BS Summary: This article contains 2 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, with Halo Effect as the most egregious example at 5% saturation with 99 hits. Analysis detected 163 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,970 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 4.1% and a BS Rank of 2% (28,503 of 28,846 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 98.80% of the article peer group.
A glass fragment.
A ceramic shard.
A scrap of leather.
Even the smallest, hardest-to-identify artifact can make Kimberli Fitzgerald light up, sometimes even jump for joy.
Fitzgerald is the city of Salem’s archaeologist and historic preservation officer, leading a program recognized for integrating preservation into planning policy and community outreach.
United Chinese Americans recently honored her with the Iris Chang Humanity Award for helping preserve Chinese American history in Salem.
Excavations she led in 2017 uncovered a Chinese shrine in Pioneer Cemetery, where the city now holds an annual Qing Ming Festival.
Fitzgerald has since organized several digs and built a program recognized locally and regionally as an innovative, proactive model for protecting cultural and archaeological resources.
Until recently, Salem was the only city in Oregon with an archaeologist on staff.
Portland Metro hired one after consulting with Fitzgerald, basing its job description on her position and role.
Cities across the state are looking to replicate the program she helped create, while colleagues in the field seek her expertise and invite her to speak at conferences.
“We’re really lucky to have Kimberli,” said Lisa Anderson-Ogilvie, Salem’s deputy community planning and development director.
“If she ever retires, how many people would we need to replace her?
She’s so well respected in the field and across the state.”
Salem has more than 250 known archaeological sites beneath its buildings and streets.
Much of Fitzgerald’s work involves identifying those resources, assessing their significance, and helping prevent or minimize damage during development.
Thousands of artifacts have been found and cataloged under her watch, including pieces that help tell Salem’s history through a glass bud vase, ceramic teacup and leather shoe.
Kimberli Fitzgerald, historic preservation officer for the city of Salem, poses for a portrait on Thursday, July 9, 2026.
Fitzgerald leads an award-winning team that works to protect more than 250 known archaeological sites in the community.
Fitzgerald began working with Salem as a consultant before joining the city full-time in 2009 as its historic preservation planner.
She already held master’s degrees in city planning and historic preservation, and Salem was beginning to set goals for protecting archaeological sites and historic buildings.
A year later, Salem adopted its first comprehensive historic preservation plan, a 10-year strategy meant to balance development pressures with protection of the city’s cultural identity.
Still, challenges remained.
Salem drew scrutiny in 2015 after a photo surfaced on social media showing a public works crew holding artifacts found during road maintenance.
The post prompted the state archaeologist to call the mayor.
That incident, along with a local historian drawing attention to artifacts found in downtown basement vaults and the discovery of a box of skulls at a recycling center, revealed the city lacked clear procedures and trained staff for handling such finds.
At the urging of her then-boss, Fitzgerald went back to school and earned a master’s degree in archaeology and cultural resource management in 2018.
The city reimbursed her tuition.
She completed her fieldwork at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site in Washington.
“They really focus on how to engage the public while you’re doing archaeology, which is my passion,” Fitzgerald said.
“You still can protect things that need to be protected, but there also is a way to educate the public and involve the community.”
She has brought that approach to every archaeology project in Salem, including the police facility site, the Parsonage at Willamette Heritage Center, and the Indian Mission Manual Labor School at Willamette University.
Each has featured open houses where the public can view excavation sites and recovered artifacts.
See photos from Salem's archaeology digs
Thousands of artifacts have been recovered in Salem under the watch of Kimberli Fitzgerald, the city archaeologist and historic preservation officer.
Not all of Fitzgerald’s work takes place at known archaeological sites.
Sometimes it starts on a street corner, when a city crew uncovers possible artifacts and Oregon law requires the work to stop until the site can be surveyed.
Having an archaeologist on staff helps Salem avoid delays while waiting for the State Historic Preservation Office to review a site.
Fitzgerald can obtain an expedited archaeology permit and do the work herself.
A couple of years ago near Marion and Church streets NE, she recovered about 2,000 artifacts in roughly three hours, helping prevent a longer closure of the right-of-way.
“Before I got this training, they would have to rely on consultants, which is very expensive, and they’re not always available,” she said.
Fitzgerald described the site as the largest “bottle dump” she has encountered in Salem — a historic trash deposit filled with discarded household glass, stoneware and ceramics.
“It’s not as exciting, but it’s still interesting.
It tells us about our history,” Fitzgerald said.
Kimberli Fitzgerald points to a piece of shoe found at Willamette University.
In most cases, artifacts at least 50 years old must be recovered.
Fitzgerald’s job is to assess their significance, much of it in the city’s archaeology lab after the sifting screens and hand trowels are put away.
Interns and Oregon Archaeological Society volunteers help document and process the artifacts, using archival-quality materials to prepare them for storage.
Fitzgerald currently works with four college interns, two from Willamette University and two from Portland State University.
They clean, weigh, measure, photograph and number each artifact, then research distinctive marks and patterns and write a biography for each one.
Processing and analysis can take longer than the excavation.
The lab has specialized tools for processing, drying and preserving fragile artifacts and sediment samples.
A soil oven helps researchers date deposits more precisely, especially useful with Oregon’s damp soil.
A nitrogen vacuum sealer helps prevent artifacts from oxidizing, such as a brittle piece of an approximately 180-year-old leather shoe found at the former site of the Methodist Mission's 1841 Indian Manual Labor Training School.
The city's new lab, in a modest building on the old public works campus, has far more space than its predecessor.
Fitzgerald now has an office and room to store equipment such as archaeology screens, shovels, augers, tarps and other supplies, which she once kept in her garage.
The former lab was housed in cramped quarters at the Willow Lake Wastewater Pollution Control Facility, a Salem-operated site in Keizer.
Kimberli Fitzgerald, city of Salem historic preservation officer, gets up close to survey the police facility archaeology dig site in 2020.
Fitzgerald needs every inch of lab space after nearly a decade of uncovering and preserving thousands of local artifacts.
In 2018, more than 21,500 historic and Native American artifacts were recovered from the site of Salem’s future police headquarters.
The property was one of the city’s earliest residential blocks, and its location near Mill Creek connects it to the Kalapuyan people.
Interpretive panels along a pedestrian walkway behind the police facility and a utility box wrap at the intersection of Liberty and Division streets NE share the site’s history.
Excavation and data recovery work took about two weeks, with a representative from The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde on site to discuss the findings with city and state officials.
Fitzgerald has continued working closely with tribal leaders on other local archaeological surveys, including one on private property on Broadway Street NE, where Salem founder Jason Lee’s 1841 Mission house once stood before being moved to the grounds of the Willamette Heritage Center in the 1960s.
A basement brick wall uncovered during excavation at the Jason Lee archaeological site on Broadway Street NE in Salem.
The Lee house site was surveyed in 2020 before the property was developed into a mixed-use building.
The most notable find was the handmade brick foundation of the basement.
A chunk of it now anchors an interpretive panel in the building’s parking lot.
Unlike earlier public archaeology projects at the police facility site and Pioneer Cemetery, this one marked the city’s first collaboration with private property owners.
Fitzgerald said the project showed how the city can help property owners navigate the process and demonstrated that historic properties can still be redeveloped.
She encourages property owners, prospective buyers and developers planning projects that involve digging or other ground disturbance to check their address on the city’s Cultural Resources Protection Zone map.
The map identifies archaeological sites, historic structures and traditional cultural landscapes.
If an address is within the protection zone, Fitzgerald’s contact information appears on the screen so she can guide the owner, buyer or developer through the archaeological compliance.
“It’s rare for someone who is an archaeologist to also have a planning background and understand the permitting system so well,” Anderson-Ogilvie said.
“Having that dual understanding has really helped, so she can advise developers early on applications and how to go about it correctly.”
Artifacts found during archaeological digs at the Jason Lee house and Indian Manual Labor Training School sites, including ceramic shards with a blue-feathered pattern, confirm Methodist Mission occupation at both.
The Lee house project led to additional research at other Methodist Mission sites, including the Parsonage at Willamette Heritage Center two years later and the Indian Manual Labor Training School on the Willamette University campus in 2025 and 2026.
The school for Native American children operated for two years before being shut down.
It was repurposed for settlers’ children and eventually became Willamette University.
Its administration building became the Parsonage for the new Methodist Church and was moved twice before being placed at Willamette Heritage Center.
Fitzgerald and her team have connected the sites by matching artifacts from the Lee house and Indian school locations, including ceramic shards with a blue-feathered pattern — the kind of find that can make her light up and jump for joy.
“This is very exciting to me because we can now make a very strong, clear connection between the Methodist occupation and these particular ceramics, which were found at both locations,” Fitzgerald said.
She hopes to confirm more connections during deeper excavation that could take place next year at the Indian school site, where initial surveys found brick similar in type and color to brick from the Lee house basement.
At the parsonage archaeology site in 2022 at Willamette Heritage Center, square holes are dug to help record the exact depth and location artifacts are found, also called units.
Salem’s archaeology program relies on grant funding and partnerships with the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office, Willamette Heritage Center, Willamette University and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.
Fitzgerald said her work has depended on strong relationships with those groups and support from city staff and the city council.
The city also hired a historic preservation planner, allowing her to focus more deeply on archaeological surveys.
“I couldn’t grow the program without that level of support,” she said.
Other cities have sought guidance as they prepare for updated state rules on cultural resource sites and landscape features that go into effect Jan.
1, 2027.
Under Oregon’s Goal 5 Cultural Areas Rule, local governments must identify, protect and manage significant cultural resource sites and landscape features.
The updated rule also establishes formal tribal notification procedures and standards for balancing development with cultural preservation — practices already familiar to Fitzgerald and Salem.
Fitzgerald said she met several times last year with Portland Metro as it developed its own program and prepared to hire an archaeologist.
She is now working with officials in Albany.
“She and the city of Salem are fantastic examples that others are looking to as those concerns for cultural resources are coming forward,” said Briece R.
Edwards, manager of the historic preservation office for The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.
“We hold them up as the example of how it doesn’t have to be scary, and it doesn’t have to be complicated.”
Capi Lynn is a senior reporter for the Statesman Journal.
Send comments, questions and tips to her at clynn@statesmanjournal.com
Speakers
3speakers14%attributed speech1,697writer words
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42%flagged-word coverageBriece R. Edwards
62 attributed words23% of attributed speech7.1% writer coverage
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