Another Roadside Antiquity

When I entered school in 1959, the Jantzen Beach Amusement Park was already 30 years old and a premier attraction in Portland, Oregon. At that point, the park, adjacent to the Columbia River, was already on the wane. Yet its primary feature, a wooden-framed roller coaster known at "The Big Dipper," still drew throngs throughout the 1960s.

The roller coaster ride was wild and woolly, and when schools celebrated "Safety Patrol Day" or other summertime events at the park, youngsters turned out in droves. The Big Dipper was widely known as the biggest and the best roller coaster ride in the West. The park also featured swimming pools, other thrill rides, midway games and a carousel.

In reality, the park was a marketing ploy by Carl Jantzen, a partner in Portland Knitting Mills, to promote swimsuits used by the Portland Rowing Club. The park, however, remained wildly popular even after the Vanport Flood wiped away the nearby residences in 1948. Eventually, Jantzen Beach Park closed in 1970 and is now a shopping mall.

Jantzen Beach was the premier summertime attraction in Portland in the 1960s. We went there frequently, riding our bikes on the ten-mile trek from Mt. Tabor to the Interstate Bridge. The park was a great place to meet kids from other neighborhoods, and The Big Dipper was the main attraction, though the wooden construction seemed dubious, even in those days

As kids, we would stop at another roadside attraction on the way to our beach house on the north side of Lincoln City on the Central Oregon Coast. Spawned by a themed restaurant known as "The Pixie Kitchen," the park, known as Pixieland, seemed like a good idea at the time, but Pixieland only lasted a mere six years before closing for good.

Jerry Parks, an entrepreneur with Disney connections, worried that the State of Oregon would bypass the Pixie Kitchen, his highly successful restaurant during a reroute of U.S Highway 101, so he purchased 57 acres nearby to build a new western-themed amusement park. The new theme park was just minutes from the Pixie Kitchen in Lincoln City.

When it opened in 1968, the 44-acre park near Otis featured a 600-foot log flume ride not unlike the one at Knott's Berry Farm, a steam train with 2,000 feet of trestle, a recreational vehicle camping site and a western-themed main street with food vendors, arcade and opera house. Though nitially successful, the park ceased operations in 1974.

A laundry list of reasons plagued Pixieland: short tourist season further diminished by rainy coastal weather, a gas crisis, undercapitalization and corrosive salt air eroding wood and metal. But the real deal killer was the fact that the Forest Service was under mandate to restore the wetlands near the Salmon River, dooming the future of Pixieland.

One of the more unusual attractions from my youth was known as "Wally's Dam" located in rural Clackamas County southeast of Portland. In 1966, Wally Hubbard built a 320-foot long, 180-foot high fiberglass slide over a wide swimming hole on Sieben Creek that had formed on his property. Soon, youngsters like myself and many others were coming from all over Portland.

The slide -- an adrenaline rush from top to bottom -- was a delight on hot summer days. Wally charged no admission fee, but he had a set of rules clear posted at the entrance: no cussing, no smoking, no drinking and a commitment to go to Church or Sunday school twice a month (a requirement met with ease for those of us who were Catholics).

A rural postal carrier, Wally's route was usually completed by noon, so he was on-site watching the kids have fun. A lifelong bachelor with a severe stutter, Wally was not shy about sharing his faith with kids or chasing off troublemakers if they caused problems. Though Wally had a pension and Social Security, he lived like a pauper and supported many causes.

Some days, Wally said he counted as many as 400 youngsters riding the slide on his property in the foothills of the Boring Lava Field southwest of Mt. Hood. Inevitably, there were bound to be injuries at Wally's Dam, and Clackamas County officials obliged Wally to cut the slide back. Eventually, he took it down, another roadside attraction lost to the ages.

Just up the Willamette River from Jantzen Beach and the Interstate Bridge is the only amusement park still operating in the City of Roses: Oaks Park. One of the oldest continuously-operated amusement parks in the country., the 44-acre park was conceived as an attraction timed to accompany the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition.

But Jantzen Beach wasn't the only amusement park affected by the Vanport Flood of 1948. The rising water submerged the park, killing a third of the stately oaks on the bluff, warping most of the rides, damaging the skating rink, and closing the park for about six months. Eventually, Oaks Park experienced a resurgence after Jantzen Beach closed in 1970.

In 1985, the owner of Oaks Park donated the site to the nonprofit Oaks Park Association, which continues to operate the park as "an affordable and family-friendly recreation attraction open to the general public" to this day. In 2005, Oaks Amusement Park celebrated 100 years of continuous operation, making it the oldest amusement park in the United States.

Oaks Park was located in the Sellwood District, so it was fairly easy access for from where I lived, first in Eastmoreland, and later Mt. Tabor. The park includes midway games, about two dozen rides that operate seasonally, a year-round skating rink and picnic grounds. Most of the year, our focus was on the skating rink, which was a good place to meet girls.