From Online Databases to Historic Mansions - CA State Parks Cultural Resources Does It All
A Reflection by ACE EPIC Member Kylie Newland
Have you ever been to a California State Park with a visitor center, museum, or other similar collection of artifacts? Chances are that I’ve had my hands on the digital footprints of those same objects you admired in their display cases. Or, if you’re outside of California, picture yourself as a Californian for a quick second, and then picture a museum, except, better: a Californian museum. Now we’re talking!
I’m Kylie Newland, an ACE Digital Data and Multimedia Collections Intern with CA State Parks Cultural Resources in the state capitol of Sacramento. I help standardize and update the state’s online database of over one million artifacts. My main focus has been in supporting repatriation efforts to get Native American artifacts and ancestral remains back to their respective tribes. Ensuring that State Park’s data on Indigenous artifacts is up to date, accurate, and accessible is a big step towards helping these culturally significant items make their way back home. Eventually, our online database will be shared directly with not only tribes interested with repatriation, but the general public too. These objects will be searchable based on key words and the locations they were found at, both of which I’m responsible for managing.
Normally, I spend my days in front of a computer, holed up in the Statewide Program Support Center (lovingly referred to as the Dungeon), but I spent last week up the mountain in Lake Tahoe in the Ed Z’Berg Sugar Pine Point State Park, helping open a historic house, Pine Lodge, for the summer season. I cleaned, dusted, inventoried, and staged antique items and furniture in what used to be the summer lodge for a family of San Franciscan socialites at the turn of the 19th century.
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That’s me in the photo, posing with my friend Sydney Hellman, the patriarch of the family and previous Pine Lodge owner. And, yes, I asked- he really was that short.
Staging a 1930s-era dress in a guest bedroom of a historic mansion was made all the more immersive by the playlist we curated of ‘The Top Hits of the 1920sâ€; jazz, swing, and tinny phonographic music playing from my not-so vintage phone.
Another highlight was cleaning ‘Mercury’, the one of the first ever ‘cigarette’ style boats made! These boats are known for their long, thin shape (hence the name) and incredible speed. Mercury was made in 1926, weighs only 900 pounds- extremely lightweight, even for race boats-and was donated to the park by the Hellman-Ehrman family, the original owners of Pine Lodge. Her aluminum paneling helped make her the ‘world’s fastest boat’ in 1926.
Cleaning boats is not what I expected to use my historical expertise for, that’s for sure. I got my associate's degree in history before transferring to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where I graduated with my bachelor’s in cultural anthropology last June. I knew I wanted a career in historical preservation from the get-go, but I truly fell in love with collections management during my college internship at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. It was here that I first got to hold items that were hundreds, if not thousands of years old. I was shell-shocked! And in love! Everything clicked.
If you’re looking to begin a career in historical preservation or museum curation, my advice is to not limit yourself to any rigid idea of how collections management or historic work, well, works. There is history everywhere. We have a habit of being quite a messy species, so no matter where you end up, there is undoubtedly history to be preserved. Gain experience however you can, because the most important lessons will not be learned in a classroom, I can practically guarantee that.
At the end of my ACE term, I’ll look back with fondness at these memories of typing away in a digital dungeon, cleaning mouse droppings in dusty old mansions, and wiping down historic boats along crystal blue lake waterfronts: they've only solidified my reasons why I’ll continue in this field. When I leave for Canada at the end of this summer to pursue my Masters of Museum Studies, I’ll never forget the unforgettable experiences I’ve had as an ACE intern that will continue to guide my expertise in museum work, collections management, and indigenous sovereignty for the rest of my career.
