Oaks Amusement Park

One of the oldest continually operating amusement parks in the country, opened in May 1905 along the Willamette River in Portland.

Oaks Amusement Park opened on May 30, 1905, when Fred Morris of the Oregon Water Power and Railway Company invested $100,000 to develop a forty-four-acre trolley park on the banks of the Willamette River in Portland's Sellwood neighborhood. Timed to coincide with the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, the park drew over 300,000 visitors in its first four-month season and is now one of the oldest continuously operating amusement parks in the United States. Its hand-carved Herschell-Spillman Noah's Ark carousel, dating to approximately 1920, is one of only about two hundred classic carousels remaining worldwide and the park's sole structure listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The skating rink, operating continuously since 1905, is believed to be the oldest in the nation, and a Mighty Wurlitzer organ with 1,242 pipes was installed there in 1955.

The park's long history has included its share of tragedy. One of its early attractions burned to the ground in a 1928 fire that destroyed the Shoot the Chutes ride. According to local historical accounts, a roller coaster malfunction killed a young boy, and the park's original owner, overwhelmed by the park's decline, took his own life. The Vanport Flood of 1948 submerged the grounds for thirty days, drowning a third of the oak trees on the bluff above and warping most of the rides. The Christmas Flood of 1964 immersed the park under eight feet of brown water. Through it all, the park endured, rebuilt, and reopened.

Staff members have reported seeing ghostly apparitions near the carousel just before closing time, describing what appear to be the figures of children playing around the antique ride after the last visitors have left for the evening. The sightings are typically brief, with the figures vanishing when approached or when the lights are turned off. The carousel's age, its hand-carved wooden animals, and the decades of childhood joy it has witnessed make it a natural candidate for the residual haunting theory that some paranormal researchers invoke -- the idea that intense emotional experiences can imprint on physical objects and replay under the right conditions.

The park's location along the flood-prone Willamette adds another layer to its atmosphere. The grounds have been underwater multiple times in the past century, and the devastation of each flood left the park temporarily transformed into a submerged ruin before being restored. The Bollinger family, who controlled the park for most of the twentieth century, eventually established the Oaks Park Association as a nonprofit in 1985, with Robert Bollinger donating five million dollars in assets to preserve the park's family-oriented character. Today, Oaks Park hosts the ScareGrounds PDX haunted attraction each Halloween season, drawing thousands of visitors who come for manufactured frights, though some who linger near the carousel after closing time may encounter something older and less easily explained.