Whatcom County researcher Tim Wahl will present an illustrated talk examining  accounts and depictions of today’s lower Nooksack River, from Spanish sketch maps of the 1790s to today’s  LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) imaging flights.  The area examined extends southwest from “Clallikon” Prairie on the land claims of Thomas Wynn to Lummi and Bellingham Bays, along what early 1900s writers referred to as vexing, changing channels of the Lummi River. The Lummi River bounded a land area called the Island of Chahchoosen. Both these placenames were probably established  at the Treaty of Mukilteo council in 1855 in the midst of an untested, often stumbling US endeavor, the creation of US Reservations for native Americans. So too began an ongoing native endeavor to retain lands, fisheries and dignity during waves of occupying miners, farmers and town-builders and immersion, or not, in a new North American economy.

$3/WCHS and Museum members free