Collections

Intro to Collections

The Evergreen Museum Collections is a selection of textiles, veteran artifacts, small objects, books, and other paper items. As a Smithsonian Affiliate Institution, we preserve over 13,000 small objects and almost 5,000 books, periodicals, and technical manuals. The Museum’s Hughes Archives holds all documentation relating to the construction and fabrication of the Hughes Flying Boat, Spruce Goose, and contains over 1 million pieces of paper ranging from drawings to reports to photographs.

We are actively collecting historical material that complements our educational mission to tell the complete and diverse story of aerospace history and veteran experience. Do you have an aviation, space, or veteran artifact that you would like to donate to our archive?

We strive to make the Museum’s Collection as accessible as possible so visitors worldwide can utilize our archive. We have created an online database and are constantly adding new documents, photographs, books, and more to the resource.

Dive into Archive Videos

Tour our extensive collection of aerospace history, military textiles, and veterans’ stories through our three virtual tours below.

The Textile Collections

Discover our textile collection, which comprises one-third of our entire archive, with artifacts ranging from patches to backpacks to military jackets.

The Hughes Archive

In 1992, more than one million pieces of paper accompanied the historic Howard Hughes Flying Boat, Spruce Goose, to McMinnville, Oregon. Learn about our efforts to preserve this critical collection of aviation history.

The Veterans Collection

Evergreen Museum and Veterans’ Legacies are teaming up to preserve the stories of all veterans. Explore our efforts to track down the stories of Black Veterans in the 41st division.

Donate

Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum is embarking on a Collections Project to care for our extensive and rare collections. We are building a new visible storage space where visitors from our community and worldwide can experience history in action and preserve veterans’ tales for future generations.