A Tualatin, Oregon Ice Age Foundation has been established to provide educational and economic opportunities for area residents, students, businesses and visitors. Local interest in ancient ice-age animals started in the 1970s when a Portland State University college student dug up half of a mastodon skeleton in Tualatin, which now is on display at the Tualatin Library along with several other ancient animal bones from such as mammoths, giant sloth, and bison.
In 2018 a Foundation board was created to guide the foundation and raise funds for the center. The board includes Portland State University Geology Professor Emeritus Scott Burns as President; Yvonne Addington, Tualatin Historical Society; Linda Moholt, Executive Director of Tualatin Chamber of Commerce; Paul Hennon, retired Tualatin Parks Director; Jerianne Thompson, Tualatin Librarian; and Rick and Sylvia Thompson of the Ice Age Floods Institute, Lower Columbia chapter.
Prior to the Foundation being established, an Ice Age Heritage Tourism Plan, funded by Washington County Visitor’s Association, which contained recommendations for further development by an international consultant, Bill Baker, owner of Total Destination Management. Baker recommended a new Ice Age Interpretive Center to house more of the collections and educate residents and visitors. According to Baker, “the Tualatin area was front and center for one of the greatest natural events of the last ice advance: a series of colossal floods that roared down the Columbia Gorge and pooled in the Tualatin and Willamette Valleys between 18,000 and 15,000 years ago. The entire Tualatin area landscape was shaped by those floods.” Baker saw important economic development, jobs and educational opportunities and recommended a new Tualatin Ice Age Foundation to implement opportunities and raise funds for a Tualatin Ice Age Interpretive Center.
Portland State University, the University of Oregon and the Ice Age Floods Institute, Lower Columbia chapter have, for several years, been assisting the Tualatin Historical Society in seeking the prehistory of Tualatin. The National Park Service has identified Tualatin as a key Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail hub. The City has continued their efforts to display their ice age prehistory by the development of the Tualatin River Greeway Trail and Fred Bruning, chief executive for Center Cal shopping centers, donating to the public, a $220,000 bronze statue of the Tualatin Mastodon. To date, many ancient animal bones and huge multi-ton erratics carried here by roaring floods have been found. Private donations of bones continue to be offered as we seek funding for this unusual historical project of building our interpretive center.
Tualatin invites you to come see the displays and exhibits we already have at the library, Tualatin Heritage Center, in our parks and walkways and in the future in our Ice Age Interpretitive Center. For more information on Tualatin’s ice age history go to: https://tualatinchamber.com/visitor/ice-age/.