When anthropologist David Brauner led the effort to save the old site of Fort Hoskins from development in the late 1980s, he was doing so mostly out of a regard for human history.

Long before he became a professor at Oregon State University, Brauner was familiar with the site, even when it was a farmer's field in Kings Valley. Local legend has it that each soldier who served at the fort had placed a gold coin under the flagpole's base.

Fired up on history (and maybe a few drinks), the group found and dug up the flagpole's base. The gold coins were rural legend (Civil War-era soldiers typically didn't have gold coins to throw away for posterity), but they did find gold of sorts: a bottle that contained a piece of paper bearing the signatures of all of the men who had served at the fort.

That sort of information could prove to be gold again if efforts to commemorate the site - perhaps even to rebuild a replica of the fort - come to pass.

Interest in history - particularly the Civil War - has launched a lucrative industry in historic re-enactment, collecting and trading of relics and unearthing forgotten great-grandfathers' yellowing portraits from attics to place them in historic context.

Two best-selling nonfiction books - Tony Horwitz's "Confederates in the Attic" and humorist Sarah Vowell's hilarious "Assassination Vacation," about organized tours surrounding the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley - have tapped into the lucrative phenomenon that has sprung up around historic revivals and reenactments.

Why not let some of that trend take root in Kings Valley?

The site is protected from any further attempts to dig up any remaining relics, but community members could start afresh by establishing the history of the men who served at the fort. What if local residents made a concerted effort to mine all of the photographs, letters, relics, anecdotes, albums and other ephemera and share them in time in preparation for the 150th observance of the fort, scheduled for July 28-29?

An effort to rebuild the fort - of reclaiming this piece of the past - would not only be an homage to this area's Civil War history but a shrewd bit of economics as well.

We expect to be a part of this effort, with continuing coverage. We'd be glad to do our part. Let the rediscovery begin.