Manis Mastodon revisted

By Emily Matthiessen • May 28, 2025 5:30 am
Sequim Gazette photo by Emily Matthiessen From left, Clare Manis Hatler of Sequim, Charlene Gustafson and Vera Morgan paid a visit to the Sequim Museum and Arts at 544 N. Sequim Ave. last week. The trio have been friends for nearly 50 years after seven summers spent investigating the mastodon bones discovered on Manis Hatler’s property by her late husband “Manny” Emanuel Manis. Gustafson’s late husband, Carl Eugene “Gus” Gustafson, an associate professor at Washington State University, led research teams of graduate students at the Manis property in Happy Valley. One of those graduate students was Morgan, who is now retired and living in New Mexico after a career as an archeologist, including excavating a site for the U.S. Highway 101 bypass in Sequim. The women stand before the museum’s life-sized mural with some of the mastodon’s nearly 14,000-year-old bones.
Sequim Gazette photo by Emily Matthiessen From left, Clare Manis Hatler of Sequim, Charlene Gustafson and Vera Morgan paid a visit to the Sequim Museum and Arts at 544 N. Sequim Ave. last week. The trio have been friends for nearly 50 years after seven summers spent investigating the mastodon bones discovered on Manis Hatler’s property by her late husband “Manny” Emanuel Manis. Gustafson’s late husband, Carl Eugene “Gus” Gustafson, an associate professor at Washington State University, led research teams of graduate students at the Manis property in Happy Valley. One of those graduate students was Morgan, who is now retired and living in New Mexico after a career as an archeologist, including excavating a site for the U.S. Highway 101 bypass in Sequim. The women stand before the museum’s life-sized mural with some of the mastodon’s nearly 14,000-year-old bones.

Sequim Gazette photo by Emily Matthiessen

From left, Clare Manis Hatler of Sequim, Charlene Gustafson and Vera Morgan paid a visit to the Sequim Museum and Arts at 544 N. Sequim Ave. last week. The trio have been friends for nearly 50 years after seven summers spent investigating the mastodon bones discovered on Manis Hatler’s property by her late husband “Manny” Emanuel Manis. Gustafson’s late husband, Carl Eugene “Gus” Gustafson, an associate professor at Washington State University, led research teams of graduate students at the Manis property in Happy Valley. One of those graduate students was Morgan, who is now retired and living in New Mexico after a career as an archeologist, including excavating a site for the U.S. Highway 101 bypass in Sequim. The women stand before the museum’s life-sized mural with some of the mastodon’s nearly 14,000-year-old bones.

By Emily Matthiessen

Sequim Gazette