Tenino releases new run of its famous wooden money for Oregon Trail Days

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Tenino Depot Museum’s move, Loren Ackerman dusted off the 1890 Chandler & Price printing press to print and distribute a new batch of souvenir wooden money.

During this past weekend’s Oregon Trail Days festivities, Ackerman, the president of the South Thurston County Historical Society, demonstrated the process of printing new bills with the press that was used to print the original wooden money in the 1930s.

The presentation was held inside the Tenino Depot Museum, the historic stone building that was lifted from the ground and transported via truck 10 blocks to the city park on Aug. 30, 1975. The former train depot building, which is listed on the National Historic Register, was then converted into a museum.

Ackerman printed batches of new $1, $5, $10, and special limited edition $50 bills, which can all be purchased and spent around town. Ackerman and his wife Shelli printed wooden money together for over 30 years before Shelli passed away in 2024, and Ackerman has passed on his knowledge to his middle son Tyler.

“I started with this museum in 1991, and by 1992, it was getting hard on the old-timers to run this machine, so they asked me to start running it and I’ve been running it ever since,” Ackerman said. “My middle son Tyler runs it, as well as his son. It’s the three of us, and we fire it up for special events like this.”

Two new $1 bill designs feature Tenino Master Stone Cutter Keith Phillips on one and a design of the depot move by a Tenino student that won a Tenino School District art contest on the other. The new $5 bill depicts Loren and Shelli Ackerman, the $10 features the museum on wheels, and the limited $50 print commemorates 50 years since the “museum on the move” spectacle with information about the event.

“To prevent the destruction of the historic railroad depot in Tenino, Washington, the community worked for 2 ½ years to raise enough funds to preserve the structure. Finally, on August 30, 1975, the 322-ton stone depot was moved in one piece to the town’s park,” the bill reads. “The project contractor was paid with a 9-by-24-inch $30,000 wooden check. Like the wooden money first printed in Tenino during the depression, the wooden check was readily accepted as legal tender.”

Ackerman said he didn’t know the attraction that the original press had among historians and collectors until 1998 when the International Organization of Wooden Money Collectors visited the museum, bringing hundreds of spectators with them. Original wooden currency printed during the Great Depression became a collector’s item and has sold for anywhere from $75 to $4,000, Ackerman said.

“This is their holy grail,” he said, pointing to the press. “This money that gets printed, it’s so collectible. It’s insane.”

Tenino’s economy, which largely included logging and farming, was deeply impacted by the Great Depression, leading to the Tenino Chamber of Commerce’s idea to issue emergency scrip to relieve the money shortage caused by the failure of The Citizen’s Bank of Tenino.

According to Arthur Dwelley’s written history on the currency, the original scrip was on paper and was given to bank depositors in exchange for assignment to the chamber of up to 25% of the depositor’s bank account balance.

“Shortly afterward, the scrip was printed on ‘slice wood’ of spruce and cedar and immediately became famous as the original wooden money,” Dwelley wrote. “Eight issues were printed between 1932 and 1933 with a total of $10,308 of the wooden currency put into circulation. It became a collector’s item, and only $40 was ever redeemed by the chamber.”

Ackerman receives scrap wood from a carpenter in Tacoma, and once he receives the designs from an artist, he sends it to Michigan to get the block. For a machine that predates any living human, the printing press runs with ease as Ackerman places the wooden bills on the machine to get stamped with ink. Prior to the printing of wooden currency, the machine was used to print the Tenino Independent newspaper.

“It’s in really good shape. I had the original set of rollers that I started with, and I changed them out probably 15 years ago and I need rollers again,” he said. “All of these holes are oil ports, and you can hear it every once in a while where it starts to squeak. We have an oiler, and we walk around and try to hit all 90 ports with a little drop of oil, and that keeps it going. For 135 years old, it runs beautifully.”

The Ackermans also printed wooden scrip currency during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide relief for residents and keep the city’s economy afloat. Some of that wooden scrip is on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

Ackerman said he would like to keep the machine and the printing of Tenino’s historic and nationally recognized currency within his family.

“I’ve been doing it for this long, why not keep it in the family? That’s the beauty of it,” he said. “That was the whole reason in training Tyler to do it is that someday when I can’t do it, Tyler can step right in here and do it, and he does. It’s beautiful. I’m absolutely honored. It’s always been an honor. It’s part of history, and I just happen to be the guy. That’s a beautiful thing.”