Scratching your head about what to put under the tree this year?

If someone on your list loves local history, 2025 has birthed several new book titles that would make excellent Christmas gifts.

The Polson Museum Store, freshly stocked, offers a few ideas to all the part-time Santas out there who seek a bit of guidance this time of year.

For starters, Aaron Goings’ “Red Harbor: Radical Worker and Community Struggle in the Pacific Northwest” is a remarkably significant contribution to the Grays Harbor’s historical record. The book was years in the making, a passion project for the Aberdeen native author who built upon his graduate school thesis work that earned him a history PhD at Simon Fraser University. ohn Hughes, in his recent editorial review of the book published in this newspaper, has aptly praised “Red Harbor” as “masterly history.” Hughes further characterizes “Red Harbor” as “one of the most important sociological studies in Northwest history. Goings unearthed, and fastidiously fact-checked, new information on the struggle for lunch-bucket dignity — decent pay and safer working conditions — during the first four decades of the 20th Century.”

If you’re curious to learn more about this book, I highly recommend you search out Feliks Banel’s recent podcast interview with Aaron Goings at Cascade of History’s SoundCloud site. $29.95 hardback.

I was tickled to read that former The Daily World Editor and Publisher John Hughes ranked Leanne Paul’s “Reality Farm: The Untold Story of Reality Farm and the 1971 Satsop Rock Festival” at #8 in his personal ten best list of new books for 2025. We’re especially looking forward to this Saturday, Dec. 20, when Leanne Paul will be at the museum to sign books and answer your questions about her experience as one of the family members who owned the farm property where the festival was held. Leanne will be on hand from 1 to 4 p.m. so come on down to the Polson and reminisce a little about that long ago rock festival.

I found her book very well written, as did Hughes, who characterizes “this remarkable book” as “the autobiography of a resilient woman who experienced the state’s first-ever legal rock festival from ground zero at the age of 15 and spent decades documenting a shameful tale of inept duplicity by state and local officials.” $22.99 softback.

Though published late last year, “Hoquiam Schoolhouse Memories” is a nostalgia-filled title that contributes significantly to the local historical record and is a must-have for anyone with ties to Hoquiam schools. Sisters Karen and Diane Taylor have compiled a 242-page treasure trove of Hoquiam school history with photos, maps, tables and more.

In seeking information on their great-grandmother, Nettie Connell, a teacher in Hoquiam starting in 1896 and promoted to assistant principal of Hoquiam Public Schools in 1898, the Taylor sisters began a years long research journey that has culminated in this comprehensive history book. While the book chronologically details Hoquiam’s various schools dating back to the 1870s, the Taylor sisters have added a cornucopia of local school trivia that is sure to delight readers: early published rules and regulations, profiles of early teachers, details on neighboring rural schools at places like Newton, Chenois Creek, Copalis Beach and more.

Non-public schools affiliated with religious or ethnic groups such as St. Mary’s Catholic and the Finnish School are addressed as well as activities that students participated in outside of schools at places like the YMCA, the Hoquiam Library and the 1939 Bunyan Jubilee. All of the district’s elementary schools along with its Junior High and High Schools are chronicled into the 1960s and a wealth of historic photos, ephemera and maps are included.

Notably, Polson Museum board members Larry Jones (also a long time Hoquiam principal and administrator) and Lee Thomasson share insightful first-hand histories from their respective eras in the schools. This meticulously researched book culminates with a wonderful reference chapter on the “evolution” of Hoquiam’s schools that chronologically and geographically details these historic houses of instruction. If ever the game show “Jeopardy!” chose to quiz contestants with a column on Hoquiam Schools, this book would provide all the answers. $29.95 softback.

Now five years old, Aberdeen native Aaron Goings’ “The Port of Missing: Billy Gohl, Labor, and Brutal Times in the Pacific Northwest” deserves another loud shout-out as one of the past decade’s most significant additions to the Grays Harbor historical record.

Goings’ fresh research into the century-old story of Billy Gohl being crowned the most prolific mass murderer in Pacific Northwest history is nothing short of award worthy. By quantifying statistics found in the archival Record of Deaths for the city of Aberdeen and the Chehalis County Coroner’s Record, Goings makes a convincing case that Gohl’s so called “floater fleet” was not the work of a mass murderer but rather an unregulated and dangerous waterfront working environment.

At 277 total pages, the book includes 50 pages of end notes that provide ample evidence of the detailed research done to support this thesis. Goings scoured various university archives, state penitentiary records, census records, city directories and labor union records. Newspaper accounts of the day further proved invaluable in telling this story and Goings left no local paper unread – the Aberdeen World, Grays Harbor Washingtonian, Grays Harbor Post, Aberdeen Herald, Chehalis County Vidette and Aberdeen Daily Bulletin all are heavily referenced.

More obscure publications such as the Coast Seamen’s Journal and Pacific Lumber Trade Journal also provided crucial context. And notably, the Chehalis County (Grays Harbor) Superior Court records gave extensive documentation of Gohl’s trial and proceedings. $29.95 hardback.

For shoppers on a budget, Janice Warford Fisher’s 85-page “Growing Up in Hoquiam: 1930-1948” is a treasure trove of Hoquiam history during the bustling years before, during and after WWII. Jan recounts her school years at Washington Elementary, the Junior High and High School, detailing stories of teachers, fellow students and events that shaped her youth. Jan’s recollections of the town, its bridges, buildings, stores and landscape are told in fabulous detail which will delight Harbor history lovers of all ages.

This Polson Museum publication features a selection of Jan’s own photographs along with others from the Polson and Jones Photo Historical Collection. Huge thanks is due to Jan for so skillfully putting her memories on paper (and gifting publication rights to the museum!) and to Mickey Thurman and Besty Seidel who each put a tremendous effort into laying out and editing the manuscript. $13.95 softback.

And finally, we just ordered a fresh stock of Murray Morgan’s 1955 classic “Last Wilderness: A History of the Olympic Peninsula” which the University of Washington Press has re-published with a highly satisfying introduction by acclaimed poet and nature writer Tim McNulty. For those who don’t know Morgan, he got his career start in Hoquiam as a reporter for the Grays Harbor Washingtonian newspaper in 1937 and went on to pen 22 books, his most famous being the best selling history of Seattle, “Skid Road.”

As McNulty notes in his introduction, Murray’s timing in taking this Hoquiam job was fortuitous in that it gave Murray a first hand look at “the wild and boisterous world of the early days of the Olympic Peninsula that he would describe so memorably in ‘The Last Wilderness.’” This was an era when “smoke from sawmill burners smudged the skies,” “more than forty sawmills crowded the Grays Harbor tideflats and riverbanks,” and “loggers from backwoods camps mixed it up with mill hands in the bars and cardrooms on Saturday nights.” $22.95 paperback.

So if you’re still searching for the perfect gift – even for someone whose bookshelves are already stuffed – know that history lovers always find a way to squeeze in one or two more books!

With Christmas Eve and Christmas next Wednesday and Thursday, the Polson Museum’s last regular open hours will be this week and weekend, Wednesday through Saturday 11 a.m.to 4 p.m. and Sunday noon to 4 p.m.. The Museum will resume its regular schedule Dec. 26 and of course were especially looking forward to Saturday the 27th when the lucky winner for a 2025 “Ruby Red” Ford Maverick will be drawn in our much anticipated “Red Car Raffle” (and, by the way, raffle tickets make great stocking stuffers!)

For more information please call 360-533-5862 or visit polsonmuseum.org.