Matt Franz has learned that walls can talk. They just need someone to translate.

The senior who is majoring in 林业与火灾生态学 is working with Associate Professor 格兰特哈雷, who runs a tree-ring laboratory in the Department of Geography and Geological Sciences. 2021年夏天, Harley’s team traveled to Chewelah, 华盛顿, to age the Colville Indian Agency Cabin.

小屋是Maj. 约翰一. 希姆斯, an Indian Agent of the United States who worked with the Coeur d’Alene, 斯波坎, 卡利斯佩尔和科尔维尔部落. The Stevens County Historical Society believes the cabin was built in the mid-1800s and reached out to Harley for help pinpointing its exact year of construction.

The team used hollow drills to extract tree cores from the cabin’s walls and ceiling. Each core contains a record of the tree’s growth, or a ring for every year. The width of each ring varies depending on the climate each year.

The team will compare the growth pattern of the cabin’s tree cores with cores taken from local living trees. If the living trees are old enough that the tree-ring pattern from the cabin logs matches the early rings from the living trees, the team will know when the cabin logs were harvested for use and help the historical society piece together the history of the region.