Next In Their Footsteps event to be held May 19

Lewis and Clark National Historical Park, Fort Clatsop has announced the next In Their Footsteps free speaker series event. Oregon’s Oldest Known Shipwreck: A Spanish Galleon of 1693 by Cameron La Follette, will be held on Sunday, May 19 at 1:00 p.m.

It has long been known that a large ship, probably Spanish, wrecked on Nehalem Spit centuries ago. Recently an archaeological team (the Beeswax Wreck Project) determined it was most likely the Santo Cristo de Burgos, which left the Philippines in 1693 bound for Acapulco, and was never seen again. Cameron La Follette and her team of independent researchers then spearheaded research into Spanish, Philippine and Mexican archival sources that revealed for the first time information about Captain Iñiguez del Bayo, the crew, the cargo, the ship, and the fabled Manila trade of which the Santo Cristo de Burgos was a part. This talk will summarize these fascinating archival findings, the Native traditions about the shipwreck, and the 150-year aftermath of treasure-hunting in the Neahkahnie area that the galleon wreck ignited.

Cameron La Follette was the lead author on most of the articles in the Summer 2018 issue of Oregon Historical Quarterly, “Oregon’s Manila Galleon.” She is the Director of Oregon Coast Alliance, a coastal conservation organization. She is also lead author of Sustainability and the Rights of Nature: An Introduction, published in 2017 by CRC Press. A companion volume, Sustainability and the Rights of Nature in Practice, is forthcoming in 2019.

In Their Footsteps is a monthly Sunday forum sponsored by the Lewis & Clark National Park Association and the park. These programs are held in the Netul River Room of Fort Clatsop’s visitor center and are free of charge.

For more information, call the park at (503) 861-2471, check out http://www.nps.gov/lewi, or Lewis and Clark National Historical Park on Facebook.