Thonni Morikawa

Thonni Morikawa
Museum Curator I

Columbia State Historic Park
11225 Jackson Street
Columbia, CA 95310

Phone: (209) 536-2888

I grew up on the San Francisco Bay Peninsula. Growing up in the Bay Area taught me a lot about the history of California, and, importantly, once you learn to drive a manual transmission in the City you can drive anything. I graduated from San Francisco State University with duel degrees in Anthropology/Archaeology and History of the American West, and spent several seasons with the National Park Service at Fort Laramie, Wyoming; Muir Woods; and Alcatraz Island. I returned to school at Humboldt State to work on a Masters in Education, but marriage took me instead to the high country of Colorado and Las Vegas, Nevada. In Las Vegas, I worked on a Masters in Public History while employed as the Curator of Manuscripts with the Nevada State Museum and Historical Society. Homesickness brought me back to California where I am currently the Curator at Columbia State Historic Park. I use my extensive knowledge of manuscripts, book cataloging, photo digitization, and other skills from the curatorial world to deal with Columbia’s collections. It is a challenging job because Columbia has been in the Park system for over sixty years and without a curator for forty of those years.