OffBeat: Fort archaeologist doesn't mind having laboratory invaded

Once a year, Doug Wilson is accustomed to sharing his classroom and his laboratory with tens of thousands of visitors.

They settle down with their picnic lunches and tubes of sun screen, maybe take their shoes off, and spend the day — and a good part of the night — in his research center.

He doesn't mind.

And that's why Wilson didn't see any advantage when this year's edition of the Fort Vancouver fireworks show was cancelled.

Wilson is a National Park Service archaeologist, and the grounds of the Fort Vancouver National Site is a valuable educational resource.

That vast green lawn also seats the community's biggest audience every year. It becomes an outdoor Oooh!-and-Aaah!-ditorium, drawn by the Fourth of July fireworks show.

But the crowds have never created a problem for his summer archaeological sessions.

"We like the event," he said. "It brings a lot of people, and it's a great celebration."

Wilson conducts an annual archaeology field school on the Vancouver Barracks grounds. On July 5, his students have never had their outdoor classroom cluttered by sandwich crusts, potato chip bags containers and pop cans.

The show's organizers "get a whole army of volunteers," Wilson said.

"We get here around 10 a.m., and it's all cleaned up.

"The one problem we've had is the people who come with metal detectors looking for coins" on the mornings after the show, Wilson said.

These urban prospectors look for loose change that fell from the pockets of fireworks fans as they sprawled on the grass.

"No metal detectors are allowed on the grounds." Wilson said.

"A metal detector can't tell if something is a 150-year-old musket ball or a modern coin."

So he isn't bothered by huge holiday throngs. You might say that it's the nickel-and-dime stuff that concerns him.

Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story, or just tell a story.