By Steve Duda, JFK student 
Mount Angel’s storied past has finally made it onto the Internet.
Thanks to the efforts of Eli Kloft, a student at John F. Kennedy High School, the Mount Angel Historical Society can now be found by web surfers.
The society, founded in July 2010, was created to showcase Mount Angel’s rich past.
Kloft created the website as part of his senior project.
“(JFK Principal) Mr. Stoops asked me early in the year if I was interested in doing a website for the Mount Angel Historical Society. I agreed and got in contact with the group,” Kloft said.
The Mount Angel Historical Society is a nonprofit organization dedicated to sharing Mount Angel’s past.
It started out as a hobby for Bill Predeek and grew out from his large collection of pictures and other memorabilia. After several displays throughout town, current members such as Predeek and Gary Edwards began making plans to form into an established group with bylaws and formal meetings. In July they began holding meetings as a formal organization.
One of the first tasks they had was creating a website. After contacting the high school and getting connected with Kloft, the historical society and Kloft began working together Kloft needed to purchase the website’s domain name and host it through a web service. He stepped up to the challenge of creating an effective website.
“I didn’t know much about how to make a website, but I learned things in my project quickly,” he said.
The website, mtangelhistory.org, has lots of information about Mount Angel’s past. It gives a description of the town’s early days as a railroad stop and small farming town. There are dozens of pictures of Mount Angel in its early days, with pictures of Main Street, St. Mary Church, the Abbey, and other bits of history.
Kloft officially completed work on the site in April, the same month as the presentation date for his senior project. However, he says that he’s not finished. While he completed sufficient work to pass his senior project, he wants to keep working with the historical society.
“Considering it is a website, it’s never really finished,” Kloft said. “I’m going to continue meeting with them to keep improving the website.”
