Confluence Project site due for ‘08

CLARKSTON – A nearby art installation that is one of seven in the Confluence Project – works that mark the route of explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark while also honoring the history of each area and its people – should be completed by 2008, supporters say.

Like the other six sites, the Chief Timothy Park site was designed by Maya Lin, perhaps best known for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Chief Timothy Park is an island on the Snake River 6 miles west of Clarkston on U.S. Highway 12. It includes one of five art projects commissioned in Washington state by the Vancouver, Wash.-based Confluence Project to mark the 200th anniversary of the Corps of Discovery. There are also two sites in Oregon that Lin has designed.

The seven works are dispersed across 450 miles, mostly where one river flows into another. One is complete – at Cape Disappointment near Ilwaco, Wash.

The cost for the Chief Timothy Park site is $1.9 million, and all but $400,000 has been raised, said Jane Jacobsen, executive director of the Confluence Project.

The plan at Chief Timothy Park is for a large “listening circle” surrounded by stone.

Wanda Keefer, Port of Clarkston manager, suggested the site be moved and that Lin create an overpass connecting Hells Canyon Marina with a visitor center.

“It is too late in the process to move the project to another site,” said Michelle Peters, a board member of the Confluence Project. “The land has already been blessed by Nez Perce elders.”

Lewis and Clark and their party, joined by Indian guide and interpreter Sacajawea in what is now North Dakota, were charged by President Thomas Jefferson with finding a waterway west and mapping the country they passed through. Although there was flourishing trade and exploration along the Pacific Coast, there had been few forays overland.

Confluence Project officials hope Lin’s interpretive works will underscore the tremendous changes ushered in by the journey.