroness of Bylines.” She covers a variety of beats including health, business and various municipalities. | March 15, 2023 2:18 PM
QUINCY — Drivers poking around Quincy will spot them from the street, here and there around town – harvesting wheat here, posing for a team picture over there. They are a record of Quincy history, dating back to the town’s founding.
Harriet Weber, director of the Quincy Valley Historical Society and Museum, wrote the murals are the result of a project undertaken by artists from local schools and the youth group from the Quincy-area Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Scott Lybbert was the project director, Weber wrote.
“They used an overhead projector in the dark, with paint brushes in a ‘dab-on’ style, similar to pointillism,” Weber wrote in response to a question from the Herald. The sepia tones are designed to give the impression of old-school photography, she said.
Together they tell some of Quincy’s story, the old dryland farming days and the expansion in farming after the Columbia Basin Project began delivering irrigation water in the early 1950s – or to put it another way, after the water came.
They can be seen in Quincy’s downtown corridor, along Central Avenue and F Street Southeast.
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