WILD GOOSE
In the course of my work as a historian, I'm occasionally asked to work on some rather novel projects. For example, in 2009 I worked on a historic survey of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And last year I was hired to prepare a National Register of Historic Places nomination for John Wayne's yacht, the Wild Goose.
The process of listing a property on the National Register requires a lot of bureaucratic hurdles, but I was happy to learn this week that the nomination for the Wild Goose was accepted by the Keeper of the register in Washington, D.C., and listed on July 19th. Even better, this week it appears on the National Park Service's website as a "weekly highlight."
I think what pleases me the most is the fact that I was able to place some rather interesting facts about Wayne's ownership into the historical record. Namely, that one of his favorite activities aboard was drinking tequila, and that during trips up Alaska's inside passage he went out of his way to chip off and store chunks of glacial ice in the yacht's freezer, as he felt the dense glacial ice lasted longer in his drinks.
The process of listing a property on the National Register requires a lot of bureaucratic hurdles, but I was happy to learn this week that the nomination for the Wild Goose was accepted by the Keeper of the register in Washington, D.C., and listed on July 19th. Even better, this week it appears on the National Park Service's website as a "weekly highlight."
I think what pleases me the most is the fact that I was able to place some rather interesting facts about Wayne's ownership into the historical record. Namely, that one of his favorite activities aboard was drinking tequila, and that during trips up Alaska's inside passage he went out of his way to chip off and store chunks of glacial ice in the yacht's freezer, as he felt the dense glacial ice lasted longer in his drinks.