Makah Cultural and Research Center

Around 1750, a mudslide buried a Makah coastal village at Lake Ozette whole — sealing it, preserving it, leaving it largely untouched until archaeologists arrived centuries later. The NPS calls it the North American Pompeii. The Makah Cultural and Research Center in Neah Bay houses what came out of the ground: canoes, basketry, whaling and fishing gear, artifacts from a pre-contact world rendered suddenly legible. The museum opened in 1979, under the leadership of tribal chairman Edward Eugene Claplanhoo, and remains managed by the Makah Tribe.