OTE - Oregon Travel Experience

Acer platanoides
One of the original 250 Norway maple trees planted by volunteers along Spruce Street and “S” Avenue in 1923 to commemorate the end of the First World War and to appreciate the returning veterans. The beautiful tree-lined parkway, known as Victory Way, stretches from downtown to Riverside Park. The planting culminated in a large ceremony including singing, a luncheon, and speeches.
Although less than 25 of the original maples survive …

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The Valley of the Giants is a 51 acre parcel of land containing a stand of old-growth Douglas-fir and hemlock trees many of which are more than 20 feet in circumference and nearly 200 feet tall. Some of the largest trees are between 400 and 450 years old. The largest, blown down in a windstorm in 1981, was more than 35 feet in circumference and over 600 years old.
Because of …

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Pseudotsuga menziesii
Between 1949 and 1973, an army of volunteers helped plant an estimated 72 million trees to reforest the Tillamook Burn — one of the largest forest replanting efforts in history. Here, in the area of Cedar Creek Flat, the new forest was planted entirely by school children from Tillamook, Forest Grove and Portland. Students arrived by the busload and were met by foresters who provided Douglas-fir seedlings, tools, and …

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Quercus garryana
Dating back for six to ten thousand years before the arrival of Euro-American settlers, Kalapuya Indians lived in the Willamette Valley and relied upon on the valley’s oak groves as source of acorns and other food resources such as camas. The practice of following seasonal rounds to gather food and plant materials led the native people to recurrent camp grounds, one of which is believed to be the oak …

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Quercus garryana
The Signature Oak at The Oregon Garden is the oldest and largest tree in a grove of Oregon white oaks that predates settlement of the Willamette Valley by European immigrants and their descendents. The latest native inhabitants of the region were the Santiam group of the Kalapuyan tribe. Native people in the region depended on oak groves as a source of acorns, camas and deer, important staples in their …

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Carya ovata
This tree sits on property settled in 1868 by W.S. Frazier, the founder of Milton, Oregon. The Frazier family carried hickory nuts along the Oregon Trail from their home in Texas. The nuts were planted shortly after their arrival and one grew to be a magnificent tree that is stunning for beauty and unusual bark. The Frazier property was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 …

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Populus trichocarpa
The Riding Whip Tree, as it became known, grew from a black cottonwood riding switch that was stuck in the ground by fifteen-year-old Florinda Geer in 1854 after returning from a horse ride with her uncle. The stripling took root and today stands as a massive monument to the early settlers of the Waldo Hills. In 1936, the Daughters of the American Revolution memorialized this tree with a bronze …

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