Willamette Falls Heritage Foundation - Partners, stewards and advocates of the culture and heritage at Willamette Falls

LockFest2010

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 22:06:42 -0600

Lock Fest 2010
May 15

What: More than a thousand visitors enjoyed a gorgeous sunny day at our family-friendly history festival, celebrating the 2010 reopening of 137-year-old Willamette Falls Navigation Canal and Locks and the 95th year of Corps of Engineers stewardship and operations of the canal. The crowd was particularly interested in the two commercial cargoes that locked through: 150 tons of scrap steel from Schnitzer Steel, in Portland, heading for a recycling center/rolling mill in McMinnville; and a barge of sand. (See photo)

Support WFHF with your purchase of Willamette Falls Heritage Foundation's gift items for history and art lovers.

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 11:51:49 -0600

The holiday season, a birthday or anytime is a great time to share heritage projects developed and offered by the Willamette Falls Heritage Foundation.

Our oral history DVDs profile seventeen workers from the Crown Zellerbach paper mill in West Linn. Their grim, funny and heart-warming stories fill both documentaries:

"Grindstones, Boomsticks, Tattletales and Nips: the stories and the people of Crown Zellerbach International, West Linn Division--1928-1986" (2 hrs.), and,

"Friends, Fish and $1.09 an Hour." (1 hr.)

Posters featuring the art of Oregon's own Daniel Robinson celebrate and raise funding for each year's Lock Fest.

Willamette Falls History Series on DVD

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 10:24:58 -0600

Now available: "Friends, Fish and $1.09 an Hour"

This moving companion piece to our 2006 documentary movie on millwork during the 60-year run of Crown Zellerbach International, West Linn Division, finishes the stories begun by 17 career mill employees in "Grindstones, Boomsticks, Tattletales and Nips--the people and the stories of Crown Zellerbach..."

No Northwest mill family's library is complete without this poignant record of workers and their jobs at the end of the Industrial age.

Our first Falls History DVD

In Their Own Words - Oral Histories of pulp and papermaking in West Linn, Oregon

History of the Mills at Willamette Falls

Thu, 05 Oct 2006 13:06:33 -0500

Thanks to the Kinsman Foundation, we were able to produce a second oral history DVD on mill work at Crown Zellerbach, West Linn, from 1928-1986. "Friends, Fish, and $1.09 an Hour" contains 'the rest of the stories' of mill work, including fish stories, Christmas parties and reminiscences about the West Linn Inn. Both documentaries are in Oregon libraries and have aired on cable access television and the Oregon Public Broadcasting public affairs channel.

Locks Funding Update

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 15:17:48 -0500

The Oregon Transportation Commission approved a $418,000 Oregon Department of Transportation grant to maintain and operate Willamette Falls locks and canal five days a week during the 2006 and 2007 boating seasons.

$100,000 of the grant, which was from Federal transportation enhancement funds dedicated to historic transportation facilities, came from public and private interests who participated in the Locks Funding Task Force facilitated by Oregon Solutions and convened by former Sen. Verne Duncan.
An agreement for locks preservation, maintenance, operations and funding sources were in place before October 1, 2007. Lock Fest on September 22, 2007 featured the signing ceremony for that final agreement.

Welcome to the web home of the Willamette Falls Heritage Foundation

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 19:06:06 -0600

Willamette Falls is a large, horseshoe-shaped basalt cascade that divides the upper and lower reaches of the Willamette River. which is an American Heritage River. The falls lie 14 miles upriver from Portland by car and more than 20 river-miles. They were the heart of pioneering industry in the Oregon Territory.