- Oaks Amusement Park
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Oaks Park 
Entrance to Oaks Park. Location Portland, Oregon Coordinates 45°28′23″N 122°39′38″W / 45.4730°N 122.66061°WCoordinates: 45°28′23″N 122°39′38″W / 45.4730°N 122.66061°W Website http://www.oakspark.com/ Owner Oaks Park Association Opened 1905 Operating season Spring weekends and daily during summer (rides)
Tuesdays-Sundays (rink)Oaks Park is a small amusement park located 3.5 miles (5.6 km) south of downtown Portland, Oregon USA, near the Sellwood Bridge. The 44-acre (18 ha) park includes midway games, about two dozen rides that operate seasonally, a skating rink that is open all-year, and picnic grounds.[1]
Contents
Rides
The Rock-O-Plane at Oaks Park.
Park rides and midway games are open weekends during spring and daily during summer.[2] Rides include the following:[3][4][5]
South End
- Looping Thunder (steel looping roller coaster manufactured in Italy)
- Disk-O (added in 2007, manufactured by Zamperla)
- Rock-O-Plane
- Scrambler (manufactured by Eli Bridge Co.)
- The Eruption
- CP Huntington train
East End
- Screamin' Eagle (a KMG Fireball)
- Spider (Eyerly Spider)
- Lewis and Clark Big Adventure
- Big Pink (a giant slide, now has 3 colors: pink, yellow and blue)
- Tilt-A-Whirl (new for 2009)
- Herschell–Spillman Noah's Ark Carousel
- Rock 'N' Roll (a rock 'n' roll themed Matterhorn, with cars shaped like '57 Chevys, similar to the Alpine Bobs)
- Ferris Wheel (manufactured by Eli Bridge Co.)
- Go-Karts (Drive As Mario Kart In Go-Karts With Can-Am As Single Driver and Sidekick as a 2 person car in a race course)
North End (Acorn Acres)
- Skooters (bumper cars)
- Up Up and Away (manufactured by Zamperla)
- Motorcycles (kiddie motorcycles)
- Toon Cars (kiddie cars)
- Zoom (kiddie coaster manufactured by Miler Coaster)
- Sky Fighters
- Frog Hopper
- Rockin Tug (manufactured by Zamperla)
- Adventure Miniature Golf (new for 2011)
Roller skating rink
The park includes a 100 by 200 feet (30 × 61 m) wooden roller skating rink, open year-round.[6] The rink has had a pipe organ for most of its history; since 1955 it has been a Wurlitzer model with four manuals, moved to the rink from its previous home at Portland's Broadway Theatre,[7] where it had been installed in 1926.[8] All pipework for the organ is mounted on a platform hanging over the skate floor.[7]
History
View of Oaks Park from Willamette River. The skating rink is behind the trees at left. The roof of the dance pavilion is visible at the center. About half of the 25 picnic areas are visible. This photo taken at river stage 11 feet, which covers the sandy beaches normally visible here.The park, conceived as an attraction timed to accompany the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, was built by the Oregon Water Power and Railway Company and opened on May 30, 1905,[9] during a period when trolley parks were often constructed along streetcar lines. It attracted 300,000 visitors during its first season, and continued to attract about that many patrons throughout its first decade of existence.[9]
In the early 1920s, the park was sold to John Cordray, one of its managers. After Cordray died in 1925, Edward Bollinger, Oaks Park's superintendent, bought all but the land from Cordray's widow; Bollinger acquired the land in 1943.[9] The 1948 Vanport flood submerged Oaks Park for 30 days, killing a third of the bluff's oak trees, warping most of the rides, and resulting in damage to the rink that took five months to repair; the next year, Bollinger's son Robert took over after his father's death.[9] The damage prompted the owners to rebuild the rink floor on airtight iron barrels, which would float in the event of another flood; the floats worked as planned during the area's Christmas flood of 1964 and the Willamette Valley Flood of 1996.[9]
From 1958 until 1974, the park was the home of Southern Pacific 4449, the only surviving example of Southern Pacific Railroad's GS-4 class of steam locomotives.
Two years after the Jantzen Beach Amusement Park closed in 1970, the Oregon Journal reported Oaks Park "may be on the verge of a renaissance"; three years later Sellwood's local newspaper, The Bee reported "30,000 people a month still come during the summer."[9]
In 1985, the park was donated to Oaks Park Association, a not-for-profit corporation created by Robert Bollinger.[10] In 1989, the park and the interior of the roller rink were seen in a long sequence in Breaking In, a film written by John Sayles, directed by Bill Forsyth, and starring Burt Reynolds. It also appears in the 1999 PBS special Great Old Amusement Parks.
The park celebrated 100 years of continuous operation in 2005, making it among the oldest in the US.[11]
Oaks Park's skating rink was featured in the 2008 thriller movie Untraceable, and again on TNT's Leverage on the season four episode four "The Van Gogh Job". The park itself was also featured in Free Willy.
See also
- Springwater Corridor, the former rail line that served the park, now a rail trail
References
- ^ "The History of Oaks Amusement Park". Oakspark.com. http://www.oakspark.com/history.html. Retrieved 2011-09-21.
- ^ "New Attractions at Oaks Park". Oakspark.com. http://www.oakspark.com/rides.html. Retrieved 2011-09-21.
- ^ "Thrill Rides at Oaks Amusement Park". Oakspark.com. http://oakspark.com/thrillrides.html. Retrieved 2011-09-21.
- ^ "Intermediate Rides at Oaks Park". Oakspark.com. http://oakspark.com/intermediaterides.html. Retrieved 2011-09-21.
- ^ "Kid's Rides Morning". Oakspark.com. http://oakspark.com/kidsrides.html. Retrieved 2011-09-21.
- ^ "Oaks Amusement Park Skating Rink". Oakspark.com. http://www.oakspark.com/skating.html. Retrieved 2011-09-21.
- ^ a b "Oaks Park Roller Rink, Portland Oregon". PSTOS. http://www.pstos.org/instruments/or/portland/oakspark.htm. Retrieved 2011-09-21.
- ^ "WurliTzer Opus 1380". Theatreorgans.com. http://theatreorgans.com/AU/opus/OP13/OP1380.htm. Retrieved 2011-09-21.
- ^ a b c d e f [1][dead link]
- ^ Bollinger. "Robert Bollinger benefactor of The Oaks, etc". Rbollinger.com. http://www.rbollinger.com/index.shtml. Retrieved 2011-09-21.
- ^ http://www.oakspark.com/index1.html[dead link]
External links
- The park's website
- Oaks Amusement Park by Bryan Aalberg, Oregon Historical Quarterly 104.2 (Summer 2003)
- Historical postcards at PdxHistory.com
Categories:- Visitor attractions in Portland, Oregon
- Parks in Portland, Oregon
- Amusement parks in Oregon
- Landmarks in Oregon
- 1905 establishments in the United States
- Willamette River
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