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Previously:

• Crescent City Pursues Another $3 million Prop 68 Grant for Beachfront Park

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Crescent City staff are pursuing a California Coastal Conservancy grant dedicated to correcting one-sided histories to tell the story of the area’s original inhabitants.

Using $200,000 in Coastal Stories Grant dollars, the city plans to expand upon the Tolowa Cultural Interpretive Area planned for Beachfront Park and add storytelling elements to Battery Point and Brother Jonathan Park, said Bridget Lacey, the city’s grant and economic development coordinator.

“The concept for this project is to tell 10 unique Tolowa stories along the Coastal Trail starting at the Tolowa Cultural Interpretive Area and ending at Brother Jonathan Park,” Lacey told Councilors on Monday. “Each story would be a 5-7 minute, high quality, video clip linked scannable QR code or hand-cranked outdoor platform. Some of the suggested stories at this time are Tolowa Dee-ni’ overview, Yontocket, Culture Overview, language overview, a traditional Tolowa story, demographics, lands, a focus on Tolowa youth, a story about Taa-‘at-dvn and the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation today.”

Lacey said there is also a proposal to turn the collection of stories into a scavenger hunt with participants following the path to Brother Jonathan Park, answering trivia questions and take a code back to the visitor center for a prize such as a tribal pin.

To be eligible for the grant, the city must submit a “pre-proposal” to the Coastal Conservancy by Monday. City staff will work with the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation and Elk Valley Rancheria to create a full project proposal, “which accurately conveys the Tolowa perspective,” Lacey said.

If it’s successful, the Coastal Conservancy grant dollars would be added to $1.3 million in Statewide Park Program grant dollars the city has allocated for the Tolowa Interpretive Area at Beachfront Park, which would also include indigenous plants, according to Lacey.

The city is also using $177,952 in Prop 68 per capita grant and $30,000 in California Endowment Cultural Diversity grant dollars.
Per capita grant dollars will go toward an overall Paths of Culture exhibit at Beachfront Park, which includes information about the city’s first settlers, the 1964 tsunami, the S.S. Emidio memorial and the monument commemorating the sister city relationship with Rikuzentakata, Lacey said.

The California Coastal Grant will allow the city to install interpretive kiosks at Battery Point and Brother Jonathan Park.

“These three grants would lay the foundation for the Coastal Stories video content,” Lacey said. “The Coastal Stories grant program would pay for the video production, the web development, the storytellers and scavenger hunt prizes.”

Crescent City’s story began at Battery Point in 1853. But the village it replaced, Taa-‘at-dvn was capital of a Tolowa polity that governed lands from Wilson Creek in the south, Point St. George in the north and Big Flat in the east, said Loren Bommelyn, a tradition bearer for the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation.

“This was their area of ownership and control and use and protection, so there’s a big story to be told there,” Bommelyn told Councilors.

Bommelyn said the Del Norte Historical Society is working on a network of video content linked to QR codes near Battery Point Lighthouse, and added that the city’s proposed project would be a good fit.

“Very few people know the story of the Crescent City area and how it was brought into existence as a city there,” he said. “I would be willing to support you, helping in any way I can as a citizen and also as a citizen of the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation.”

Crescent City Councilor Blake Inscore said one component of the project would be to create a marketing plan, possibly through the Del Norte Visitors Bureau and its Explore Del Norte website, to draw people the project site.

The exact locations for the kiosks have yet to be established, according to Lacey. That would be one of the project’s next steps, she said.

City Manager Eric Wier said he hoped the Tolowa Cultural Interpretive Area and the Coastal Stories project would tie in to other stories focusing on the area’s experiences with tsunamis and its sister city with Rikuzentakata, Japan.

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