The Wallowa Story was originally created in honor of Wallowa County's first centennial birthday in 1987. Working with both contemporary and historical photographs, a group of local historians developed 279 slides, wrote a 47-minute narrative, and commissioned local KWVR radio announcer Dave Nelson to record an audio cassette.
The presentation premiered to standing room only at the OK Theater in the Wallowa County seat of Enterprise, Oregon. Partially funded by the Oregon Council for the Humanities, volunteers then took the presentation on the road to schools and state parks in neighboring counties.
To restore the film, the audio was recorded from an original cassette tape and the slides were individually scanned. The resulting video was shown to a full house at the Wallowa History Center on July 4, 2022, thirty-five years after its creation. The Wallowa Story remains an excellent, near-comprehensive introduction to local history.
