A little girl stands in an orchard located in the town of Gifford before the construction of Grand Coulee Dam. Stands of fruit trees that flourished along the Columbia River before the dam are now underwater. 

Joe Barreca uncovers area’s history by talking to those who lived it

BY SOPHIA ALDOUS
S-E Staff Reporter

    Joe Barreca is a wellspring of information. About what? About a lot of things. The 63-year-old owner of Map Met¬rics, who lives south of Kettle Falls with his wife, Cheryl, approaches life with the curiosity of a small child and a mind like a Rolodex.
    “I once saw a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon that showed them excitedly digging a huge hole in the ground and Calvin coming up with a big worm,” said Barreca. “The caption underneath it said, ‘There’s treasure every where.’ I think that’s a great attitude to have.”
    Barreca has brought that viewpoint to his latest project, Old Kettle Falls Oral History. He and his accomplice, Grady Knight, have inter¬viewed nine people and accu¬mulated 20 hours of video de¬scribing life in the Kettle Falls and outlying areas before and after the construction of Grand Coulee Dam in the 1930s.
    The project is a branch the Heritage Network, a volunteer, non-profit organization formed to assist heritage groups in discovering and preserving historical resources within their respective communities. It is being funded by a Pre¬serve America grant.
    “So far, all of our interviews have been tied to Old Kettle, though many of the people we have talked to did not live in Old Kettle per se, but they all visited there, or lived close by,” explained Barreca. “Right now we are still dealing with the loads of footage we already have, but in the future, we would like to branch out to the elderly folks in the sur¬rounding areas.”
    While collecting these sto¬ries, Berreca has become privy to information most tourists, and even locals, won’t find on a historical plaque or sight¬seeing pamphlet.  According to one old-timer Berreca inter¬viewed, there has long been a conflict of the river being a dumping ground for Canadian neighbors to the north, and the people south of the border having to deal with it.
    “The town of Old Kettle used to reek from all the sewage dumped in the river from Trail, B.C.,” said Barreca. “People coming from out of town would be totally repulsed by the smell, but I guess the townsfolk got used to it after a while.”
    It’s interesting pieces of trivia like that Barreca is in¬terested in hearing. Not just names and dates, but the per¬sonalities behind the names and the people who were there, or at least remember the stories of the people who were there. The good, the bad and everything in between, Barreca is fascinated by ac¬counts of the past.
    “There’s a lot of good stuff out there,” said Barreca. “If we don’t pay attention, it all goes away. Back in the day, it took some real grit to live around here. You had to stick it out.”
    It’s Barreca’s hope that this project will inspire people in some shape or form, to look at their history, and times past of the area in which they live. Call it a reconnection to roots or just “getting local,” but ac¬cording to Berreca, it’s a source of knowledge you won’t find anywhere else.
    “Knowing the history of where you live, whether it’s here or across the world, en¬riches your life,” Barreca stated. “Instead of just driving down the road and not thinking about anything, you can look around you and re¬alize how rich your history is, if you pay attention.”
    Look for more stories about the Heritage Network history project in upcoming editions of the Statesman-Examiner.