THS Board Member Kurt Krause reflects on life in early Durham

Celebrate Arbor month with us and the city of Tualatin. Learn more about our first annual Arbor Day Poetry Contest and how to win a tree, an annual membership and your place in history.

Rick Wheelock brings a love of history and many more things needed in his new role as Manager of the Heritage Center.

REPRINT: The Oregon Journal, October 31, 1937

Mastodon’s Teeth Taken From Well

Widely separated areas in Oregon recently have given up evidences of wild life in the state in prehistoric times. Near the grass toots of a new well he started on his farm near Tualatin, Charles M. Roberts, chief of police there, uncovered some teeth and parts of the skeleton of a mastodon. The skeleton rested in a low rich onion growing field, where not more that 20,000 years ago, believes Dr. H. C. Dake, Portland student of paleontology, the mastodon may have been a victim of the last great ice age which extended down nearly into Oregon, forcing these great mammals to migrate to the warmer climates of the south.

When Tualatin was barely a one stop sign town in the late 1940s and 1950s, the volunteer fire department would use its ladders to string lights on a tall redwood across Boone Ferry from today’s CI (then the Spot Tavern). Tualatin historians Loyce Martinazzi and Yvonne Addington remember families would gather around a big bonfire nearby to sing familiar carols. Elves from the fire department would then help Santa distribute donated toys they had repaired. Local church women sewed new clothing for cast-off dolls especially for children in need. See how we honored this tradition in 2021….

There is an increased public interest in identifying and learning about the current relationship to the Ice Ages, which still affects our lands today. Area collectors and public places now open to the public have simply run out of room to preserve and display our ancient history properly. The Tualatin Ice Age Foundation was created to finance and provide space for local collections and displays and learn about Tualatin’s ancient history and the surrounding areas over 10,000 years ago.

“The site assessors were impressed by our plant identification signs and the two updated guidebooks for visitors coordinated by THC manager Cindy Frost. Also attention-getting was weed removal work regularly done by Karin Olson and Margie Torgeson over the past several years.”