Progress in Oregon

Amber Anderson clears overgrown weeds from around a young native tree at the Willamette Mission State Park.

Last week we worked at the Willamette Mission State Park and the Luckiamute Natural Area, each for two days. Arriving at the work site required a ferry crossing over the Willamette River. At the 1,600-acre Willamette Mission State Park, we worked with OPRD Park Rangers Jeremy Aloha, Bonny Shepard and Natural Resources Specialist Andrea Berkley to identify specific locations at which native trees were planted in a restoration effort that took place two years prior. Native trees were planted alongside a trail on the boundary of a farm area that is leased by the OPRD. Invasives and overgrown weed populations outcompeted approximately 50 percent of the trees that were planted. Our job was to find all locations where trees were planted and clear a 1.5-foot radius around the tree, whether it was dead or alive.

For the trees that are still among the living, clearing weeds from this space will help the trees to attain a stronger hold and eventually grow to parallel the mature trees just on the other side of the trail. In the distance you can see a towering 276-year-old black cottonwood tree, the nation’s oldest, its growth having begun circa 1735. It is an example of what the natural area would have looked like before much of the area was turned to farmland.

Sarah Gadomski carries red dogwood segments for installing in the Willamette Mission State Park while Alyssa Pun plants the segments in the ground.

The state park itself is on the National Register of Historic Places. It is the former site of the Willamette Mission, established in 1834 by Reverend Jason Lee. At the mission’s height, buildings included a blacksmith shop, granary, hospital, school and dining hall in addition to the mission house and chapel. In a flood in 1861, the mission was significantly damaged. Today, the Willamette Mission has been rebuilt as a ghost structure with metal beams replicating where the mission once stood.

After clearing weeds from a radius around all the native trees that were previously installed, we planted new trees at spots where the last restoration effort didn’t go quite as planned. New trees that we planted included black cottonwood, dogwood and a type of willow. The latter two trees, clearly species that are very much interested in survival, were much easier to plant. We simply lopped two-to-four-foot sections of limbs from trees that were already established and then essentially stuck these severed branches straight into the ground. Given time, water and ample nutrients, roots will eventually sprout from the subterranean segments of the limbs.

Work was carried out under heavy fog, visibility in the morning usually not exceeding about 150 feet. Equipped with our bright yellow rain gear bottoms so as to prevent dew from soaking our NCCC-issued kakis, we planted over 100 trees this week at the Willamette Mission.