Oregon Trail landmarks face closure

Interpretive center and two other sites might fall victim to economy

By Matthew Graham

The Clackamas Review, Mar 4, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Matthew Graham / Oregon City News

The End of the Oregon Trail Interprative Center will close in March without significant outside financial help.

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Oregon City’s historic museums will be closing this month due to dwindling funds, as the Clackamas Heritage Partners try to scrape together new funding sources to get the doors open again as soon as possible.

Operations for the End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, Museum of the Oregon Territory and Stevens Crawford House will be suspended next week after a vote by the board of the Heritage Partners.

David Porter, executive director of the Heritage Partners, said that while visits to the museums were steady, revenue has declined.

“Interestingly the number of small donations increased (this year), but corporate sponsorships and these kind of things and funding from philanthropic organizations definitely went down,” he said. He said people were spending less at the gift store, and the average ticket price had declined. Ticket prices didn’t change, but Porter said whereas in the past a group might have consisted of grandparents, parents and children, now it was the grandparents bringing all the grandchildren, so the revenue was skewed toward the reduced children’s ticket price.

“Attendance in 2008 was almost equal to 2007 and up from 2006, but per visitor revenues declined,” the Heritage Partners said in a press release.

“We have great relationships with many of the state institutions and county institutions and we are talking to the tourism development council about possible help,” Porter said. “The city actually is the owner of the Oregon Trail site, so we’re talking to the city. Of course they have a tight financial situation themselves.”

Porter said visitor information at the Interpretive Center has grant funding and will continue, as will special functions in the Tumwater Room at the Museum of the Oregon Territory.

The museums serve 10,000 students annually and attract tens of thousands of visitors, according to the release. While it has been debt-free since 2007, the CHP and its facilities primarily rely on grants, contributions and earned revenue rather than public funds. And those losses will have a large impact.

“We actually have visitations from all over the state, all over the United States and internationally, about 5 percent of our visitors are foreign, because Oregon City is the western terminus of the Oregon trail,” Porter said. “Impact on schools is going to be substantial. We have hundreds of school groups a year. We have been calling and canceling school field trips starting next week. That’s very hard to see when we know schools are going through their own struggles. This is Oregon’s 150th birthday, it’s hard to see these facilities in Oregon City that tell the stories about the first 150 years” not be open for that.

“It’s important to us that we are still looking for solutions,” Porter said. “We haven’t given up hope.”