OTE - Oregon Travel Experience

Sequoiadendron giganteum
Judge William Waldo, the son of an 1842 pioneer, planted this sequoia in 1872. Waldo made efforts during his lifetime to preserve the tree and over time others have saved it from the encroaching street system. In 1936 the Salem City Council declared the site, a twelve by twenty foot plot of land, a city park.

Tree Facts

Approx. height: 85′
Planted in: 1872
Circumference: 22′
Dedicated on: April 8, 1998

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It is …

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Picea sitchensis
This is the first tree to be designated an official Oregon Heritage Tree and was once the biggest tree in Oregon and the National Co-Champion Sitka Spruce. It germinated from a seed onthe forest floor around the time of the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 and grew to its mature height about the time Christopher Columbus sailed to the new world. A legacy of the primeval coastal …

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Pseudotsuga menziesii
Early settlers in the “old town” area of Lake Oswego used this giant Douglas-fir as their lantern post by hanging a lantern on a peg driven into the side of the tree to conduct town meetings. In 1852, Oswego’s first Sunday school classes were held under the Peg Tree until a proper building could be built. Today it is the lone survivor of what was once a great row …

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Prunus avium
Folklore is that this tree was planted in 1847 by Eugene Skinner, co-founder of the City of Eugene in 1853. The tree is within the boundaries of Skinner’s 1850 Donation Land Claim. The General Land Office Survey of 1853 puts a cultivated area very close to this tree. It is known that Skinner had an orchard of fruit (peach and almond) trees in 1860, and since the cultivar cannot …

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Pseudotsuga menziesii
This Rocky Mountain Douglas fir was raised from a seed carried to the moon by Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa in 1971.
The story begins in 1953 when a man named Stuart Roosa, a native of Oklahoma, took a job as a US Forest Service smokejumper, a firefighter who would parachute into the wilderness to fight forest fires. Roosa came to love the forests of Oregon, a love that he …

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Cupressus macrocarpa
Seeds for this non-native tree were brought here by an unknown settler, but this particular tree was transplanted to its present location by Harrison Blake when he built his house in the 1850’s. Although this tree was surpassed in 1996 as the largest of its species in the nation, it still holds that distinction within the state.
The nearby Blake home, now housing the Chetco Valley Museum, is the oldest …

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Salix babylonica
In 1860, Martha Hanley planted this weeping willow to commemorate the birth of her son. The willow cutting was obtained from the pioneer Luelling Nursery in the Willamette Valley and delivered by Martha’s friend Kit Kearney, an express rider, who stuck it in a potato to keep it from drying out. The tree flourished and the Hanley farmstead eventually became know as “The Willows.”

Tree facts

Approx. height: 30′
Planted in: 1860
Circumference: …

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Acer palmatum
This Greenleaf Japanese Maple was planted by Governor Tom McCall in late 1973 or early 1974 during his second term of office. McCall is remembered for many enviornmental achievements, such as the “Beach Bill” which granted the state government the power to zone Oregon’s beaches, thus protecting them from private development, and the “Bottle Bill” which was the nation’s first mandatory bottle-deposit law, designed to decrease litter in Oregon.

Tree …

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Syringa vulgaris
The original start of this lilac was brought from Maine to Oregon in 1843 by Mary Charlotte Foster, wife of Philip Foster, partner with Sam Barlow on the Barlow Road. The Fosters sailed around Cape Horn and Mary Charlotte planted the lilac immediately upon her arrival in Oregon City. She moved it five times, replanting it at each of her homes. It was planted in its current location in …

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