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On Saturday night in Eureka’s Clarke Historical Museum, a glittering fringe coated the display cases.

Under the former bank’s grand ceiling and founder Cecile Clarke’s imposing portrait, drag artists dropped in spectacular splits, crooned country tunes and delighted the crowd as they peeled off layers.

People clutched cups of “pink pony punch” and threw crumpled bills to the performers, who blended gender hyper-expression, political commentary and comedic performance art in their acts among the artifacts.

“Drag Me to the Museum” was the Clarke’s first-ever drag show and fully dedicated LGBTQ+ exhibit for Pride Month, something curators hope will help establish the museum as an archive for local queer history.

As it turns out, gender-bending acts have a century-old history in Eureka.

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Historical documentation on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, two-spirit and queer people can be elusive. There’s limited publicly available history of these people in Humboldt County.

“Most of our local history sources center LGBTQ+ organizations, rather than individuals,” Humboldt Historian editor Charlie Hilton told the Outpost in an email. “It was difficult to get personal experiences recorded due to the underground nature of the community throughout the twentieth century.”

LGBTQ+ people were persecuted by the law and heavily stigmatized by society. Most mentions of LGBTQ+ people in local newspapers before the 1970s are about their arrests.

Jasmine Freitas, the Clarke’s Nealis Hall curator-registrar and organizer of the show, has spent the last few years combing through articles in local newspapers, and found many stories of people arrested for gender non-conforming behavior.

But something caught her eye. From roughly the 1890s through the late 1950s, those same newspapers were plastered with ads for gender-bending performances.

“This whole corner of Old Town had so much female and male impersonation,” said Freitas.

These entertainers were often part of vaudeville-style variety shows in the early decades, and performed in local nightclubs, fairs, and even in a theater that once sat where Nealis Hall now is.

One 1940 ad in the Humboldt Times for Bill’s Nite Club, “Eureka’s Gayest Night Club” at 213 F Street, boasted a glamorous and exciting show with a female impersonator from Seattle.

“It was a lot more prolific than I ever expected,” she added.

Freitas stopped seeing these ads in the papers roughly by the 1960s. Of course, cross dressing as an art has been around for thousands of years. Local drag officially pops up in the historical record by the 1990s.

Today, Humboldt County has a robust local drag scene.

Freitas wanted to bring her research to the public, get the ball rolling on archiving local queer history, and show “we’re not just here for the logging history or the Victorian era, we’re here to talk about everybody’s history,” she said.

Drag artist Komboujia said it was their first time performing in a museum — it felt high-class, fancy.

Costumes of the five performers were displayed along the walls, artifacts of contemporary drag along with biographies. Komboujia said they enjoyed performing as part of an exhibit.

“I didn’t think that any of the stuff that I’ve ever worn would be put in, like, an exhibit. I mean, drag is art — we hear about that all the time — but for people to take it seriously, is really, really cool,” they said.

Artist Mr. Gino, for her display, brought a crown she won in Humboldt Pride event Mr. Thing/Miss Thing in 2009, shows where she first started performing drag. Since then, she said the local drag community has grown and diversified.

“I’m proud that we’re a small county, but we have such amazing entertainers, drag artists, burlesque artists, and so it’s nice to be celebrated and learn a little bit more of the history,” she said.

Folks at the Clarke say it was exciting to welcome the community to the museum.

Pop-up displays included exhibits on drag in the Victorian era, the Wiyot term gou’mel (Soulatluk for “both together,” to describe people with third gender experiences) and local LGBTQ+ history.

“I think it’s really important for a community and a local history museum to tell the history of all of its population,” said Shawn Wagner, Clarke executive director. And, it’s important to celebrate what queer people have done throughout history, she said.

“They’ve always been here, we’ve always been here, but it’s just not something that has been really talked about,” she said.

“I am a little emotional,” said Freitas. “I was like, just so touched that we were able to do this and provide this space for our community. History’s for everyone, and we want to make it so absolutely, abundantly clear that we’re here for everybody.”

“We’re hoping that the community will come forward and recognize that we are a space for archiving queer history, and maybe start giving us some of those pieces,” she said.

For those interested in learning more, a virtual exhibit will be put online in the future — stay tuned to the Clarke’s social media pages.

More photos below: