One of Silverton;s murals depicting an old oak tree and the main street. Picture: Sarah Nicholson
Source: National Features
The Silver River runs through the heart of Silverton. Picture: Sarah Nicholson
Source: National Features
THIS is exactly how I imagined small-town America would look.
An organised grid of streets makes up the core of the settlement; baskets of blooms hang from light poles; there’s a diner on Water St with a row of chrome stools set along a Formica counter; and Palace Theatre on the corner of Oak St has an old-style marquee announcing latest releases.
Houses with white picket fences flank the tree-lined streets; swings dangle from front porches; the high school is surrounded by football fields and baseball diamonds; yellow buses wait for the school bell; and kids with homemade fishing poles paddle in the stream that gurgles through town.
I’m in Silverton, a village 70km south of Portland in Oregon’s rural heartland, and I feel like I’ve stepped into a Frank Capra movie when a farmer leaning against a red pick-up truck touches his hat as I walk past.
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Silverton is one of Oregon’s historic hamlets, established when the town square was built around an oak tree that marked a meeting point for native Americans using the trails through Oregon’s fertile Willamette Valley, and now it serves families that have been farming the same parcel of land for more than a century.
The spot has been on the tourist track since 1933, as gateway to the Silver Falls State Park, one of Oregon’s largest and most popular nature reserves. But now Silverton is as much an escape as the park.
Visitors browse the galleries and call on artists in their studios, sit on the verandas of the Water St restaurants to eat comfort food while looking over Silver River, and drive through the Gallon House Bridge, one of Marion County’s famed covered bridges christened during Prohibition.
They pause to look at the murals – there are 19 around the neighbourhood, celebrating everything from the Red Sox baseball team, formed in 1937 by men from the local timber mill, to Silverton Pet Parade. The most famous mural recalls the epic cross-country journey made by Bobbie – a Silverton farm dog that ran 12km into town every day to see his owners for a midday snack at their downtown cafe – after he was lost during a family trip to Indiana in 1923.
The owners searched for days after he was chased away by a pack of wild dogs, but they returned to Oregon when they couldn’t find him. They were overjoyed when Bobbie staggered back into Silverton months later after walking thousands of kilometres home.
Another favourite is Oregon Garden, a 32ha estate planted according to themes developed by horticulturalists to showcase plants grown for America’s garden centres.
“We have 20 individual gardens, each with something interesting happening every season, and while the conifer garden was the first, I think the rose garden is special because it has 400 roses belonging to 40 varieties, and I love the oak grove with the 200-year-old trees American Indians used to camp under when they were out hunting,” a guide explains on a tram ride around the grounds.
A shady plot beside the Oregon Garden is home to another attraction, the only Frank Lloyd Wright house in America’s Pacific Northwest that’s open to the public.
The Gordon House – designed in 1957 to stand on a farm in nearby Wilsonville, but moved to Silverton in 2001 when threatened with demolition - is an example of Wright’s Usonian style, developed in the 1930s to meet the need for affordable housing.
The house – basic by Wright’s standards – features an open floor plan, a cantilevered roof, fine cabinetry, and floor-to-ceiling windows and doors.
The Silverton Country Museum in Water St holds artefacts dating back to the 1850s, displayed in a house built in 1908, and travellers can take a self-guided tour of the historic hamlet by picking up a map at the Chamber of Commerce next door.
– The writer was a guest of Travel Oregon.
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- OREGON
– Getting there
Silverton is an hour’s drive from Portland. Go via the town of Woodburn for tax-free outlet shopping at Woodburn Company Stores. See woodburncompany stores.com
– Staying there
The Oregon Garden Resort beside the Oregon Garden on the edge of Silverton is a delightful lodge-style hotel featuring charming rooms with fireplaces, and the Garden View Restaurant serves regional cuisine using ingredients grown in the Willamette Valley.
– Doing there
Visitors can print the pamphlet from the town’s website to do a self-guided tour of the Silverton murals. See silverton.or.us
For the Oregon Garden and the Gordon House, see oregongarden.org
For Silver Falls State Park, see oregonstateparks.org
More: See traveloregon.com
History and charm in Oregon heartland
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