A grand old time in Lincoln City

To help celebrate Lincoln City’s Antique Week, the North Lincoln County Historical Museum will offer a new exhibit called “Sears Years,” a tribute to how Sears, Roebuck & Company and Montgomery Ward & Company made rural living in North Lincoln County a lot easier around the turn of the 20th Century.

Having poor access to stores in the valley and being fairly isolated from other coastal communities, residents in the region relied on catalog ordering for their goods, as well as the supply boat captains who had to brave the challenges of crossing the Siletz River bar.

The exhibit will feature artifacts from the museum’s collection that closely match entries from Sears catalogs from the late 1800s to the 1930s, as well as quotes from county residents gathered via oral histories and diary accounts. The museum will also offer a special trivia challenge — with the winner receiving a gift basket including an historic reprint of an 1897 Sears catalog, along with several issues of the museum’s Pioneer History of North Lincoln County series and more.

Antique Week runs from Saturday through Monday, Feb. 11 through 20, featuring various sales at Lincoln City’s antique shops and used book stores and a special installment of its popular “Finders Keepers” program. Through Finders Keepers, 100 special antique-style Japanese glass floats made by local artisans will be hidden along the city’s seven miles of sandy beach, from Roads End on the north to Siletz Bay to the south. Floats will be dropped above the high tide line and below the beach embankment.

The North Lincoln County Historical Museum is located at 4907 SW Hwy. 101 in Lincoln City. For more information, go to northlincolncountyhistoricalmuseum.org or call 541-996-6614.

For more information about Antique Week and a list of store locations, go to oregoncoast.org.