The Willamette Heritage Center is a particularly apt place for a performance of early nineteenth-century music on guitars from the period.

Located across from Willamette University at 1313 Mill St SE, in Salem, Oregon, the Willamette Heritage Center preserves buildings that date from the 1840s when Euro-American missionaries and immigrants settled in the Mid-Willamette Valley, home of the Kalapuya. It is likely that these settlers would have brought guitars with them very similar to the ones we will be playing on our concert!

The concert will take place in the Pleasant Grove Church, built in 1854 by Oregon Trail immigrants. The Heritage Center includes many other historic buildings and the 1896 Thomas Kay Woolen Mill (where Neil’s mother shopped for fabric for her sewing projects well into the 1960s!).

The mill is a National Park Service-designated American Treasure, vividly telling the story of industrialization of the Mid-Willamette Valley. Concert-goers are encouraged to stay and visit the rest of the Willamette Heritage Center to experience the life and culture of early Oregon and the era in which the Caulkins’ music would have been heard.

The concert is Free to the Public. Donations to the museum will be gladly accepted.