This month's museum pick...

Eccentric Maryhill

Maryhill commands a bluff overlooking the Columbia River.

It's best reached aboard a classic riverboat

Every month The Cultured Traveler introduces a museum in this space, often one that because of theme or location is not as well known as it might be.

We’ve covered the restored Library at Alexandria, the great museum-quality ensemble of modern architecture in little Columbus, IN, the American Jazz Museum, the California Railroad Museum, a Canadian canoe museum, a culinary artifacts museum and the Tate Modern.

But even by our eclectic standards, this month’s selection, the Maryhill Museum in Goldendale, WA, stands out. It houses eccentric collections in a remote location that can be pleasantly accessed by an unlikely means of transportation.

Goldendale is several hundred miles up the Columbia River. The Cascade Mountains, which the Columbia sliced through long ago, create a distinct dividing line between the wet, heavily forested landscapes of western Oregon and Washington, and the treeless brown desert that forms the eastern half of both states.

It was on the dry side that Portland entrepreneur Sam Hill bought 6,000 acres in 1907 with the intention of establishing a Quaker farming community. Hill, a devoted husband, knew his wife didn’t like the desert or its lack of amenities. As a comfort to her, he built Maryhill (named after his daughter, Mary), a dramatic mansion on a bluff overlooking the Columbia and surrounded by green.

A man of considerable charm and extensive social contacts, Hill began collecting museum-quality artifacts that he housed at Maryhill. His first collection was a series of sculptures by Auguste Rodin. As time went on, Hill made Maryhill home to a diverse array of collections, including American classical realism paintings, Native American art, one of the world’s best chess set collections, the royal regalia of Romania’s Queen Marie (including Faberge artifacts) and the 167 fashion mannequin collection of the French Theatre de la Mode.

Getting There Is Half the Fun

By itself, overlooking a river that flows through only one major city (Portland) along its entire 1,300-mile flow, Sam Hill’s museum might not be worth the long trip. But what if you could get there on a riverboat that cruises through some of the most magnificent scenery in North America?

Since April 2000, the Delta Queen Steamboat Company has been offering Columbia River excursions on the Columbia Queen, an 81-stateroom paddle wheeler based on a 19^th century design, but with 21^st century amenities.

The cruise starts at Astoria, where the Columbia spills into the Pacific Ocean through a three mile wide mouth, the widest exit made by any North American river. It passes Portland and enters the fabled Columbia Gorge, a landscape of dramatic cliffs and waterfalls that on an alternate earth would have long ago been made a national park. Later on, the boat passes into desert country, stopping at Maryhill, as well as a winery and other historical sites in the area.

If you add the stateliness of an unhurried upriver cruise to the goal of reaching Sam Hill’s unlikely desert gem, we think this month’s museum pick is a winnah.  — Patrick Totty