1820s-era botanist David Douglas is played by Jerry Herrmann (from left), historian Larry McIntyre, youth interpreter Matthew Riegg with information panels and community activist Walt Fitch.
1820s-era botanist David Douglas is played by Jerry Herrmann (from left), historian Larry McIntyre, youth interpreter Matthew Riegg with information panels and community activist Walt Fitch.
The word for waterfall (tumwata or tumchuck) in Chinook Jargon, the trade language of Native peoples in this area, is based on the term "tumtum," or heartbeat. A tumtum is something's spirit or soul; to the local Indians, the waterfall was the tumtum of the river.
Oregon City School District hosted some incredible students at a middle school called Tumwata on the shoulders of Newell Creek Canyon, which itself hosted Native peoples and later supported the coming and settlement of pioneers.
That area, which some think of as 60-acre Rossman’s Landfill, in fact encompassed nearly 1,000 acres from the planks of Holcomb Hill all the way to and through Clackamette Cove and Clackamette Park. Native peoples of many family and tribal settlements lived there.
The challenge of students at Tumwata was to learn about the early uses of the land, look at the potential for a major development at Abernethy Green and make recommendations in teams of five or six students.
Under the leadership of gifted teacher Evan Howells and Vice Principal Stephanie Phelps, students looked at pioneer settlement and cultural history and of course what kind of improvements could celebrate those things and provide an economic benefit to our region.
Their efforts ultimately led to over 70 well-thought-out exhibits that the students themselves could graciously and effectively interpret to over 300 guests on Jan. 26.
A number of guest presenters with cultural history, design backgrounds and other professions donated their time weeks in advance to give students facts and information they could then react to and formulate their individual team ideas.
I presented the case of David Douglas, the international botanist from Scotland, who was in the area in the 1820s. He specifically reviewed this huge land area at the confluence of the Clackamas and Willamette rivers and its associations with nearby Willamette Falls.
We also discussed the coming of the earliest pioneer wagon trains that included Hiram Strait, the Casons and the Hunsingers who pioneered the land that we call Abernethy Green. The Cason family went on to have a major impact on the founding of a similar floodplain in what we know today as Gladstone.
Through all of this, the students and their incredible teachers were the most attentive group I have witnessed in decades. Abernethy Green, as we now know, is in part the location of Rossman’s Landfill, which was built between 1970-93. Students became proficient at understanding impacts of an unlined landfill, the first of its kind in the Oregon Country. They began to realize that ideas for a new major project on that landfill would have to address the impacts of a first-generation landfill on the 1,000 acres from Holcomb Hill to the confluence of the Clackamas and Willamette rivers.
It was amazing how the students addressed the impacts through creative processes including resculpting the land and, where possible, reestablishing the feeling and aspects of historic Abernethy Green. They, of course, recognized that economic purposes must be sought and developed on the landfill to pay for the huge changes that would occur there.
Everyone was impressed with Tumwata students. We transited their exhibits and interacted with focused and attentive young people doing their very best to present their dreams and projects. This generation is the generation that must work with the impacts of our modern society, correct them where they can, and ultimately lead us to a better way of doing things in our immediate future.
Congratulations to the Oregon City School District and its students, affiliates and staff of Tumwata. The city of Oregon City’s involvement also made a big difference as students learned of the challenges and opportunities of good land-use planning. David Douglas would have been measurably pleased, had he been alive, to see all of this.
Jerry Herrmann is president of the Rivers of Life Center, a nonprofit organization that enlists at-risk youth in tourism and environmental cleanup activities throughout the Willamette Valley.
