Paper: Oregonian, The (Portland, OR)
Title: ESTACADA LOOKS BACK, PUSHES AHEAD IN ITS CENTENNIAL YEAR
Author: STEVEN AMICK - The Oregonian
Date: May 19, 2005
Section: SOUTH ZONER
Page: 01

Summary: A hundred years after it began as a small farming community, the city undergoes a growth spurt amid a burgeoning arts culture

  A century ago Estacada was a sleepy farming community with dreams of growth and glory.  Before it was incorporated on 
May 25, 1905, the city had about 300 residents.
 In this centennial year, with a population of 2,450, Estacada remains among the smallest of Clackamas County's smallest 
cities. Only Johnson City and tiny Barlow lag behind.

  However, after decades of a boom-and-bust economy, Estacada is a 
city that retains its dreams.  It has enough new housing under way to add more than 750 residents 
in the next two years.  City Manager Randy Ealy said modern Estacada has much to celebrate: 
several new businesses, a vibrant arts community, millions of dollars' worth of recently completed school construction and 
renovation projects and more civic improvements on the way.

"Of course everyone is really excited about the library,"; Ealy said, referring to plans for a $3.55 million library to be completed 
in summer 2006.  Estacada's centennial celebrations are taking several forms. At 7 p.m. Friday, in City Hall, Mayor Robert Austin will dedicate a 
commemorative quilt that was given to the city by the Skip-A-Week Quilt Club.

  From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday at City Hall, Estacada postmaster Wayne Maunu will hand-cancel stamps on postcards and letters. 
He'll use a date-bearing rubber stamp made specifically for the occasion.

  The festivities will continue June 25 with a street dance and banquet in front of City Hall. Austin will dedicate a new fountain 
there in honor of the city's first hundred years.

  Homeland to Clackamas

  Long before 1905, the place that is now called Estacada was part of the homelands of the Clackamas, a tribal people who lived in large 
villages of cedar-plank houses. The Clackamas hunted, gathered wild foods and fished in the Willamette, Clackamas and Sandy rivers.

  Nineteenth-century European and American settlers, including thousands of pioneers who journeyed west on the Oregon Trail, 
eventually displaced the Clackamas.  Reduced in numbers by measles and other diseases previously unknown 
to them, they were removed to the Grand Ronde Reservation along with the remnants of several other tribes.

  Beginning in the 1850s, donation land claims in the area in and near what was to become Estacada were taken up by George Currin, Hugh 
Currin, William H. Wade, John Zobrist and dozens of other settlers and their families.

  The community did not gain substantial population, however, until after the turn of the century. An electric railroad, built by the 
Oregon Water Power and Railway Co. to help build a hydroelectric dam at Cazadero, made its first run in 1904. That same year, Estacada was 
platted and an Estacada post office was established.

  The OWPR Co. -- a precursor to Portland General Electric Co. -- built a 47-room hotel. By offering weekenders a scenic roundtrip from 
Portland, three meals and a night's lodging -- all for $2.75 -- the company made Estacada a popular tourist attraction.

  In its heyday, the electric railway had six daily passenger runs between Portland and Estacada, as well as a night freight service 
that carried local farmers' grain, berries, prunes, hops and other produce to market.

  Began as farming community

  The railroad also was envisioned as a way to haul timber from the nearby Cascade Mountains.
  But large-scale logging did not come to the area until World War II, said Art Webber, a board member of the Estacada Area Historical 
Museum.  "Everybody thinks Estacada was always a timber town," Webber said, "but that's not true. It was a farming community."
  The post-war construction boom increased demand for lumber. Largely because of its proximity to the Mount Hood National Forest, Estacada 
became a prosperous mill town.

  By the 1950s and '60s, the city's growing population of timber workers and their families was increasingly joined by residents whose 
jobs were in stores, offices, restaurants and government.  The old hotel, where City Hall stands now, was torn down in the 
1930s. But in 1970, after Glen Park, the late timber magnate and big-game hunter, opened his Safari Club Restaurant & Lounge, the city 
again became a destination for Portlanders and other fun-seekers.

  Park's hot spot featured dining, dancing and drinking amid lifelike displays of stuffed lions, tigers, bears and other animals from his 
shooting expeditions to Alaska, Africa, India, Central America and other exotic places.

  The area's supply of readily available timber dwindled in the 1980s, and Estacada's economy slumped.

  The city's short-lived experiment with card-room gambling failed after the use of professional dealers and other illegal practices 
took hold. On March 18, 1989, the Safari Club, no longer owned by Park, and four other card rooms were hit in simultaneous raids by 
more than 180 sheriff's deputies and police officers.  The gambling ordinance was repealed and for the next decade, the 
city's economy flagged.

  Mike Park, a former Estacada mayor who owns the Estacada Industrial Campus, is one of many businesspeople who think the city is on the 
verge of another economic boom. The signs, they say, abound.  River-running enthusiasts, guides and outfitters are drawing 
increasing numbers of outdoor recreationists to the area.  Park's industrial park is gaining new tenants.  The Estacada Growers' Market is drawing visitors downtown each 
Saturday from May through mid-October.

  The Spiral Gallery, a co-op, sells works by local painters, sculptors and other artists and helps support a burgeoning cultural 
community that includes actors, dancers, writers and musicians.  Estacada's city manager credits the grit he sees in Estacada's 
people for the city's growth and vigor on the eve of its second hundred years.

  "There's a sense of optimism," Ealy said, "of confidence and resilience."

  Steven Amick: 503-294-5915; 

Author: STEVEN AMICK - The Oregonian
Section: SOUTH ZONER