Ilwaco museum spotlights hats through history
Published 9:00 am Tuesday, April 1, 2025
Cora Smith, right, was a dressmaker in Iowa before she headed west with her young son. She arrived at the Breakers Hotel in June 1912 and relocated to Seaview, where she was postmaster from 1914 to 1939.
Betsy Millard puts the finishing touches on a display of early 20th-century hats.
Military memorabilia highlighting Ilwaco-born Jack Williams, who became a four-star admiral, is part of the exhibit. Other public service hats highlight the career of longtime Ilwaco Fire Chief Kenneth Inman.
Betsy Millard, volunteer exhibits curator, fluffs up a hat in a display case in the “Topping it Off: Hats from the Collection” a millinery exhibit at the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum this week through July 5.
Hats from all ages are on display at the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum.
Hats are the latest artifacts to adorn the special exhibits gallery at the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum.
“Topping it Off: Hats from the Collection” will open on April 4, the same weekend as the museum’s Driftwood & Daffodils event, although, unlike the flowers it continues until July 5.
Museum leaders are seeking to feature hats connected to the region’s better-known families as well as showcase “simply beautiful expressions of the milliner’s art.”
Betsy Millard, volunteer exhibits curator, said many hats on display were already in the museum’s collection. “We have covered most of the major periods of hats,” she said, acknowledging it has been a challenge to match the hats with stories that illustrate the lives of residents.
“We thought we should do a hat show, and we have started putting out more and more, but how to connect it back to people while reviewing fashion trends of the past?”
Millard commended Kathi McCormick, who was enlisted to assist. “All hats have been dealt with, and fluffed up,” she said.
Another helper has been Wendi Peterson, who has set up a midcentury display, complete with a mannequin.
A photograph of Cora Smith in a distinctive circular hat decorated with flowers is being used to promote the exhibit.
Smith was a dressmaker in Iowa but when widowed she traveled West with her young son, arriving in 1912. She was appointed Seaview’s third postmaster in 1914, holding the position until 1939.
Smith’s sepia-toned photograph adorns the walls with a 1921 portrait painted by Peninsula artist Joseph Knowles of an unnamed woman in a hat.
Other hats of similar scale are on display, plus a selection of women’s cloche hats from the 1920s. A grant from the city of Long Beach enabled the museum to buy head-shaped hat forms on which to show off the items. Some are particularly delicate.
One glass case is adorned with colorful pill-box hats and designs from the 1950s and thereafter. Millard said the exhibit is, in part, designed to demonstrate how headgear progressed through the decades.
For women, the popularity of hats declined in the 1960s when lifestyles — not just fashions — changed. “It was the mid-60s,” she said. “We had folk music and rock and roll, and the sexual revolution, and in those years women grew their hair long.”
Men’s heads are covered, too.
The Wiegardt and Prest families, from Nahcotta and Chinook, who were among the leading lights on the Long Beach Peninsula throughout the 1900s, are well represented with a top hat made from beaver fur and a stiff black derby or bowler. Much later in the century, men’s headgear developed softer brims for comfort.
Hats often signaled status. Two reflect the community leadership of Kenneth Inman, who died in 1970. He served as Ilwaco Fire Chief for 25 years, having come to the peninsula in 1903 to join the lifesaving service at Fort Canby. He was deputy sheriff of Pacific County during World War II.
One corner of the gallery includes the first public display of the full uniform of Jack Williams, who grew up in Ilwaco and advanced in the U.S. Navy to become a four-star admiral.
Next to Williams’ uniform is a photograph that shows his wife, Dorothy, who lives in Portland, breaking a champagne bottle over the hull to launch the USS Olympia, a nuclear-powered submarine, in 1983.
The Williams family has written many pages of Ilwaco history, most recently with long-serving retired fire chief Tom. Jack Williams’ mother, Julia (Hoare) Williams, proprietor of the Shelburne Hotel in Seaview, is also featured.
Millard is delighted about displaying Jack Williams’ uniform, including the late admiral’s medals.
“We have never had the opportunity to show it before,” she said.
‘Topping it Off: Hats from the Collection’
Millinery exhibit at Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum, 115 Lake St., Ilwaco, open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays through July 5. Free admission.
www.columbiapacificheritagemuseum.org
