Gerry Matthews, creator and curator of the Museum of Un-Natural History

WALLA WALLA, WASHINGTON—
[GETTING THERE][HELPFUL LINKS]

Until a decade ago, wheat fields stretched in all directions from Walla Walla, Washington. These days, the amber waves still ripple, but among them are a growing number of grape vines.

"There are vineyards everywhere you go now," says Patti Cobb, a longtime Walla Walla resident. "It's big industry."

As the tasting room signs proliferated along Willamette Valley roadsides, few people had any idea that another phenomenon was growing right in the heart of Walla Walla itself. In an upstairs gallery behind a black door, a creative spirit was at work. The remarkable result is now open by appointment: The Museum of Un-Natural History.

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Gerry Matthews, the museum's creator and curator, came to southwestern Washington almost by chance. After a career in New York as a Broadway singer and dancer, a television actor, and a nightclub performer, he and his wife Pat headed to the Pacific Northwest in search of a place to put down fresh roots.

"I liked Walla Walla, and there was nobody here that I knew," says Matthews, although plenty of folks might easily have recognized his voice. He has provided the voice for Sugar Bear, Post's animated cereal mascot, since 1962. A man with multiple muses, Matthews has also written stories, novels, children's books, plays, television scripts, and screenplays.

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