Materials are arranged in the order created during the interview process with the first file containing administrative materials created before, during, and after the interview.
Accession No. PA.2002.0005: Lincoln and Tahoe Washburn, 2002
[identification of item], Lincoln and Tahoe Washburn Oral History, SPEC.PA.56.0111, Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center Archival Program, Ohio State University
Contains audiocassettes
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Processed by: Audrey Wimbiscus, 2020 March; Finding aid written by: Audrey Wimbiscus, 2025 November
Albert Lincoln “Link” Washburn (1911-2007) was an American geomorphologist who primarily studied the permafrost and quaternary studies; he also taught at universities across the globe, wrote textbooks, and dedicated his life to fieldwork and intensive study of the Arctic. Lincoln majored in geology at Dartmouth College, graduating in 1935; that same year, he married his wife Tahoe and qualified for the 1936 United States Olympic Ski Team. He then started his dissertation at Yale University prior to World War II, but paused it to serve in the United States Army Air Forces as an intelligence officer in the Arctic, Desert, Tropic Information Center. The knowledge gained during the war through the Center led to the formation of the Arctic Institute of North America, which Lincoln led upon his discharge from the military in 1945. His dissertation was ultimately published in 1947. Lincoln was a founding member of the Snow Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment in 1949 (later known as the Cold Regions Research Engineering Laboratory). In 1957 he went to Antarctica as a part of the first International Geophysical Year. Following his return, Lincoln taught at universities in New Zealand and across the United States, ultimately ending up retiring as a professor emeritus of the Department of Geological Sciences in the Quaternary Research Center at the University of Washington in 1976. He was also the former director of the Quaternary Research Center. Following retirement, Lincoln continued doing fieldwork and writing scholarly publications on his quaternary research. His last trip to the Arctic was in 1998 with Tahoe when they were both 87 years old.
Barbara “Tahoe” Washburn (nee Talbot) (1911-2007) married Lincoln in 1935; following this, she became his regular field assistant as well as his wife, and traveled with him and their three children to the Arctic and across other parts of the globe many times. In 1999 she published “Under Polaris,” a book about their early years working together in the Canadian Arctic. Lincoln and Tahoe were married for 71 years prior to their deaths in 2007.
The Lincoln and Tahoe Washburn Oral History, dated 2002, contains audio recordings, administrative information, and transcripts of the interview of Lincoln and Tahoe by Brian Shoemaker of the American Polar Society conducted on May 9-10, 2002. This interview was a part of a series of polar oral histories sponsored by the American Polar Society and Ohio State University's Byrd Polar Research Center Archival Program, with funding from the National Science Foundation. Major topics discussed include Lincoln (often referred to in the oral history as Link) and Tahoe's many research trips to the Arctic, his involvement in the founding of several major Arctic-focused institutions, their partnership in both fieldwork and marriage, and memories of the many locations across the globe that Lincoln's career took them.