A short section of Water Street, at the corner of Cherry Lane, on the west Capitol Campus will be restricted between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on July 17 while workers remove the Chief William Shelton Story Pole from the campus greenhouse. One lane will remain open and traffic will be directed by flaggers. The story pole will be loaded on to flatbed trucks for delivery to a climate-controlled storage facility in the Seattle area.

The 71-foot-tall story pole, carved by Chief William Shelton, was installed on the west Campus in 1940. It was removed in November 2010 for safety reasons — extensive interior wood decay and ongoing water intrusion led to serious stability concerns. Due its combination of weight and fragility, the pole had to be cut into sections for safe removal. The sections have been stored in the nearby campus greenhouse since that time.

The sections, which were very wet when initially taken down, are completely dry now but increasingly brittle. Artech, an art handling and collection management company, is wrapping each section of the story pole in a breathable foam and mesh tarp on July 9 and 10, in preparation for the move. The wrapped sections will be lifted on to custom pallets and secured for transport.

Enterprise Services convened a working group of conservators, museum professionals, Native American tribal representatives and contemporary carvers to discuss the story pole and the issues important to each. The entire group agreed that stabilizing and relocating the pole to appropriate storage is a critical first step in any effort to preserve it.

The state is examining the feasibility of preserving the pole for installation and indoor display in a Capitol Campus location still to be determined.

The story pole is often incorrectly referred to as a totem pole. The figures of a totem pole symbolize a family's history, while those on a story pole symbolize ancient stories.

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