The SR 26 Project by Mike Jobes

THE SR 26 PROJECT METHODS & APPLICATIONS FOR CREATING INDIGENOUS ATTRACTIONS WITHIN THE STATE ROUTE TWENTY-SIX CORRIDOR, WASHINGTON

MICHAEL JOBES

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE IN ARCHITECTURE

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE MAY 2001

To the faculty of Washington State University:

The members of the Committee appointed to examine the thesis of MICHAEL JOBES find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted

_________________________________ Chair

_________________________________

THE SR 26 PROJECT: METHODS & APPLICATIONS FOR CREATING INDIGENOUS ATTRACTIONS WITHIN THE STATE ROUTE TWENTY-SIX CORRIDOR, WASHINGTON

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Abstract Michael Jobes, M.S. Washington State University May 2001

Chair: Paul F. Hirzel

The experience of driving the 133.53 mile State Route 26 (SR 26) in Eastern Washington State, is perceived by most travelers as an unremarkable if necessary passage to more desirable destinations beyond. This study investigates the hypothesis that interest among travelers can be increased through local participation in creating indigenous attractions by finding and framing existing regional attributes. Two methods for creating sustainable attractions that grow from existing conditions are supported by analysis of the theory and practice of tourism and observation of conditions found within the SR 26 Corridor. The first, Finding the Exotic at Home, applies theories of local participation in regional marketing (MacCannell, 1976; Lippard, 1999) to propose a method for uncovering under-appreciated regional attributes and social systems. Local landowners were surveyed regarding regional identity to demonstrate one application of this method. In the second, Framing Existing Attributes, examples show a correlation between an observerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perception and the manner in which information is presented, to propose a method for increasing awareness of selected regional attributes. Following the methods, their objective is defined in Creating Indigenous Attractions, in which examples of site-specific vs. imported attractions were compared and analyzed. Next, the methods were applied to two proposals for indigenous attractions designed specifically for the SR 26 Corridor. The first, The MilePost(car)ds Collection, proposes a series of postcards that correspond to existing road signs created from local input to educate travelers about regional features. The second, The SR 26 Motel, proposes a destination motel designed to provide an off-highway experience of the existing landscape, conditions, and history of a specific site adjacent SR 26. Implications of the applied methods were analyzed and findings relate closely to empirical and theoretical data collected to support the hypothesis that indigenous attractions can be created through local participation in framing existing regional attributes. Finally, the significance of the study is extended to include communities beyond the SR 26 Corridor.

CONTENTS

ABSTRACT

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LIST OF FIGURES

INTRODUCTION

Project Background

Review of Relevant Literature

Purpose and Rationale for the Study

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

RESULTS

Part One Methods For Creating Indigenous Attractions

Method: Finding the Exotic at Home

Resident Landowner Survey

SR 26 Corridor Regional Profile

Method: Framing Existing Attributes

Consider the Observerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Context

Beyond Marking the Past

Objective: Creating Indigenous Attractions

Homogenizing the Interstate

The McDonaldization of SR 26

Summary of Methods

Part Two Two Interventions for Developing Existing Regional Attributes in the State Route Twenty-Six Corridor, Washington

Application One: The MilePost(car)ds

Application Two: The SR 26 Motel

CONCLUSIONS

REFERENCES

APPENDIX

Resident Landowner Survey Documents

SR 26 Media Contact List

LIST OF FIGURES 1. Location of State Route 26

2. One Hundred Places In Washington, Center for Land Use Interpretation

3. Surveys Mailed to SR 26 Landowners

4. Map of SR 26 Landowners

5. Local Support for Interventions

6. Preferred Funding for SR 26 Motel

7. Preferred Funding for SR 26 Resort

8. The Muller-Lyer Illusion

9. From Vogt, Gravitational Mystery Spots of the United States (1996)

10. Robert Overby, Indian Chief (1971)

11. “26 Brand” from State of Washington Livestock Brand Book 1980

12. Cattle Ear Tag

13. Cattle Hot-Iron Brand

14. Diagram of Cattle Earmarks

15. Diagram of Cattle Dewlaps

16. Seagram’s Tower, New York

17. MilePost(car)ds Packaging

18. MilePost(car)ds Packaging

19. MilePost(car)ds Milepost 42: Insects of 26

20. MilePost(car)ds Milepost 124: Asphalt

21. Point A to Point B Series, Palouse Empire to St. John

22. Point A to Point B Series, Pampa to Winona

23. The SR 26 Motel looking southeast from highway

24. The SR 26 Motel Site Plan

25. Dusty Grain Elevator

26. The SR 26 Motel Detail

27. The SR 26 Motel Roof Plan

28. The SR 26 Motel Floor Plan

29. The SR 26 Motel Site Section

30. The SR 26 Motel Building Sections

31. The SR 26 Motel Model

32. Teepees Motel, AZ

THE SR 26 PROJECT: Methods & Applications For Creating Indigenous Attractions Within The State Route Twenty-Six Corridor, Washington

“The meaning of Home is therefore chang’d for them as well. As if their own Fields had begun, with tremendous smooth indifference, to move, in a swell of Possibility.” (Pynchon, Mason & Dixon, 1997, p.334)

A drive on State Route Twenty-six (SR 26) is perceived by many travelers to be a monotonous, unremarkable experience. This is true despite the fact that SR 26 traverses a landscape possessing remarkable geological, topographical and historical features found alike in no other place. In this thesis, the SR 26 Corridor serves as a case study to investigate the hypothesis that regional interest can be increased through local participation in enhancing selected indigenous features without the introduction of imported attractions.

Fig. 1 The Washington State Department of Transportation estimates that nearly 2.5 million automobiles use SR 26 each year (for comparison, Yellowstone National Park receives 3 million visitors annually). Still, no part of SR 26 is mentioned in Washington State Bureau of Tourism or American Automobile Association guidebooks (Hirzel, et al. 1999). Recently, communities within the SR 26 Corridor have begun to consider promotions to increase tourism to offset a

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current farming recession in this heavily agricultural region. A more comprehensive physical and historical description of the region and its current conditions can be found in the Finding the Exotic at Home section of this thesis. Methods for creating indigenous attractions are proposed as a resource for SR 26 communities to apply in the promotion of regional qualities with sustainable, locally-developed interventions. Project Background The SR 26 Project, in various forms has been ongoing in the School of Architecture at Washington State University (WSU) since 1994 when The Site Studio, under the direction of Professor Paul Hirzel published Pullman: A Book of Secrets. The charge of each contributor to the book was to uncover and express some unique quality of the town of Pullman, Washington, home to the WSU. My article “A Traveler’s Guide to Highway TwentySix” identified the SR 26 as an irreducible part of the experience of approaching Pullman. (Pullman: A Book of Secrets received the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture National Design Award for 1995). My personal experience with SR 26 began in 1972, when my family moved to Clarkston, Washington, a town just south of Pullman on the Idaho border. During this period, the family traveled on SR 26 to family in Seattle. The back seat of our 1962 Oldsmobile wasmodified by my father so that my brother and I could see out of the windows more easily. The altered back seat gave us a new vantage, imbuing the road trip with customized excitement and unimpeded views of the vast, mysterious landscapes of Eastern Washington. A subsequent class in The Site Studio in 1999 again focused attention on SR 26 and its infamy. Under the direction of Hirzel once again, students sought to improve perceptions of the SR 26 Corridor by several means. The end product includes the first book devoted to this highway, Motion Pictures: Stories of SR 26, a set of twenty-four postcards, a two compact disc soundtrack and promotional posters all available for purchase. I decided to return to Pullman to conduct The SR 26 Project beginning in the Fall of 1999. In August, 1999, I returned to Pullman after living in Los Angeles for five years, to complete work on this thesis.

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Review of Relevant Literature The theory and practice of tourism generate a great deal of effort and information relevant to an investigation of regional promotion. The methods and applications for creating indigenous attractions proposed in this thesis follow a body of related theories of tourism and perception as well as examples of existing attractions and the methods used in their creation. Two studies of local participation in the creation of tourist attractions have formed the rationale behind the first method proposed in this thesis, Finding the Exotic at Home. In both Dean MacCannell’s (1976) and Lucy Lippard’s (1997, 1999) studies of tourism it was found that sustainable regional promotion often result from a local community-wide vision, beginning with a shift in local self-consciousness. Lucy Lippard refers to this as a state of becoming a “Tourist At Home”. She suggests a form of tourism that promotes responsible stewardship of the land through increased knowledge of its attributes: “… this could be a time to focus on latent questions about our own places— areas we’ve never walked through, people we’ve never met, history we don’t know, issues we aren’t well-informed about, political agendas written on the landscape.” (Lippard, 1999) Lippard extols promotions that are catalyzed in the local psyche and therefore, more likely to avoid the damage to the social fabric and culture of a place caused by attractions created for short-term profit only. In Tourist: A New Theory for the Leisure Class (1976), sociologist Dean MacCannell identifies a type of tourism that naturally develops from within an existing regional social structure. Integrated into indigenous conditions, this style of local planning promotes existing features by reframing and linking them in new relationships and networks. MacCannell shows that this type of pattern can occur, “If the local people develop regional self-consciousness that transcends their immediate social situation and reflexive cultural structures. . . ” (p.163) MacCannell further illustrates the potential of repackaging existing local attributes by recounting the pioneering efforts of American Express at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. This excerpt from the book American Express: A Century of Service, recounts the wildly successful

system which utilized existing social structures and attributes to develop a healthy tourist infrastructure: “The technique of operation was for a railroad ticket agent to sell a traveler an order on American Express for one of its tours. On arriving in Chicago the tourist was directed to the American Express kiosk set up in the Union Station and manned by uniformed representatives. Here he exchanged his order for a strip of coupons. One of these paid his taxi to the assigned hotel; another paid for his room, and others were honored for meals and at the Fair.” (Hatch, 1950) This form of integrated tourism is then contrasted with that of imported attractions or what is referred to as “plantation tourism” (term coined by Ruth C.Young, from an unpublished paper by Young noted by MacCannell). Highly controlled “packaged” tours conducted by the Thomas Cook Company in the nineteenth century are used here as an example of “plantation tourism”. MacCannell finds that “plantation” tours supercede indigenous conditions with a highly controlled environment described as, “tourist factories through which people are run assembly-line fashion and stripped of their money.” (MacCannell, 1976, p. 163) Dona Brown links tourism with commerce and portrays their combined impact: “No area is passed over, no matter how isolated or economically marginal. Indeed, tourism now often appears to be the answer to all economic problems great and small, from declining farm profits to de-industrialization.” (Brown, 1995, p.2) Her hypothesis is echoed in recent statements made regarding the SR 26 Region: “Grant County is very pro-growth.” and “Weakening of the county’s major industry has caused its leaders to look around for ways to diversify.” (Mayne, 1999) Declining wheat prices have led to a depressed regional economy causing small communities in Southeast Washington to consider the Faustian alternative of increasing tourism to attract new income to local coffers. While tourism can lift a lagging local economy, excessive hype can leave a community decimated and reeling from overexposure. The onslaught of tourism often seems abstract and inevitable, but every tourist industry is conceived and initiated by some group. “Tourism is not destiny, imposed on a community or region by its geography or history. Tourist industries were built by people.” (Brown, 1995, p.205) The tourist construction requires an intervention by some entity to frame and package a sight. (Diller & Scofidio, 1994, Stewart,

1984, MacCannell, 1976, p.161) But some level of heightened regional self-consciousness must exist before touristic imaging and framing may occur. A study by Paul Hirzel at the Washington State University School of Architecture of the tourism practices of the State of Washington, begins to suggest that a mental landscape may be proliferated in this state that could foster negative perceptions of SR 26 and the landscape that it crosses. Hirzel has found that the predominating image exported by the state to attract tourism to the Northwest, favors the alpine landscape of the western third of the state. In this tradition, the arid steppe climate of the Columbia Basin Plateau, crossed by SR 26, is not the certified view of Washington (Hirzel, 1998). The packaging of the Western Washington climate by the Washington State Bureau of Tourism has contributed to it becoming the predominant image of Washington as perceived by those living in other places over the landscape of Eastern Washington. The choice to promote one view over another is discussed by the architects and theorists, Diller and Scofidio in a 1994 study of tourism and the sites of war. They point out the importance of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;officialâ&#x20AC;? view in the construction of the tourist experience in which the expected image of a place may be more powerful than the actual site. In this respect, methods of framing or identifying tourist attractions may be more important than the sites themselves. Methods of framing the landscape are examined by Susan Stewart in a study of souvenirs, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (1984). Stewartâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s examination of the framing of a place by images on souvenirs and postcards provide a valuable insight for understanding strategies of marketing places. As the SR 26 Project examines the framing of existing conditions, the proposals in this thesis must respond to the car as the primary vantage point from which the SR 26 Corridor is observed. Most visitors experience SR 26 from within their cars. This is a condition that has determined the way much of the built environment has been developed since the second half of the twentieth century. The study of the Las Vegas Strip by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour in Learning From Las Vegas (1972) was revolutionary examination of the impact of the automobile on the experience of place. Their insights into the commercial communication systems that occur in Las Vegas have decoded road signs and architecture

scaled to the automobile for places beyond The Las Vegas Strip as well. The interventions proposed by the SR 26 Project carefully consider the context of the car and its inherent problems and opportunities in communicating with the traveler. The road is only one component of the entire SR 26 Corridor, but it is a datum that connects the region, charged with history and meaning. J.B. Jackson used the term, odology to mean the science or study of roads and journeys. He took this word to mean more than just the engineering of a rationalized and highly regulated conduit designed for the uninterrupted steady flow of goods and commerce, pointing out that the road has traditionally served other needs as well: “For untold thousands of years we traveled on foot over rough paths and dangerously unpredictable roads, not simply as peddlers or commuters or tourists, but as men and women for whom the path and road stood for some intense experience: freedom, new human relationships, a new awareness of the landscape.” (Jackson, 1994) While the road has long been an indispensable tool of the tourist industry, (“The New England states launched massive state-funded road-building programs at the turn of the century, hoping to improve the commercial prospects of New England farmers and to encourage tourism” (Brown, p.208)) Jackson calls for the reclamation of the highway by environmental designers and architects as a site for meaningful interventions that go beyond just economic gain. As a result of the attention and money directed toward tourism, the enterprise has developed a broad range of sensitive and effective strategies for framing and packaging places and changing the way we look at the world. Still, this form of influencing perception has been largely ignored by architects and artists and left to the scholars of anthropology, sociology and cultural studies. Lucy Lippard asks why artists, those in the business of teaching people how to see have not scrutinized the activity of tourism much more. (Lippard, 1999, p.4) Purpose and Rationale for the Study Literature discussed above and direct observation of the conditions found within the SR 26 Corridor, have been the basis for the methods and applications for creating indigenous attractions proposed in this study. The two methods

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Finding the Exotic at Home and Framing Existing Elements extend the body of tourism literature by presenting the information as a resource to be applied by local groups in marketing places using existing features. By applying the methods to the design of two indigenous attractions for SR 26, the hypothesis that regional interest can be increased through local participation in enhancing selected indigenous features without the introduction of imported attractions is tested. Findings from analysis and speculation of the implications of each design are congruent with the literature and observational data collected to provide a rationale for the hypothesis. Beyond addressing problems specific to the State Route 26 Corridor, the methods proposed for promoting existing features, can be applied by other communities to discover the attributes that make their own place unique and worthwhile. The methods and procedures used to conduct the study are described in the following section.

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RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

Data was collected from theoretical and empirical sources to study regional promotion through local participation in framing selected indigenous features without introducing imported attractions. Findings from the research were categorized in one of three ways. The first category included examples of local participation in discovering the under-appreciated qualities of their own environment, that were synthesized into the first Method for Creating Indigenous Attractions, Finding the Exotic at Home. The second category grouped various strategies and theories of perception and framing of information to formulate the second Method proposed, Framing Existing Attributes. The third classification collected examples two types of tourist attraction: 1. Those that respond to the specific conditions of context and, 2. Those in which the context is modified to accommodate universal standards. These two typologies were then compared and analyzed to delineate the objective of the two Methods in Creating Indigenous Attractions. Finally, the Methods are applied to two indigenous attractions designed specifically for SR 26, The MilePost(car)ds Collection and The SR 26 Motel. The procedures used to collect and analyze the data, and apply the findings to two designs is described below.

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Part One: Methods for Creating Indigenous Attractions

Method One First, examples of community self-consciousness and local participation in the creation of desirable destinations from existing features, were researched and collected. Analysis of collected examples inform the proposed method Finding The Exotic At Home. Next, the method is applied to SR 26 to gain a greater understanding of the local social structure and community identity present within the SR 26 Corridor using a mailed survey of a sample of landowners with land adjacent SR 26. The procedures used to conduct the survey are described below and the results from the survey are described analyzed in Finding the Exotic at Home. Resident Landowner Survey Tax records kept by county assessor’s offices provided the data of land ownership in the region. SR 26 crosses three counties: Grant, with an office in Ephrata, Adams, with and office in Ritzville, and Whitman, with an assessor’s office in Colfax. Each assessor’s office was contacted to identify all landholders with land fronting the SR 26 right-of-way. This information was graphically represented by a map included in Finding the Exotic at Home. Of one hundred and fifty-six (156) total landowners, one hundred and two (102) who used that land as their primary residence were selected as the sample to receive a survey by first class mail. Of the sample population, fifty-six subjects responded to the survey. It should be noted that county assessor’s records provide the name and address of the party responsible for paying taxes on the parcel of land in question. In some cases, a different party may lease the land from the owner or have some other arrangement in which the owner is not residing on the land. This was considered in the data collection process and it was decided that only landowners and not lessees would be contacted as they have a larger vested interest in the SR 26 Corridor. Distinguishing landowners from lessees was

controlled by selecting only those landowners whose address appeared to be within the parcel for which they held the title. Surveys were mailed to the chosen sample population. Research shows that mail surveys are effective for a sample population that has a strong interest in the topic (Newman, 1997). Each sample household received an identical package sent via First Class U.S. Mail. Each package included the following: 1. A cover letter describing the topic of the survey and its importance, and asking for the recipientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s participation in the study. 2. A brief description of The SR 26 Project. 3. The survey. Samples of these documents and the survey are included in the Appendix. The cover letter informed each member of the sample population of the extent and percentage of SR 26 property for the county assessor showed them to hold the title. The background and rationale for The SR 26 Project was outlined in a one-page synopsis included in the mailing. Survey questions were designed to foster a sense of community among the sample as it was hoped that a regional self-awareness may be found to go beyond the boundaries of towns and counties to encompass the entire Corridor. Three levels of regional promotion for SR 26 were proposed and the sample was surveyed to determine levels and types of support for the various promotions. At the end of each survey, a space was provided to for each respondent to make comments regarding the contents of the survey and the SR 26 Project in general. Anecdotal information collected from this portion of the survey were helpful in collecting qualitative data that was used to inform the MilePost(car)ds and The SR 26 Motel proposed in this study. Several phone conversations, emails, and letters from interested members of the community followed the mailings. The State Route 26 Corridor Regional Profile Based on the findings from the land owners survey, and direct observation a regional profile is included to further demonstrate the

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use of the first method, Finding the Exotic at Home, and to identify regional attributes and conditions to inform the design of the two indigenous attractions, The MilePost(car)ds Collection and The SR 26 Motel, described in Part Two of the Results. Method Two Theoretical and actual examples illustrating a correlation between an observerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perception and the manner in which information is framed or presented are collected and analyzed to form Method Two, Framing Existing Attributes.

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Part Two: Two Interventions for Developing Existing Regional Attributes in the State Route TwentySix Corridor, Washington

The Methods proposed in Part One are applied to two indigenous attractions designed specifically for SR 26, The MilePost(car)ds Collection and The SR 26 Motel. Data collected from analysis of the tourism literature, the landowner survey and direct observation identified the existing regional attributes to be utilized in the design of the two interventions.

RESULTS The results of this investigation of creating indigenous attractions by finding and framing existing attributes of a place are divided into two parts. In Part One, Concepts For Creating Indigenous Attractions findings from a survey of tourism literature and empirical evidence found within the SR 26 Corridor are analyzed to propose methods for local community groups to implement in creating attractions from existing regional attributes. Next, the methods are applied to the design of The MilePost(car)ds Collection and The SR 26 Motel in Two Interventions for Developing Existing Regional Attributes in the State Route Twenty-Six Corridor, Washington. The proposals describe two indigenous attractions designed specifically for the SR 26 Corridor that support the hypothesis by demonstrating the Methods for Creating Indigenous Attractions.

Part One Methods For Creating Indigenous Attractions Finding the Exotic at Home Framing Existing Attributes Creating Indigenous Attractions

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The methods for creating indigenous attractions from existing regional attributes, are arranged as two strategies, Finding the Exotic at Home and Framing Existing Attributes that are shown to lead to the objective delineated in Creating Indigenous Attractions. In Finding the Exotic at Home, the importance of local participation in finding the unique qualities of a place is supported by an analysis of relevant theories of tourism practice and examples of improved community self-consciousness. Based on the findings from the analysis, one-hundred and two (102) of the primary resident landowners of the SR 26 Corridor were identified and surveyed to determine levels of interest in developing regional attributes and which attributes were perceived to be most exemplary of the region. The information is presented such that the findings may be applied to discovering the distinguishing but overlooked qualities of anyplace. Analyzed in Framing Existing Attributes are empirical and theoretical examples illustrating a correlation between an observerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perception and the manner in which information is framed or presented. Methods and examples of the effective framing of landscapes to create zones of concentrated interest are analyzed to form the methods for the creation of indigenous attractions. Creating Indigenous Attractions compares destinations that respond to specific conditions of context with those in which the context is modified to accommodate universal standards. Site-specific interventions are shown to derive from local participation, creating sustainable economic opportunities without reliance on interests from outside of the community. This finding supports the hypothesis and suggests site-specific development of existing attributes as a sustainable strategy for marketing places.

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Method: Finding the Exotic At Home Description of Method: Drawing from local knowledge and vigorous direct observation to find the qualities of a place that distinguish it from all other places.

“It is human nature to see the space that we occupy as the center and everything beyond as decreasing in value the farther its position from our center.” (Knopp, 1996, p.2)

“The shape of the individual mind is as affected by land as it is by genes.” - Barry Lopez (Knopp, p.2)

Active participation by local inhabitants in representing the attributes of their home region to visitors can result in a more sustainable and mutually beneficial understanding of a place. By approaching tourism from inside out, existing features can be imbued with meaning and importance where it seemed little of value had existed before. The Visitor’s Key to Iceland, a guidebook for the roads of Iceland (described in greater detail in the section entitled “Framing Perception and Finding the Unusual), is an extraordinary example of the perceptual transformation that can occur when the local forces that have created or were created by the physical and cultural topography, are linked with the landscape. The Visitor’s Key animates each land feature in Iceland with a legend or human event that transpired right there. The hills, rocks, and streams are charged with magic and new meaning where they were once opaque to outside interpretation. In The Tourist, Dean MacCannell suggests that the tourist attraction is a cultural production “put on” by some social group. He uses the “cottage tourist industry”, like the sort found in Ireland, as a model to illustrate the benefits of a tourist economy developing naturally from the existing social structure and physical features. This type of tourism, constructed by pointing out, reframing and networking existing features, can be a mutually beneficial arrangement for both the local well being and the visitor. But before this can occur, a

heightened regional self-consciousness must take place, resulting in the formation of local groups based on the conviction that some feature or attribute is insufficiently represented. It is possible for increased regional self-awareness to take place independently, but more often it is initiated in reaction to some outside force. MacCannell uses the example of movements that develop when an old structure is slated for removal (MacCannell, 1976, p.161). Regional solidarity is found to be developing among local landholders of SR 26 as a result of the Resident Landowner Survey described below. I discovered that a majority of the residents of the SR 26 Corridor had not conceived of the highway as a single community. Promotional groups are currently active in many of the communities along the highway, with very little crossgermination occurring among groups. The regional self-awareness that MacCannell found to be critical in any development of existing regional attributes may begin when one turns a tourist’s gaze on their own region. Lucy Lippard simplifies the point, “travel is the only context in which some people ever look around. If we spent half the energy looking at our own neighborhoods, we’d probably learn twice as much.” (Lippard, 1999, p.13) This expectant gaze turned on the home front often occurs after a person has moved away for some time, to return home with a new perspective from which to view the same place. This active reassessment of home can cause what Lippard describes as a “critical tourism” to pique interest in “history we don’t know, issues we aren’t well informed about, [and] political agendas written on the landscape” to influence our actions. (p.15) These examples point out that the first step in any development of regional attributes into pleasurable attractions has to begin with the local residents. The Los Angeles based Center for Land Use Interpretation organizes critical tourism programs in their own backyard, running tours of selected sights on the outer edges of the Los Angeles Basin, that entertain the tourist while educating them about the ramifications of public policy on land use patterns. The group’s publication, One Hundred Places in Washington, identifies several sites that trace the legacy of the hydroelectric and nuclear enterprises in this

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state. Withholding judgment, these various remarkable land uses are collected to foster a greater understanding of the forces that have shaped the Northwest. Involving the local community in raising awareness of the otherwise overlooked attributes and history of the SR 26 Corridor, may encourage a naturally developing tourism that extends beyond commercial motives to impact regional self-awareness and stewardship.

Fig. 3 Surveys Mailed to SR 26 Landowners

Resident Landowner Survey

Based on the active role of the local community in Dean MacCannellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s model of â&#x20AC;&#x153;naturally occurringâ&#x20AC;? tourism, the existing social structure of SR 26 was investigated by creating a map of land ownership adjacent the highway and conducting a survey of those residing on their land within this population. SR 26 has rarely been examined all at once by any discipline, including the Department of Transportation, which manages the highway with two separate jurisdictions and budgets. By mapping the landholdings sliced by the highway it was expected that a window on the Corridor would come to light that had not been previously available. Another expected result of the survey was a new way of looking at SR 26 by local residents, encouraging a change in perceptions and attitudes regarding the highway and its use. The design and procedures of the survey are outlined in Research Design and Methods. Overall, respondents favored some form of promotion within current levels of SR 26 traffic. Proposals that were designed for use within the car or had a minor effect on the landscape, such as a guidebook or interpretive markers, were found most favorable.

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Interventions that would require substantial construction and maintenance, such as the Resort and Motel proposals were found to be less favorable, although more respondents were in favor than were opposed to such plans. (Fig. 5) Overwhelmingly, respondents favored private funding for interventions, with money from local civic coffers finding the least favor. (Figs. 6 & 7) An unexpected result of the survey was the level of feedback received from a cross-section of the SR 26 Community contacting The SR 26 Project to pass along stories, concerns, and ideas for this place in which they take great pride. The survey suggested to many residents that their land was worth studying. Being acknowledged as a worthwhile subject for research, SR 26 residents provided critical information about existing community promotional efforts such as Washtucna’s posturing to become “The Gateway to the Palouse Falls”, and Othello’s plans to landscape the edge of SR 26 through town. At the end of each survey, a space was provided to for each respondent to make comments regarding the contents of the survey and the SR 26 Project in general. Anecdotal information collected from this portion of the survey provided helpful qualitative data used to inform the process of designing The MilePost(car)ds and The SR 26 Motel proposed in this study. Several phone conversations, emails, and letters from interested members of the community followed the mailings.

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Fig. 4 Map of SR 26 Landowners

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Fig. 5 Local Support for Interventions Of 56 total respondents from Resident Landowner Survey, chart shows percentage in favor of and opposed to various levels of promotional intervention within the SR 26 Corridor

Fig. 6 Preferred Funding for SR 26 Motel Of 56 total respondents from Resident Landowner Survey, shows levels of support for five types of funding for a proposed Motel for SR 26.

Fig. 7 Preferred Funding for SR 26 Resort Of 56 total respondents from Resident Landowner Survey, shows levels of support for five types of funding for a proposed Resort for SR 26.

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The State Route 26 Corridor Regional Profile

The following profile of existing conditions found within the SR 26 Corridor is based on the findings from the land owners survey, and direct observation. The profile is intended to further demonstrate the use of the first method, Finding the Exotic at Home, and to identify regional attributes and conditions to inform the design of the two indigenous attractions, The MilePost(car)ds Collection and The SR 26 Motel, described in Part Two of the Results. Washington’s State Route Twenty-six is a 133.53 mile-long, two-lane asphalt highway that stretches from Vantage at its western end at the junction of Interstate 90 and the Columbia River near the middle of the state, to Colfax in the east at SR 195. The only complete history of SR 26 is Prima Davidson-Hayter’s in the book Motion Pictures: Stories of SR 26 (1999). According to Hayter, by the beginning of the 1950’s, SR 26 was in a form resembling its current footprint although, comprised of a conglomeration of primary and secondary highways and by 1956, was called SR 26 for the first time. The final 16.53 mile stretch from Dusty to Colfax was completed in the late1970’s, providing a mostly straight route across the southeast quadrant of Washington State. Crossing a rich agricultural region, SR 26 facilitates an efficient flow of commercial traffic while serving as the main route for WSU students from Western Washington to Pullman. The Washington State Department of Transportation has divided SR 26 into two jurisdictions, the North Central and Eastern regions. The North Central Region averages 5,200 vehicles per day and has an annual maintenance budget of $200,000. The Eastern Region, which begins at milepost 61 and SR 395, averages 1,640 vehicles each day and operates on $1,300,000 per year. (Hirzel, et al, 1999, pp.16, 28) The geological history of the land traversed by SR 26 attracts the scrutiny of geologists from around the world. Its sublime natural history is well documented in the book Cataclysms On the Columbia (Allen & Burns, 1986). The foundations of the Columbia Plateau, crossed by the highway, were formed by lava flows up to two-miles thick and considered the greatest outpouring of lava in North America. Moreover, cataclysmic Ice Age floods believed to be the

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largest series of floods in evidence on Earth, carved out the Channeled Scablands, portions of which are traversed by SR 26. The immense Columbia Basin Project, including the Grand Coulee Dam, irrigates over one-third of the land adjacent SR 26. The Eastern third of the highway passes through the rolling Palouse Region, a unique landscape formed by piles of glacial dust boasting some of the highest dry farming yields in the world. Now is a critical time to examine the regional promotion of the SR 26 Corridor as local communities bordering SR 26 consider self-promotion as a way to offset current economic th

hardships. SR 26 crosses three counties, Grant, Adams, and Whitman, the 19 , 8 and 15

least populated counties in the state, respectively. These counties depend primarily on agriculture to sustain their economies. Worldwide wheat surpluses have depressed wheat prices to around $2.50 per bushel (the breakeven point on soft white wheat is estimated to between $2.50-3.80/bushel), causing severe recessions in the local economy for the past four years. Soon after the Farm Bill of 1996 passed Congress, phasing out government subsidies that essentially guaranteed farmers $4.00/bushel, world wheat prices dropped, leaving farmers without a federally funded cushion for the first time since the New Deal in the wake of the Depression. (Bond, 1996) Many believe the future of agriculture for small family-run farms in eastern Washington to be bleak. “Few children follow their parents into agriculture. Most high school graduates head off to the cities.” (Lyons, 2000) Faced with the effects of the recession, small local communities have begun to seek alternatives for bringing income to the region. Adams County Commissioner, Rudy Plager, summarized the predicament his county faces: “In the next year, Adams County will have to lure new businesses to the region or cut back on services.” Groups have formed in several of the small communities along SR 26 interested in drawing tourists from the highway into their towns to spend money. The region is at a critical moment in which local residents must decide on issues that will greatly impact its relationship to tourism. Developing thoughtful strategies for creating indigenous attractions in the region with the participation of local groups is imperative at this time.

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Method: Framing Existing Attributes

Description of Method: Framing the qualities found to distinguish a place in such a way that awareness of those qualities is increased.

Fig. 12 The Muller-Lyer Illusion Lines of identical length do not appear so due to the manner in which each is framed

“Vision is not simply the end product of sensation…Rather, it is the beginning of interpretation.” (Knopp, 1996, p.138) Observing is not an innocent activity; we see what we expect or choose to see. The nature of perception has been the focus of numerous studies in the fields of psychology (Roth & Bruce, 1995), sociology, and physiology (Gregory, 1986) in order to gain understanding of the selective manner in which we perceive our surroundings. The state of mind, preconceptions, and worldview we carry with us affects our experience of a place. The way in which the attributes of SR 26 are framed and presented to the traveler can raise their awareness of them creating a more lasting experience. Many visitors to the SR 26 Corridor miss the subtle beauty intense geology and massive land uses simply because they are not aware of them. For these visitors, the place seems barren and desolate as they speed to destinations beyond. The MilePostcards travel guide described in Part Two propose a system that uses the existing mileposts to educate and engage travelers as they spend time driving through the area. This section briefly examines how we see the world and how framing affects what we see.

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Lisa Knopp in her essay, Field of Vision, writes of the interpretation that occurs as we observe. She points out the valuation of objects within the field of vision that determines their position either in the background or the conscious foreground. The instances or objects we remember as we recall a certain situation, are those that we have placed in the foreground as a figure. She recounts the first time she really saw the tiny mayflies that had always been present during her visits to Mississippi, usually relegated to the background of her perception: “Yet, of all the cusps between spring and summer, only once—last year—did I really see them, allowing them to hover about me, to land on my hand, where I observed the fine balance achieved by the upward lift of the pincerlike forelegs, the center arch of the ten-segmented abdomen, the backward extension of the tail filaments, V-parted when alive, joined in death.” Knopp asks, “What led me to twist the focus ring, pulling the mayfly from blurred background to definite object?,” to illustrate the way context and personal values affect what we see.

The Visitor’s Key To Iceland is an extraordinary guidebook that takes the traveler on a journey through the human histories, myths and legends associated with the landscape features along every road in Iceland. Eliot Weinberger reviewed The Visitor’s Key in an article for The Nation: “Iceland has few notable buildings, museums or monuments. What it has are hills and rivers and rocks, and each has a story the book recalls. ‘Here was a stone bridge which collapsed behind an escaping convicted murderer, proving his innocence. Here lived a boy whose magical powers were such, he could wither grass. It is said that two chests of silver are hidden somewhere in this hill.’” (Weinberger, 1997) While The Visitor’s Key To Iceland does not physically add to or subtract from the Icelandic countryside, its stories radically transform the way in which the landscape is perceived.

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SR 26 crosses a rich landscape of history and myth as well. The highway begins at the Columbia River and the land it traverses is closely linked with this waterway agriculturally as well as historically. Folk singer, Woody Guthrie, mythologized this land in songs he was commissioned to write for the Bonneville Power Administration in 1941. Guthrie toured the River and its dams in a chauffeured car, penning and recording twenty-six songs in praise of the hydroelectric infrastructure and the cheap and democratically available power it produced. A line in Talking Columbia could describe the situation currently faced by the farmer’s of the SR 26 Corridor, “Gasoline goin’ up, wheat comin’ down.” (Guthrie, 1941) Guthrie saw the area as an opportunity for all citizens to share in an abundant source of energy, creating jobs for many workers. He was looking at the same Columbia Basin that SR 26 crosses projecting his personal beliefs and fantasies upon the landscape to relate it to himself. The scientific explanations of one operation that formed the Columbia Plateau through which SR 26 crosses, provides an illustration of the way in which perception is changed by the way information is presented. Before geologist J. Harlan Bretz in 1919 managed to formulate his theory that immense ice-age floods had shaped the unusual topography found in the region, anomalies such as garage-sized boulders in the middle of fields, a river gorge that cuts through the Cascade Range rather than taking the easier route along its base, and drastically carved scablands found near Washtucna, were explained using known models of the slow process of erosion. While these explanations did not quite fit the reality found in the topography of the region, many could not fathom any other explanation. Bretz imagined what was before unimaginable to develop his theory that placed parts of the Plateau over 1,000 feet of water during several floods. This radical paradigm shift regarding the origins of the landscape, once accepted by the rest of the scientific community, changed the way the Columbia Plateau was perceived and experienced from that time forth. (Allen, J.E., Burns, M. 1986) Another way that people relate to a site is by taking some artifact from the site home with them. These artifacts often shape what we remember about a place. Also, our perception of a place may be influenced by the “official” set of views arranged to represent that place, reducing the chance of noticing the more subtle attributes that have not been framed for us to

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readily take in. For instance, a selective view of national parks is often prescribed by the scenic roads and vista points promoted by the Park Service. Post cards and travel books serve to reinforce a certain image of the park and bias the traveler’s expectations. Niagara Falls is a site where the desire for the expected image drives the reality of the place. At this landmark, “engineers are fiercely negotiating hydroelectric demands while combating the natural effects of erosion to the receding waterfall in order to preserve the grandeur of the postcard image.” (Diller & Scofidio, 1994, p.43) In this way, a tourist attraction may be understood as a series of optical devices framing pieces of the whole while displacing the unsightly into the background (p.42). This may only require affecting the observer’s expectations of a sight through some means separate from the actual site, an advertisement, a postcard, a book, a soundtrack, or some other device that serves to frame the perception of a place. People respond more intensely to sites that are valued for their original or unmatched characteristics. ”Tourism loves firsts: the site of the Pilgrims’ first step onto what was to become American soil, the site of the first manned flight, the crater left by the first detonation of the atomic bomb the club in which the Beatles first performed, the first McDonald’s, etc.” (Diller & Scofidio, 1994). Unmatched size as another desirable trait for a successful tourist attraction, i.e. the largest ball of string, the deepest canyon, the tallest tower, etc. In this respect, SR 26 has tremendous tourist potential. Informing a traveler of the immense geological activities that formed the landscape of SR 26 (Allen, J.E., Burns, M. 1986) can snap these sites, previously relegated to the background, into the foreground as sights of interest and curiosity. Anomolies and scientific wonders are another engaging attraction for many highway tourists. For instance, the “gravitational vortex” or “mystery spot” is pseudo-scientific tourist attraction typology that has seen tremendous commercial success in the United States. These anomalous spots are characterized by a perceptual phenomenon that runs counter to common sense or expected experience. The “Mystery Spot” of Santa Cruz, California exemplifies one

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type of gravitational vortex, where tilted structures are placed on a site to appear as though they were inconsequential buildings that have collapsed. The tilt of the “collapsed” structure causes volunteers to appear to grow or shrink depending on where they stand in relation to the background. The phenomenon is attributed to an odd magnetic force in the area. To add to the illusion, nearby trees are said to grow in a “corkscrew” fashion, and levels and magnets are used in all manners to apparently prove the illusion to be authentic. Another, less manipulated type of this tourist attraction is the “Magnetic Hill” illusion. This type is characterized by the illusion that one is traveling downhill while the opposite is true. A traveler may place the car in neutral and be apparently pulled uphill by an unseen magnet. (Vogt, 1996) While the authenticity of these attractions is highly suspect and most likely the result of perceptual manipulation by people interested in capitalizing on the curiosity of others, they represent the importance of framing and the attraction of the unusual in the perception of a place.

Fig. 9

from Vogt, Gravitational Mystery Spots of the United States (1996)

In the essay “The Birth of the Big Beautiful Art Market” (1996), Dave Hickey describes the way General Motors (GM) used the customized automobile aesthetic and a ladder of car models to establish a brand name and expand the market for automobiles after WWII when

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production capacity was fast outstripping demand. GM hired Hollywood’s custom car expert to the stars, Harley Earl, to introduce features including the Cadillac tail-fin that would move from the “luxury” line year by year down to the “economy” line, encouraging consumers to grow with the company. (Hickey, 1996) This system of aesthetic hierarchy creatively repackaged the same product, altering consumer habits by changing their perception of what they needed. Often reframing the ordinary can greatly affect the way a place is perceived, making it suddenly extraordinary. The songs of Bruce Springsteen have reframed industrial landscapes of New Jersey giving them a mystique that many find irresistible. “. . . hey ho, rock n’ roll, deliver me from nowhere.” (Bruce Springsteen, “Open All Night.” From Nebraska, 1982) With the stories he told in his songs, Springsteen changed the perception for many of the New Jersey turnpike. The world described in his songs about this highway of industry, transported the imagination of people who had never before visited New Jersey, and before “The Boss” sang about it, had no reason to either. Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska captures several haunting, transcendent moments “beneath the glow of the refinery towers” that skirt this road. The album was recorded in his bedroom with an acoustic guitar for next to nothing. It is now considered one of the most influential albums to be recorded in the last twenty years. Springsteen’s reframing of his homeland created something out of what many considered to be nothing. Today, plans are underway to build “Bossland” in Asbury Park, New Jersey, Springsteen’s economically depressed hometown. This theme park revels in the world of the sooty post-industrial landscape of North Jersey and makes it economically viable as a tourist attraction. The way Springsteen experienced and expressed the conditions of his surroundings changed the way many others perceive that place.

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Fig. 10 Robert Overby Indian Chief 1971 Latex casting of car interior

Considering the Observerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Context

Raising the awareness among highway travelers of the attributes that exist along the SR 26 Corridor must take into account the context of the viewer and the primary experience of SR 26 occurs in an automobile. The highway is mostly traveled by cars, but a large portion of the travelers drive large transport vehicles or farm machinery, and the landscape is experienced at different speeds and with various levels of interest from within each mode of transport. In a car, the average travel time from one end of SR 26 to the other, traveling at the speed limit, is approximately two-and-one-half hours, a period similar to that of a feature length film. This metaphor is an apt starting point for designing interventions that engage the viewer like a good film. Persuasion on the highway is an artform that has been often studied and more often practiced. The most common mode of capturing attention the attention of drivers, is the highway sign or billboard, located at the edge of the road and large enough to be read from a great distance and at the speed of driving. The relationship of driving speed and the size and location of billboard was analyzed by Appleyard, Lynch, and Myer in their 1964 book, The View From the Road. They found that over half of the objects sighted along a road by both drivers and passengers are seen straight ahead and narrowly to the sides. That is why the signs are large

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and near the roadside. As car speeds increased with more powerful engines, signs grew in size to facilitate the need for a longer focal length. The commercial viability and tried effectiveness of road signs have encouraged the medium to flourish, drastically changing the physical nature of the highway margin. In Las Vegas road signs define the place, creating a new environment that bears no resemblance to its original landscape. J.B. Jackson suggests that the patterns of movement and experiences generated by the road may have begun to supercede the role of architecture to symbolize the collective identity of the times (Jackson, 1988). But its language has not been developed much since it began. Where architectural space and experience has changed dramatically through the ages, the road and its symbols and expressions have progressed very little. Communicating the existing qualities of a landscape to a highway traveler may take a new form of expression, or a fresh combination of existing forms. The MilePostcards proposed in Part Two attempt to create a system that syncopates the slowed-down existence occurring along SR 26 with the speed and experience of car travel. As people spend more and more time traveling in cars, perhaps new symbols will emerge to bring meaning to the landscape in this context. Many commuters in Los Angeles customarily drive for up to two hours each way to and from work. Tract homes have sprung up in the Antelope Valley, a two hour-plus commute to downtown Los Angeles during rush hour, making single-family detached dwellings affordable for families that would live in higher density situations in the city. While housing becomes affordable in these communities, the lifestyle comes at a high cost for those still dependent on the city for employment and forced to ride the freeways for over one sixth of each working day. (Davis, 1990, p.12) Such substantial time spent inside of an automobile begins to make the car interior mean more than just a place to sit on the way to a more traditional static place. These commuters come to know their cars and the freeways they travel intimately, intuitively feeling the controls in the car and the flow of traffic outside. Joan Didionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s character, Maria Wyeth, drove on the freeway every day to experience its transcendent emptiness without a utilitarian purpose to her journey, â&#x20AC;&#x153;She drove it as a riverman runs a river, every day more attuned to its currents, its deceptions, and just as a

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riverman feels the pull of the rapids in the lull between sleeping and waking, so Maria lay at night…” (Didion, 1970, p.16) The highway itself, the asphalt surface beneath our tires, rarely rises to the foreground of perception. Maybe its ubiquity causes us to take the road for granted. Dr. Eyad Massad and Dr. Tom Papagiannakis, civil engineers at Washington State University are known as the “Pothole Professors”. The two have received substantial grants from the Washington State Department of Transportation to improve the procedures for mixing and applying asphalt. Superpave is the industry name for asphalt produced within specific parameters dictating the size and shape of aggregate and the exact composition of the asphalt cement. Computer models are used to analyze the internal structure of asphalt concrete specimens compacted using the Superpave Gyratory Compactor and the Linear Kneading Compactor, in an effort to increase durability in asphalt highways. This research impacts over 2 million linear miles of asphalt paved roadway in the United States alone. This is intervention at an immense scale. Asphalt forms the largest manufactured surface on Earth by many times over and is mostly comprised of crushed basalt, the igneous rock that formed the foundation of the SR 26 Corridor between six and sixteen million years ago. Car travel has become a mode of existence that comprises a great deal of time in modern life and has introduced forms and building typologies onto the landscape. Drive-in movies, drive-thru Windows, service stations, motels and parking lots are all been byproducts of the car. These typologies may need to be reconfigured and mixed with new forms in order to frame the existing features of SR 26 without altering its physical composition.

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Beyond Marking the Past

Marking the past can also possess a viability in the present, a temporal dimension that reflects the passing of time. Rather than commemorating a past event markers can delineate the daily working operations of a region or even suggest new uses for the future. New markets can be opened up and new modes of experience suggested by roadside interpretive sites. An example of an interpretive marker taking on a new meaning can be found in the Alliesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; methods for planning the invasion of Normandy in World War II. In order to study the Normandy coast with no physical access during German occupation, tourist photographs, markers of a past experience for their owners, were used to piece together a highly detailed picture of the topography and beach gradient they would face upon arrival. (Diller & Scofidio, 1994) The region crossed by SR 26 has its own history of marking the present. At one time sheep herders near Hooper in the Channeled Scablands piled basalt into columns to orient themselves on the open range. Nearby, on SR 26, college students spray-paint messages and affiliations on the basalt cliffs formed by a highway cut in the topography. These are markers that communicate much more than any concrete pylon with a bronze plaque convey. The design of an interpretive marker, should consider the impact of the intervention in the future, pondering the alternative meanings that the marker may elicit from users years from now. For example, the proposed SR 26 Motel is designed to rest on piles driven into the glacial dust, loess found near Dusty. The concrete structure of the Motel may outlast its current use and as it deteriorates, the hill around it may cover or suspend the remnants marking the windborne erosion that occurs on the site. The orientation of the spaces toward the Dusty Grain Elevator may suggest a sacred quality to the storage facility to archeologists in the future. Marking the past has implications in the present and future as well. The systems of marking animals for identification purposes have been practiced since early Egyptian civilizations. Livestock are marked in many different manners including, hot iron

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branding, ear tagging, earmarking, and dewlapping. This language is very active in the SR 26 Corridor. The State of Washington Livestock Brand Book 1980, includes many registered branding marks by ranchers from the Corridor.

Fig. 11 “26 Brand” registered by CE Holmes Jr.from State of Washington Livestock Brand Book 1980

Fig. 12 Cattle Ear Tag

Fig.13 Hot Iron Cattle Brand

. Both terms, branding and tagging, hold meaning in the world of marketing and in the practice of marking of crops and livestock. The SR 26 Project contains elements of both disciplines in trying to promote the attributes of the region, magnifying its attributes to open up niches of experience not previously available. This language could be used to communicate and open new markets with the SR 26 region. Travelers who have “done 26” and feel that a postcard is not enough to mark the experience, may find that branding the vinyl seats in their car a more lasting mark. “SR 26 MirrorTags” could be purchased to hang from the rearview mirror to denote unique excursions to towns of SR 26.

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“Dewlaps, are cuts, slits, or splits made in the folds of skin hanging from the chin, under the jaw, from the throat under the neck down to and including the brisket of cattle. The name is derived from the action of the loose skin lapping or licking the dew when the animal is grazing.” (Wolfenstein, 1970, p.150) Beyond branding, dewlaps could be used to scarify the interior of cars to signify the membership into the “SR 26 Club”.

Fig. 14 Cattle Earmarks Fig. 15 Cattle Dewlap Diagrams

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New symbols used to identify remarkable sites must be developed to creatively frame the features, cycles and activities that occur within the SR 26 Corridor. Lasting traces of past events have formed this landscape, from basalt flows to cataclysmic floods to rock piles for wayfinding sheepherders. Ways of marking the past that continue to reflect the passage of time and the specific conditions of this place will enrich the experience of those visiting the region.

Objective: Making Indigenous Attractions

Description of Objective: Developing existing regional attributes with local participation that is based on those qualities that distinguish a specific place from others.

“. . . I love you, in my own peculiar way.” -Willie Nelson

In his novel Mason & Dixon, Thomas Pynchon tallies the price paid for the tremendous progress made during the Age of Reason, when logic and science replaced the endless possibilities of the unknown, unexplained, non-standardized. As the astronomer/surveyor team of Mason & Dixon begin to draft a rational line on then wild America, Pynchon describes the enchanted possibilities that are displaced by the reasonable task of standardizing the surface and spaces of the World: …wherever ‘tis not yet mapp’d, nor written down, nor ever, by the majority of Mankind, seen,-- serving as a very Rubbish-Tip for subjunctive Hopes, for all that may yet be true…” (Pynchon, 1997, p.345) The SR 26 Corridor possesses qualities that distinguish it from all other places. It’s remarkable geological history marked by immense ice-age floods that formed the Channeled Scablands topography near Washtucna and created the basin over which the Palouse Falls flow. Promoting this landscape by creating attractions from existing attributes with local participation, and avoiding interventions that do not respond to the local context, can increase interest in the region while reinforcing the qualities that make this place unique.

Homogenizing the Interstate

As automobiles gained popularity in the 1920’s, Americans embraced the freedom cars afforded them and began to explore the country on newly constructed roads. Newly available

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freedom of movement transformed the sedentary lifestyle and expanded opportunity and range of experience. At this time, the journey and the freedom of movement was enough to thrill travelers. Collectively, the unique roadside symbolism and architecture tangibly rendered the spirit of this time, while each destination manifested its own peculiar set of natural and cultural conditions. As a result, variety and flamboyance characterized the roadside businesses and accommodations.

The military and national safety concerns that predominated infrastructural planning after the Second World War, changed the form of the American highway system. Even before becoming president in 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower began to express concern for national security regarding the meandering two-lane highway system in America. He had seen the efficient manner in which German troops and supplies had been able to move with the wider, more direct Autobahn system1. Under his administration, Congress passed the Federal Highway Act of 1956 and work on the Eisenhower Interstate System began. Criteria for moving goods and military vehicles were established, including room to land airplanes in emergency situations. The new highways were to provide faster, more direct routes for a larger volume of traffic to key locations, shadowing existing highway corridors. As these more efficient Interstate 1

The German threat is also said to have been a factor in the development of the hydroelectric

infrastructure on the Columbia River, a major intervention that has made the agriculture practices on the Western third of SR 26 possible. Electricity produced by this series of dams supported Federally established aluminum plants in Eastern Washington. These plants produced the aluminum used to build fighter planes and, as Mark Reisner in Cadillac Desert hypothesizes, the superior aluminum stock of the Allied forces was a deciding factor in WWII and by reverse reasoning the Grand Coulee Dam â&#x20AC;&#x153;probably won the Second World War.â&#x20AC;? (Reisner, 1986, p.165) It should be noted that this hypothesis has been challenged by Paul Pitzer who claims that Grand Coulee was not at full production until after WWII (Pitzer, 1994), although, he documents the justification of the construction of the Grand Coulee by boosters proliferating the impression that it would factor heavily in the War effort.

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highways were installed, the old route soon withered and many of the roadside businesses of the previous era were forced to close. Strict regulations were placed on the signage and architecture of businesses that cropped up to serve the many drivers using the Interstates. Regulation and increased travel speed resulted in the standardization of roadside architecture and symbols. At sixty miles per hour, the desperately quirky signs and themes of the old highway system could not communicate well enough. Motel chains and restaurants abandoned eccentricity, opting for consistent identities to establish a brand name that let the traveler know what they were getting before they pulled off of the Interstate. Many roadside accommodation typologies were superceded by the highly controlled (and selective) Interstate margin. In his anthology of motels in America, John Margolies describes the demise of the log cabin motel: â&#x20AC;&#x153;As the spirit of automotive adventuring faded and Interstate uniformity homogenized the roadside environment, so too did the romantic notion of cabins in and of the woods.â&#x20AC;? (Margolies, 1995). His description suggests the branded regionalism of the early motels and conversely, the universal character of their Interstate counterparts. By forgoing regional identity for universal symbols, the standardization of the Interstate reduced the field of choices in the pursuit of the American highway experience. The spirit of universalism reached far beyond the motel, characterizing much of the architectural milieu of this period. The International Style was taking hold of American corporate architecture at the time, becoming a symbol for Capitalism.

Fig. 16 Seagramâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Tower, New York In this scenario, a building for an international bank in New York could look identical to a speculative office tower in Chicago.

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The McDonaldization of SR 26

George Ritzer used the term “McDonaldization” to describe the trend he defined as: “The process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the World.” (Ritzer, 1993. p.1) The majority of the roadside economy serving travelers on SR 26, is comprised of franchises of national chain businesses. The greatest concentration of car traffic on SR 26 occurs at Othello (Hirzel, et al, 1999, p.28), which is also the site of the greatest number of services and restaurants serving highway travelers. All of the service station and dining establishments visible from the highway at Othello are outposts of national chains, Burger King, Taco Bell, etc. Experienced as a group, the standardized layouts and homogenous interior and exterior spaces of these establishments form a displaced context that may recall similar spaces occurring in places other than Othello. This universalized mask fitted onto the main entrance to town may leave Othello, remembered by a transient visitor, only as a displaced figment of familiarity. Ritzer offers examples of reasonable alternatives to McDonaldization, such as Marvelous Market in Washington D.C. He points out that while Marvelous Market espouses some of the most basic principles of the fast-food industry, such as, food that can be picked up quickly and prepared effortlessly, the Market is “oriented toward reason rather than rationality.” (Ritzer, 1993, p.172) He explains that it is reasonable for people to want to be served by empowered employees rather than by the automatons serving the food at a rationalized enterprise. It is reasonable that customers would want high-quality, handmade bread, Marvelous Markets main product, and the phenomenal success of the Market support this theory. SR 26 has its own more site-specific form of McDonaldization. Judy McDonald started Judy’s Espresso & Deli near milepost 15 just west of Royal City in 1972 as a roadside fruit stand. Judy’s exists because of, not despite its context and renders it in a tangible form. The establishment began in a small stand erected by previous owners where the McDonald family could peddle the products of their orchards. Judy’s skill at canning and baking with the produce

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of the region was well known and many travelers “in the know” stopped at the fruit stand to sample her concoctions as they passed the McDonald Farm. As traffic volume increased on SR 26 along with Judy’s reputation, the demand for her cooking made the McDonald’s decide to expand into the roadside restaurant business that is there today. About half of the Deli’s clientele are the farmers and farm workers of the nearby crops. If you want to know how successful the harvest has been in a particular year or on a particular day, this is the place to go. In this way, Judy’s is a human-scaled version of the larger local agricultural condition. Judy’s also serves the many visitors passing through the area on State Route 26. The Department of Transportation estimates that nearly 5,200 cars travel this stretch of the highway each day. To accommodate a steadily increasing clientele from the highway, the Deli has expanded twice. In this way, Judy’s has grown to match the traffic volumes of the highway. Judy’s history reflects the regional history. Irrigation from the Columbia Basin Project made farming on this previously hard land possible. In this way, the orchards are a manifestation of this immense irrigation project.

Summary of Methods for Creating Indigenous Attractions

The two methods developed here to achieve the objective of creating attractions that grow from a specific place are intended as a resource for community groups to utilize in promotion their region. The methods were applied to two interventions designed specifically for SR 26 described in the following section.

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Part Two: Two Interventions for Developing Existing Regional Attributes in the State Route Twenty-Six Corridor, Washington

The Methods for Creating Indigenous Attractions are applied to two proposals for indigenous attractions designed specifically for the SR 26 Corridor:

The MilePost(car)ds Collection A series of postcards that correspond to existing road signs created from local input to educate travelers about regional features.

The SR 26 Motel A destination motel designed to provide an off-highway experience of the existing landscape, conditions, and history of a specific site adjacent SR 26.

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Application One: MilePost(car)ds “Always one, you’ll see it.” Pynchon, The Crying Of Lot 49

Fig. 21 The MilePost(car)ds Collection packaging

The MilePost(car)ds are an ever-expanding series of informative postcards created by local groups to educate travelers about specific features, stories, legends or businesses located near each of the 133 mileposts of SR 26. The collection combines two existing systems: the milepost and the tourist postcard, both systems commonly used by travelers to judge distance and mark an experience, respectively. The series is intended for use during a trip in either direction along SR 26. Drivers may view individual cards by inserting them into a clip attached to the windshield with a small suction cup, requiring an action not unlike using a cupholder or cell phone while driving. Cards may be read aloud to other passengers in the car. Under this proposal, a group would be established to plan and produce the initial collection including one informational card per milepost, totaling 133 cards. This first edition set would be created and distributed with the support of local businesses, tourism organizations and individuals interested in raising awareness of existing attributes of the SR 26 Corridor among highway travelers. Appropriate and feasible means of producing the sets are discussed below in Producing MilePost(car)ds. After the first set is produced and available to travelers in SR 26 Authorized dealer locations near the highway in other cities such as Seattle, Spokane, Portland and Boise,

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additional individual cards could be sponsored or produced by any group or person to point out a specific feature linked to any milepost along the route. Constant expansion of the set is possible. The MilePost(car)ds Collection would create a body of SR 26related knowledge compiled in a format that could be collected and enjoyed after the experience of driving the highway. The MilePost(car)ds Collection propose an alternative to the billboard, the most common form of communication with the highway traveler. Signs placed at the roadside to convey messages at the scale and speed of the automobile must be large enough to be read from a distance to attract the focused attention of a driver. This format dominates the edges of many highways, distracting the traveler from experiencing the existing landscape by creating a desire for another place or product. This may have been what Victor Hugo meant when he presaged that the printed word would kill architecture in the Western world. J.B. Jackson, in a 1956 article regarding the development of the commercial strip, implored the advertising expert to, “do us a valuable service by devising a set of symbols for roadside use to replace the present nightmare of words.” (Jackson, 1956) The MilePost(car)ds enhance the experience of driving SR 26 from within the car without adding billboards to the road’s edge. Mileposts with Meaning Similar toThe Visitor’s Key to Iceland, a guidebook described in Framing Existing Attributes, the MilePost(car)ds Collection narrates the trip along SR 26, engaging the traveler in the legends, history, and geology that have transpired near each existing milepost. The car becomes a theater from which the story of SR 26 unfolds, and with each new card is added to. Framing specific regional features, the collection can change the way a traveler perceives what they see by giving meaning to subtle, and otherwise overlooked, landmarks. Like cattle tagging, branding and dewlapping described in Beyond Marking the Past, the cards identify each milepost by assigning meaning beyond the marking of distance.

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Agency 26 The MilePost(car)ds Collection is a system that could develop from the local desires to market the regional attributes and to promote local commercial enterprises to passing travelers. The concepts of the collection will be developed and produced by a group established by the local people interested in pursuing this system. The name of the group may be Agency 26. The name suggests a slightly covert operation, a sort of benevolent guerilla group whose goal is to promote SR 26 in unorthodox ways. Agency 26 will offer design and production services to local businesses, organizations, or individuals interested in promoting a certain aspect of SR 26 or merely to promote their own business using the system. The agency will design a postcard to be printed in bulk and made available to the general public for the price of a standard postcard or possibly free of charge. Each MilePostcard will correspond to a milepost on SR 26, for instance, a card describing the unauthorized history of Washtucnaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s apple orchards may correspond to milepost 75, located near the town of Washtucna. We are accustomed to using mileposts as orientation devices, so to use them, as the framework for another form of communication is a natural extension of that habit. After some time the collection will catalogue the entire infrastructure of curiosity and pleasure in the region. A complete set representing every milepost will be issued in a package along with other SR 26 products. After the initial public offering of the MilePost(car)ds complete set, individually sponsored cards may be issued singly to supplement the first edition. The first pack and following singles will be available at all participating â&#x20AC;&#x153;SR 26 Authorized Dealerâ&#x20AC;? businesses located on the highway as well as in key locations in Seattle and Spokane. Currently, Peter Miller Architectural Bookstore in Seattle carries other SR 26 merchandise so it is feasible that they would continue to carry subsequent products.

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Available for hands-free reading or viewing if driving alone will be an SR 26 plastic clip attached to a suction cup for the windshield to hold one card at a time. With all of the gadgets available to support the MilePost(car)ds Collection, a collector culture may develop similar to the Beanie Babies phenomena of recent years.

Producing MilePost(car)ds Agency 26 could produce each postcard edition with a company such as Modern Postcard (MP) of San Diego, CA. MP offers printing services for 500 postcards at a cost of less than 20 cents per card. The company will save a template for the standard layout of MilePost(car)ds and new designs can be sent via file transfer protocol, formatted per the template, produced and shipped. Modern Postcard communicates with clients by email to update them on order status. Agency 26, in tandem with a separate production company becomes a facilitator rather than a cumbersome production company. In this way the MilePost(car)ds system can remain flexible and require little initial capital. The MilePost(car)ds provide the traveler with specific information, histories, myths, and natural phenomena that describe the context tangibly. The front of the cards have common fields of information in a pattern that can be easily recognized from card to card. A photograph of the milepost associated with the card, and corresponding images of the highway looking West on the lower left and East on the lower right at that particular milepost, occur with each card in a regular arrangement. The areas leftover will include images particular to the area described.

Rituals of the Road Long-distance driving can involve elaborate rituals to alleviate boredom and forestall sleep. Listening to music, drinking coffee, singing, counting signs, or smoking cigarettes are common road trip activities for casual drivers and professionals alike. MilePost(car)ds create a ritual for the drive on SR 26. One-by-one the cards are removed from the pile to be viewed or read. Reading time is averaged to correspond to approximately one minute per mile.

Fig.18 The MilePost(car)ds packaging

Point A To Point B Series The Point A To Point B Series (Figs. 21 & 22) is a secondary SR 26 postcard product that may be sold one at a time. This series proposes a new exaggerated form of the tourist postcard. A photograph of a location on SR 26 will be combined with one off of the highway in a more remote location. Together the photographs form one new image to signify a trip that may be taken, the experience personalized. The back of the postcard will include a map that connects the two locations and a brief narrative describing some key features that characterize the trip. Typically, postcards stand-in to represent a single place, freezing the “official” view for all-time. “One reason why all the photographs of the Grand Canyon look the same is that almost all of them are taken

from one of the two observation platforms built by the Park Service.” (from Robert Silberman in Diller & Scofidio, Flesh, 1994, p. 204) The cards will be sponsored by a business that is interested in attracting some of the high traffic volume on SR 26 to their remote location. In this way, new markets can be opened and customers lured to smaller towns, off of the beaten track. Towns like Benge, Hooper, Lacrosse, Endicott, Lind, and Hay would benefit from this Series. The Point A To Point B Series would be sold at all SR 26 Authorized Dealer locations for the same price as a regular postcard, with proceeds going to Agency 26 for development of the MilePost(car)ds system or for other selected SR 26 interventions. A traveler may choose a trip based on the way its combined image looks; a “choose your own adventure” thrill. Once the card has been chosen, the map on the back will guide the traveler to true back road adventure. Upon completing the trip and returning to SR 26, the postcard may be mailed to mark the occasion, the trip appropriated, the unknown, known.

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Fig. 19 MilePost(car)d 42 Insects of 26 front and back

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Fig. 20 MilePost(car)d 124 Asphalt front and back

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Fig. 21 Point A to Point B Series, Palouse Empire Fair to St. John, front and back

Fig. 22 Point A to Point B Series Pampa to Winona, front and back Application Two: The SR 26 Motel

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Fig. 23 The SR 26 Motel from the highway

The SR 26 Motel includes six motel suites, an outdoor swimming pool, and an office/maintenance component. The six suites and the outdoor swimming pool are located across SR 26 to the south of the Dusty Grain Elevator located approximately twelve miles west of the eastern end of the SR 26 Corridor. The office and maintenance facility is located in a new building across the highway from the town of Dusty and adjacent a landing strip and the SR 26/SR 127 Junction to Pomeroy and Dayton.

The existing Dusty Café located in Dusty will be

used as a catering service and restaurant associated with the motel. Guests will be encouraged the patronize the Dusty Café for meals and for catering of events in the motel. The Motel would provide the Dusty Café with new customers provide employment opportunities for local teenagers who may otherwise have to leave the region to find work. The six motel suites and the outdoor swimming pool are developed in this proposal. The SR 26 Motel is a destination motel that proposes a new way of experiencing the existing landscape, conditions, and history of SR 26. The motel and swimming pool will offer the traveler an experience that cannot be found in any other motel. Six motel suites allow the

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traveler to physically inhabit the unique topography of the Palouse Hills, inverting the experience of viewing the landscape from the car to viewing the highway from the surrounding hills. This motel delivers the traveler into the context.

Fig. 24 The SR 26 Motel Site Plan Approach From the highway an asphalt-paved driveway submits to the topography and continues onto the roof of the Motel where the highway and the grain elevator may now be viewed from a new perspective while still framed by the windshield. The driveway leading to the Motel allows the traveler to leave the rationally engineered state route onto a road that follows the Palouse topography. Driving up and down in the hills on the way to the motel would transform the banal act of driving into an extraordinary experience. The car may be parked on the roof of the motel, an action that is seldom available at an intimate scale. Rooftop parking garages at shopping malls are common, but this parking space is the roof of one single motel room. Now parked, the traveler may begin to notice the subtleties specific to this place, the changing light captured on the large white edifice of the working grain elevator and the sublime landscape beyond. From the car, stairs cut into the hillside. The longitudinal section follows the

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slope of the hillside. The traveler is buried only to emerge into the room, itself a fine-tuned instrument of interpretation. Motel Suites Concrete walls and roof are skinned inside and left exposed outside. The Western Wall is finished with limestone and punctured by an aluminum-framed strip window through which to view changes in the western sky. Limestone, the only imported material in the project, is chosen to introduce a curious anomaly to any archeological investigation of the motel in the distant future as well as to add importance to the West, the direction of early settlement in the area. The adjacent car and stair are framed in this window through which light will project onto the opposite wall bringing the sunset into the room. A large picture window to the North replaces the windshield, framing the grain elevator, highway and landscape from the bed, the table and the bathroom. Liquid Crystal Display â&#x20AC;&#x153;switchableâ&#x20AC;? glass will be used in the bottom pane to offer the choice to block out the highway and create visual privacy. Marvin Windows has a commercially available product. A switch will be placed near the head of the bed. A spatial change will occur as the glass toggles from opaque to transparent expanding and contracting the perceived space. Above the bed is a large skylight for viewing the unadulterated night sky and dynamic cloud patterns by day. The location of the motel directly across the highway, its orientation absolutely normal to the longitudinal axis of the Dusty Grain Elevator, provides a viewpoint that is seldom available. The elevator appears to be flattened and rectangular, like a cinema screen. The inhabitant of a motel room may begin to notice the rectangular tower at the top of the elevator, roughly the same size and proportion as a single motel room in the SR 26 Motel. The size of the elevator may be sensed if the room from which one views is compared to the tower on top of the structure. The Dusty Grain elevator is a working elevator. It is operated by the Ritzville Warehouse Company and is used to store and distribute local grain. The opportunity to observe the process of storing and distributing grain is rare for most people passing this edifice, and the motel provides a vantage point from which to observe this process. The picture window in each motel room frames the elevator and the landscape beyond, the postcard view of a working agricultural land. The vista from inside of a motel room provides an unusual view of the

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Dusty Grain elevator and allows one to examine its size, proportion, color, texture, operation and relationship to the context of Dusty, the Palouse and beyond.

Fig. 25 Dusty Grain Elevator

Movies may be projected onto the grain elevator creating a “Drive-Inn”. (See Margolies, p. 64 for precedent) Washington State University could project live feeds of school football games onto the grain elevator to entertain alumni on away-game weekends. For home games, the motel rooms could be rented at a premium rate for groups of alumni to have large “tailgate” parties, watching the game on the grain elevator or avoiding the weather by watching from inside of the warm motel room. Without these projections, one may observe the subtle change of light over its southern face throughout the day, a very slow movie. The east wall and ceiling of the room are skinned with lapped sheets of thick naturalcolored wool felt to add acoustical and physical warmth. Wool was a major product of the region before profitable dryland wheat-farming techniques were developed. The wood frame bathroom walls are finished in plywood, with plumbing chases connecting every two units and providing maintenance storage space. The long wall of the bathroom tapers the entry ramp into a forced perspective that gives way to the picture window. The SR 26 Motel room reconfigures the typical layout to create a unique experience, focusing on the grain elevator and the western sky. In section, the room ramps up to the middle only to drop down for the bed. The section creates separate spaces without using walls. The skylight is located above the bed to allow for viewing from a supine position, an unusual experience in a typical motel room.

The Motel is constructed using materials and techniques common to the Department of Transportation that are unusual in arrangement only. Concrete walls and roof slabs with asphalt roof deck are furred from the inside of the room to soften the texture in the habitable space. Aluminum frame windows, readily available for agricultural construction, are used in fresh arrangements with common detailing. The construction uses ordinary materials and methods to create an extraordinary experience. Swimming Pool The swimming pool is placed onto the topography, its floor sloping with the hill to the south to go from shallow to deep. Two main concrete walls are placed parallel with the fall line of the hill and enclose at the end to hold water. The path leading from the motel to the pool is made of precast concrete pavers that are perforated to allow the soil to penetrate the surface and vegetation to grow through. The pathway is intended to invoke the experience of walking on the abandoned road beds of SR 26 found near Hooper, surfaces that have begun to deteriorate and return to the earth. The pathway becomes the floor of the pool as the hillside begins to slope down to the south. As the two main walls of the pool continue out from the hill with level tops, they are enclosed when the difference in slope between the top of wall and the hill reach fifteen feet, providing enough depth to dive from a high-dive at the south end of the pool. From the high-dive, the Palouse hills can be seen in all directions as one dives back into the topography.

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Fig. 26 The SR 26 Motel view looking southwest through western window.

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Fig. 27 The SR 26 Motel Roof Plan

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Fig. 28 The SR 26 Motel Floor Plan

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Fig. 29 The SR 26 Motel Site Section

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Fig. 30 The SR 26 Motel Building Sections

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Fig. 31 The SR 26 Motel Model Roadside Accommodations The roadside motel typology developed in response to the increasing numbers of America’s middle class exploring the country in their cars beginning in the 1920’s. The luxury hotels of the previous era proved to be too expensive, and stuffy for this more quotidian clientele. Between the 1920’s and the 1950’s, when motels became standardized and franchised, roadside motels experienced a period of tremendous flamboyance, its multivalent expressions promising a novel experience to the traveler. The SR 26 Motel is conceived with this era in mind, but values site-specificity over the symbols of a mythologized past that characterized the earlier versions. The SR 26 Motel is an instrument for specific habitation of the Palouse landscape adjacent State Route 26.

Fig. 32

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The SR 26 Motel is based on the existing conditions found on the site. The slope of the hill, the adjacency to the grain elevator, the orientation to the sun and the relationship with the highway all derive the form and experience of the motel. In this way, the SR 26 Motel does not suggest its likeness in another location. This motel does not adhere to the layout specifications of a motel franchise, nor does it dictate a new universal standard for replications of itself to create a new motel chain. Driving on SR 26 through the Palouse Country often evokes a repressed desire to leave the highway margin and tumble out into the rolling topography. Walking on the surface of the hills allows for a more intense relationship with this landscape than driving through on the highway. But The SR 26 Motel goes further to provide a way to inhabit the topography, sleeping tucked their folds and peering out from inside. The perspective from inside of a vehicle observing the landscape is inverted in the experience of the motel room from which the highway traffic is now observed from inside of the topography. The car is not merely stored in front of the motel for the night as in the usual motel. At this motel the cars become the roof as well as an anteroom, a crucial component in this mode of dwelling. The SR 26 Motel provides a destination in the SR 26 Corridor. These novel accommodations may provide an unusual alternative for urban dwellers seeking escape from density and congestion. The slower pace experienced while watching a grain elevator dispense grain into a truck or reflect the dayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s light may prove therapeutic to some. The experience of diving into the Palouse hills offered in the swimming pool would be a novel attraction that would allow for a better understanding of the topography of the region. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s location makes this motel an ideal place from which to explore the Palouse Falls, the Channeled Scablands, the Snake River, Steptoe Butte, and other yet undiscovered qualities that exist at this end of SR 26.

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CONCLUSIONS The methods and applications proposed in this thesis, that have been developed to increase awareness of the attributes of the SR 26 Corridor, can be applied to other communities to discover the qualities that make their own place unique and worthwhile. The SR 26 Project was initiated to give new expressions to the underestimated landscapes, regions, cities, and neighborhoods that exist all around us. Landscapes widely regarded as pleasure destinations are well known from generous media exposure proliferating a desirable image. Visitors often have a highly developed impression of what to expect in these places and visit to consummate their expectations. The Western Washington landscape has developed into a highly desirable destination and the clichés of “Northwest Living” have been disseminated across the globe. Whole industries have emerged around the image purveyed by the region including Starbuck’s Coffee, offering products for a gourmet coffee lifestyle and Recreational Equipment Incorporated (REI) forwarding an outdoor recreational aesthetic for the local alpine climate. These images define the region and attract a thriving tourist economy, but leave little room for the unexpected. An advertisement for Barbados uses the slogan, “Just Beyond Your Imagination” to describe the experience of visiting the island. Because little is known or appreciated about the SR 26 landscape, the possibility exists for SR 26 to remain mysterious with the allure of the unknown. Early in the project, a tendency to view the SR 26 Corridor as a neutral background on which to impose new forms, presented itself many times. As knowledge of the region increased, it was clear that to introduce stark elements into the landscape would be detrimental to the intentions of the project. Appreciation for the existing conditions suggested less intrusive and more supportive interventions. The proposals became vessels through which the landscape could be reframed and newly perceived. There was more to reveal about SR 26 than was originally anticipated and the purpose of the project became to point out what was there.

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A common critique of the SR 26 Project it that it threatens to reveal what some consider to be a well-kept secret, and once discovered, bringing unwanted change to the region. This may be a valid concern as the examples of detrimental tourism practices following regional promotion are seen far too often. But a passive approach does not seem to match the evidence of change taking place already. The information gathered from a survey of SR 26 Landowners revealed that community promotional groups are currently operating in towns within the Corridor, seeking to bring much needed income from tourism to the region. Community leaders from Adams County, Othello, Washtucna, Lacrosse and others verified that a depressed agricultural economy has forced them to investigate other options for generating income. This project provides a sustainable approach to changes that are already underway along SR 26. A passive approach to change can lead to the destruction of the regional character in the name of commerce. The homogenous sprawl landscape of the Los Angeles Basin resulted in part from a hands-off approach to planning and development that squandered the character and resources of the Basin. Imagining and investigating sustainable interventions to achieve economic goals while retaining the regional character are critical activities at this juncture for the SR 26 Corridor. Interest generated in the region through educational interventions can encourage advocacy and responsible stewardship of the land. For instance, studies of the causes of erosion, a condition that greatly affects the Palouse Region at the eastern part of SR 26, have led to changes in agricultural practices and a reduction in the rate of erosion. Similarly, if disinterested visitors to SR 26 are educated about the attributes and concerns of the Corridor, they may invest or advocate the preservation of region in the future. Dialogue generated by the SR 26 Project has revealed several viable proposals for SR 26: The National Parks Service is planning a series of interpretive centers to call attention to the Bretz Floods, the series of cataclysmic Ice Age Floods that swept through the Columbia Basin. Most of the interpretive markers are currently planned along highways in Idaho and Montana although SR 26 crosses a remarkable stretch of landscape shaped by these floods.

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The techniques developed in this thesis could be applied to the planning and implementation of some of these interpretive sites to be included within the SR 26 Corridor. An idea to introduce a winery at the western end of SR 26 is currently being investigated by a local landholder. It has been determined that the land on which the winery is proposed is ideal for growing world-class grapes. A visitor center for the winery has been discussed along SR 26. The location is near the Columbia River and could become the western gateway to the SR 26 Corridor. The town of Washtucna would like to establish itself as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Gateway to the Palouse Fallsâ&#x20AC;?. The community group involved in this promotion is aware of the SR 26 Project and have begun to consider their project at the scale of the entire Corridor. The ideas proposed with the SR 26 Project is the basis for an emerging professional discipline, possibly called Landscape Marketing, in which regional agents, are commissioned to develop awareness of the existing attributes of a region, city, or neighborhood, uncovering previously unknown qualities that distinguish that place from all others. Some of the techniques used by landscape marketers may be similar to those proposed in this thesis, but others most certainly would develop as potential experience was discovered and mined in locations other than SR 26. The SR 26 Project has already increased public awareness of the possibility that there is more to this landscape than may at first be realized. Both interventions proposed in this thesis have begun to gain momentum across Washington State. The actual and speculated impact caused by The SR 26 Motel and the MilePostcards will be discussed below based upon events and feedback generated so far as well as on extrapolations of these events and comparisons to similar existing interventions. As well, hindsight will be used to consider some possible variations or extensions of each of the two projects.

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The SR 26 Motel The Motel has become an icon for a project that was intended to work without them. In a way, this is both a blessing and a curse. As this thesis was initiated from within an architectural discourse, a building provided an entry point to the project for architects, developers and local civil servants, the intended audience for the proposals developed here. The MilePostcards and techniques for Landscape Marketing became more accessible on the heels of presenting the Motel. But, on the other hand, the hypothesis put forward that the existing qualities of a particular place are enough to transcend negative perceptions and create intense experience. In that regard, as an additional element that did not previously exist, the Motel could be considered a failure. A future project in the realm of Landscape Marketing could improve upon the field by creating a similar experience without the need for a building. I was not clever enough to achieve such an ethereal solution. As it is, the SR 26 Motel is designed to dissolve in the process of its experience. It begins as an extension of the highway, the living out of an imagined activity where one can veer off of the road to buzz the Palouse topography like a crop duster. Landing on the roof, the experience leaves the car to burrow into the loess hillside only to reemerge fitted with a new way of seeing the landscape. In this way, the Motel becomes part of the landscape as it opens up new modes of inhabiting it. The SR 26 Motel recently won an AIA Southwest Washington Chapter Merit Award in Tacoma, Washington. The Tacoma News Tribune of January 22, 2001 ran the following in a piece about the Awards, "The jurors commented on the project's unique approach to taking cues from the forms and elements on the landscape and reinterpreting them from the viewpoint of a place that becomes part of the landscape." This comment by the jury made up of members from outside of Washington, suggests that the intentions of the Motel are apparent even to those who have never visited the SR 26 Corridor. An article on the SR 26 Motel will appear in the Washington State University School of Engineering and Architecture periodical Innovation in the Summer 2001 issue. The published interview will provide the largest exposure to date for the project, reaching all alumni of the School. More recently, The Motel was presented along with the MilePostcards to the WSU

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West alumni group at Elliot Bay Books in Seattle. The care and enthusiasm this project directs toward the SR 26 Corridor seems to be contagious as more people become interested in the work and reevaluate their attitudes toward this landscape. Washington State University alumni organizations and fund-raising entities can invent many ways to utilize this unique form of habitation in the Palouse for entertaining important guests, soliciting funds, or recruiting potential faculty or students. Westside corporations may invest in a room, like a skybox at a sports stadium, to send overworked employees for rest and recuperation. Eccentric couples may choose the motel for an unorthodox honeymoon or anniversary. The SR 26 Motel creates a new destination suggesting new uses and ways of inhabiting this landscape. The SR 26 Motel provides the opportunity for many media-ready images and newsworthy photographic opportunities of cars on the roof are appropriate for newspapers or local television. Possible titles for articles or feature stories covering the SR 26 Motel may include: “The Movie Motel in Dusty”, “Get Your Kicks on Route 26” (this was the title of a Spokesman-Review newspaper article covering the “SR 26 Collection” produced by Paul Hirzel’s Site Studio in 1999), “Charming Farming”, “ Five-Star Farmhouses”, “High-End Highway Accommodations”, “Fans Can Stay Warm and Watch the Cougs: Dusty Motel Projects Football Games on Grain Elevator”.

MilePostcards This document could be used by local planning groups within the SR 26 Corridor to establish Agency 26, a group comprised of local activists to oversee the development of the existing features of the SR 26 Corridor. The MilePost(car)ds are the proposal that could be most easily implemented and may be a suggested first project for Agency 26. All residents of the region could be asked to submit ideas or designs for specific MilePost(car)ds that correspond to a specific milepost along SR 26. Along with the call for submissions, Agency 26 would ask for financial support of the endeavor, explaining the process and cost involved in producing the cards, as well as the long-term plan for the cards. The project statement should

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include reference to the great body of knowledge that could be gathered with such a project producing an Encyclopedia of SR 26 in the form of postcards. A set of 24 postcards depicting the various moods and conditions found along SR 26 produced by students in Paul Hirzelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Site Studio at Washington State University, have sold out with three consecutive print runs and continue to create a demand. The ever-changing nature of the MilePost(car)ds could create a collectorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s culture around the set. New postcards could be released at anytime and for any milepost and made available only in select locations or statewide, depending on the funding available. Individuals, families, businesses or community groups could sponsor a postcard for the set and work with Agency 26 to select a level of exposure for their card. Years from now, a complete set of MilePost(car)ds including all cards issued could be a valuable collection to any local history hobbyist in the State of Washington or elsewhere. Local county fairs would include MilePost(car)ds booths for collectors to trade their cards. MilePost(card)ds could be issued in memory of loved ones that had passed away, issued to correspond to a milepost near an area that person had loved. Conservationists, event organizers, students, hunters, farmers, and school teachers could all use the MilePost(car)ds to convey their message or bring visibility to their cause related to the region. The Point A to Point B Series could foster a market for day trips to the small towns located off of SR 26 that are slowly withering away with little opportunity for income. Towns such as Benge already have small historical societies that display their artifacts in the General Store. A postcard could be sponsored to attract car tourists to their town for an afternoon. The SR 26 Project is only beginning. This thesis will be presented to community planning groups as they plan interventions to promote the features of SR 26. Many regional advocates have sought further information regarding this project in an effort to expand their own efforts along SR 26 into a larger collective project. This document will help to unify the SR 26 Community and serve as a resource in planning the future of the Corridor. The discussions that are initiated around the publication of this document may spawn new ideas and form new

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groups interested in increasing the awareness of the SR 26 Corridor. Beyond SR 26, the techniques and interventions proposed here are intended to inspire landscape marketers interested in creating a more intense experience in their own communities, towns, and neighborhoods.

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Jackson, J.B. (1988). The Accessible Landscape. In Horowitz, H.L. (Ed.). (1997). Landscape In Sight: Looking At America. New Haven: Yale University Press. Jackson, J.B. (1956). Other Directed Houses. In ibid. Knopp, L. (1996). Field Of Vision. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Lippard, L. (1999). On The Beaten Track: Tourism, Art & Place. New York: New Press. Lippard, L. (1997). The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society. New York: New Press. Lyons, S. (2000, August 14). Meth invasion: America's Drug of the Moment Wreaks Havoc in the Rural West. High Country News, 32(15). MacCannell, Dean. (1976). Tourist: A New Theory For the Leisure Class. New York: Schocken. Margolies, John. (1995). Home Away From Home: Motels In America. Boston: Bullfinch Press a trademark of Little, Brown & Co. Mayne, J. (Ed.), et al. (1999, December). Open For Business. Washington CEO. Meyers, T.R. (2000). Exhibition catalogue: Robert Overby, Parallel: 1978-1969. (p. 76). Los Angeles: UCLA Hammer Museum. Newman. (1997). Social Research Methods. (p.253). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Pitzer, P.C. (1994). Grand Coulee: Harnessing A Dream. (p. 249). Pullman: Washington State University Press. Pynchon, Thomas. (1997). Mason & Dixon. (p.334, 345). New York: Henry Holt. Pynchon, Thomas. (1966). The Crying of Lot 49. (p.334, 345). New York: Lippincott. Reisner, M. (1986). Cadillac Desert:The American West and Its Disappearing Water. (pp. 165, 168-170.) New York: Viking. Ritzer, G. (1993). The McDonaldization of Society. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press. Richardson, L. (1991). Postmodern Social Theory. Sociological Theory, 9. (pp.173-179). Roth, I., Bruce, V. (1995). Perception and Representation: Current Issues. (2nd ed.). Philadelphia: Open University Press. Sante, L. (2000, March). Seven Wonders. Conde Nast Traveler. pp. 134-137

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Stewart, Susan. (1984). On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Vogt, D.B. (1996). Gravitational Mystery Spots of the United States. Bellevue: Vector Associates. Wilson, A. (1992). The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez. (p.22). Cambridge, England: Basil Blackwell. Weinberger, E. Paradice. The Nation. February 10, 1997. Wolfenstein, M.R. (1970). The Manual of Brands and Marks. (p. 150-151). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

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APPENDIX

Resident Landowner Survey Documents Cover Letter Document: The SR 26 Project Survey

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SR 26 Media Contact List Listed below are local media contacts that have published stories regarding the projects by the Washington State University School of Architecture regarding SR 26: Andrea Vogt The Spokesman-Review P.O. Box 2160 Spokane, WA 99210 Phone: (509)332-3674 Email: andreav@spokesman.com Article: Vogt, A. (August 29, 1999). Get Your Kicks on Route 26. The Spokesman-Review. Article Photographer: Colin Mulvany, The Spokesman-Review Jennifer Karinen Lewiston Morning Tribune P.O. Box 957 Lewiston, ID 83501 Phone: (208) 743-9411 Fax: (208) 746-7341 Article: Karinen, J. (February 4, 2000). ‘…that which everybody sees’. The Lewiston Morning Tribune. Article Photographer: Steve Hanks, Lewiston Morning Tribune Tina Hilding Public Relations Director Washington State University School of Engineering & Architecture hilding@mail.wsu.edu

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