TURNER, Ore. — The man behind Oregon’s iconic Enchanted
Forest amusement park in Turner has passed away.
Family members said that Roger Tofte (above) who created
the park south of Salem off of Interstate 5 more than half a
century ago, has died at age 96.
Tofte built much of the park by hand, opening it to the public
in August of 1971.
On July 28, 1978, National Lampoon’s Animal House, a movie
spoof about 1960s college fraternities starring John Belushi,
opened in U.S. theaters. It was the first film produced by
National Lampoon.
Produced with an estimated budget of $3 million, Animal House
became a huge, multi-million-dollar box-office hit, spawned a
slew of cinematic imitations and became part of pop-culture
history.
Peter Iredale in Seattle, circa 1900.
Peter Iredale was a four-masted steel barque that ran ashore
October 25, 1906, on the Oregon coast en route to the Columbia
River. She was abandoned on Clatsop Spit near Fort Stevens
in Warrenton about four miles (6 km) south of the Columbia
River channel.
Wreckage is still visible, making it a popular tourist attraction as
one of the most accessible shipwrecks of the Graveyard of the
Pacific.
The ship was named after Peter Iredale, who not only owned the
vessel as part of his shipping fleet, but was also a well-known
figure in Liverpool, England, where his business was
headquartered. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Peter Iredale
Iredale retired in 1899 at the age of 76
and died shortly afterwards on the 26th
of October the same year.
Peter Iredale shortly after grounding in 1906.
The first major wagon train to the northwest departs from Elm
Grove, Missouri, on the Oregon Trail.
Although U.S. sovereignty over the Oregon Territory was not
clearly established until 1846, American fur trappers and
missionary groups had been living in the region for decades,
to say nothing of the Native Americans who had settled the
land centuries earlier.
Dozens of books and lectures proclaimed Oregon’s agricultural
potential, piquing the interest of white American farmers. The
first overland migrants to Oregon, intending primarily to farm,
came in 1841 when a small band of 70 pioneers left Independence, Missouri.
They followed a route blazed by fur traders, which took them west
along the Platte River through the Rocky Mountains via the easy
South Pass in Wyoming and then northwest to the Columbia River.
In the years to come, pioneers came to call the route the Oregon
Trail. The trail was heavily traveled until 1884, when the Union
Pacific constructed a railway along the route.
Conferring with Clatsop Indians at the fort.
After passing a wet and tedious winter near the Pacific Coast,
Lewis and Clark left behind Fort Clatsop and headed east for
home.
The Corps of Discovery arrived at the Pacific the previous
November, having made a difficult crossing over the rugged
Rocky Mountains.
Their winter stay on the south side of the Columbia River—
dubbed Fort Clatsop in honor of the local Native American
tribe—had been plagued by rainy weather and a scarcity of
fresh meat. No one in the Corps of Discovery regretted
leaving Fort Clatsop behind.
In the days before their departure, Captains Lewis and Clark
prepared for the final stage of their journey. Lewis recognized
the possibility that some disaster might still prevent them from
making it back east and he prudently left a list of the names of
all the expedition’s men with Chief Coboway of the Clatsops.
Lewis asked the chief to give the list to the crew of the next
trading vessel that arrived so the world would learn that the
expedition did reach the Pacific.
The months to come would witness some of the most
dangerous moments of the journey, including Lewis’
violent confrontation with members of the Blackfeet tribe
near the Marias River of Montana in July.
Nonetheless, seven months later to the day, on September
23, 1806, the Corps of Discovery arrived at the docks of St.
Louis, where their long journey had begun nearly two and a
half years before.
