Sean C. Morgan
Nineteen students from Central Linn High School spent last week working and learning at the new South Santiam Outdoor Education Center.
The center is owned and operated by Kim Powers, owner and operator of the Mountain House Restaurant. It is an effort to bring more people into the area, educating them in the rich history surrounding it.
Last week’s program included students who had previously visited with Siletz Indian high school students on an educational tour of the area. The second part of the program includes a variety of work and educational opportunities.
Siletz Indians will spend this week working at Longbow Organizational Camp and meet members of the Civilian Conservation Corps, which helped build much of the forest infrastructure during the Great Depression. The week culminates in a CCC reunion.
Central Linn students spent Thursday with Forest Service botanist Alice Smith collecting camas seeds at the camas prairie off Moose Creek Road by Triple T Studs.
Siletz and Grand Ronde Indians helped restore the traditional camas prairie in 1996 and use it to grow camas bulbs, what was a staple in the diet of local Indians.
The first group of Central Linn students included 10 members. They brought more for the second part of the project, the work experience, including two from Central Linn’s summer school program.
The students are part of Central Linn’s forestaton and natural resources restoration program, Powers said. Later Thursday, they went to Gordon Meadow to pull up young trees and preserve the meadow. Wedneday, they visited the Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance Department to learn and become certified in CPR.
A career fair Thursday night exposed the students to many professions, many forestry-related. Among those meeting the students were the U.S. Forest Service, Cascade Timber Consulting, Oregon State Police, South Santiam Watershed Council and John’s Automotive.
Friday, “we are doing some role play” and practicing jobs, Powers said. Students assumed the roles of high school graduates, college graduates, low-skilled workers and management to simulate a real work environment and teach real world lessons.
Some of the students with an interest in restaurants helped out in the restaurant as well for work experience, Powers said. One girl became interested in paramedics while learning CPR.
Following that, they went to Fish Lake to tour the forest ranger site there.
The object of the program is to show students how what they learn in the classroom applies to the real world and connect to it, Powers said. This is the second year Powers has done the program.
Next year, Powers plans more in her effort to bring area history alive. She is working with a national classic automobile club to recreate the first transcontinental automobile race on its 100th anniversary. That race came through Sweet Home in 1905 on its way from New York to Portland. It took 46 days, and next year’s recreation of the event will also. The reenactment will end at a vintage car race at Portland International Raceway.
Powers is working Joanne West of the Sweet Home Ranger District, Linn County Tourism Coalition and area chambers of commerce.
The program will include a replica of the old toll gate for the South Santiam Wagon Road, used for the race, and the center will have a curved dash automobile on hand. The two cars in the race were two Oldsmobile curved dash cars from about 1903.
“We have a passion just for history and making fun things for families to get out and do,” Powers said. Bringing students out to experience hands-on learning beats just reading a textbook.”
For information about Powers’ programs, persons may call her at 367-3074.