South of Portland and on the east side of the Willamette River lies Oregon City, which is the end of the Oregon Trail. Their interpretive center was closed for lack of funding, but we could still read about some of the men and women who worked to improve the trail enough that immigrants no longer needed to winter over there. We also visited John McGloughlin's white house a few blocks away on the banks of the Willamette in Oregon City. He was the chief factor (agent) for the Hudson's Bay Company. In many respects he was the father of Oregon Territory. He helped immigrants in many ways with promoting the territory, making improvements like mills, nursing the sick, and even loaning money to those who needed it. Eventually he became a United States citizen. It is impressive how much good can be done by those who seek to help others.
In McMinnville, Oregon, is the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, last resting place of the amazing eight engine "Spruce Goose" (actually mostly birch), largest aircraft (boat-plane) ever built. It was built in 1946 and 1947 for the purpose of carrying troops and equipment over long distances. It was a prototype, and only flew once for a few seconds by Howard Hughes himself. It was disassembled into about 36 pieces and brought by barge and truck to McMinnville's museum for reassembly. It has the largest wingspan ever, but a few aircraft have been slightly longer. BJ was also impressed with how large it is. Howard Hughes got the money for his enterprises from his father who bought the modern oil drill bit patent for $150 and then improved it slightly and got rich selling drill bits. This wonderful museum also had Migs, Phantoms, helicopters, trainers, a Wright flyer, and many many other aircraft. Did you know that the original Wright flyer was sitting on a dune at the end of the day when a gust of wind tipped it and cracked it up beyond repair? Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/moody75/21497558/
Over on the Space Museum side we saw Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo craft and rockets. I most enjoyed the comparison of the Redstone, Atlas, Titan II (see image), and Apollo rockets. They had actual rockets and engines of all but the Apollo which only had one and not all the engines in configuration. One of the X-15 pilots was actually the first man to fly into space twice, long before Gus Grissom's first space flight. I learned that Niel Armstrong, first man on the moon was also an X-15 pilot and flew into space in it as well. The part that most made me think was the area that talked about the four pioneers of space flight, Tsilikovsky, Oberan, Goddard, and Von Braun. Each played a crucial role in making it happen. It was fun to learn that Von Braun had been arrested for wanting to go to the moon more than defeating the allies during the War. He certainly was fascinated with and bent his whole life toward achieving that goal. Talented people can accomplish much good by working with others. Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9027208@N03/3164923317/
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