| STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE
INTRODUCTION
Constructed in 1959, the Paul Bunyan statue in Portland’s Kenton neighborhood owes its existence to Oregon’s centennial celebrations. Centennial-themed festivals, ceremonies, parades, balls, exhibits, rodeos, and jamborees filled the event schedules of even the smallest towns in Oregon throughout the centennial year, which began on February 14th, 1959. The anchor event for the state’s birthday was the Oregon Centennial Exposition and International Trade Fair, held in north Portland for 100 days between June 10th and September 17th. North Portland’s Kenton neighborhood, celebrating its proximity to the event site, the neighborhood’s industrial heritage, and Oregon’s timber industry, erected a 31-foot-tall statue of the famed, over-sized lumberjack to welcome Exposition visitors. The Paul Bunyan Statue is eligible for listing in the National Register for state-wide significance under Criterion C in the area of architecture as a highly evocative and well-crafted example of roadside architecture in Oregon. Paul Bunyan was among many favorite characters of exaggerated size that cropped up along America’s roads between the 1930s and the 1960s, before freeways and zoning codes limited the popularity of such constructions. The largest of the few purpose-built Paul Bunyans in the state, Kenton’s Paul Bunyan stands alone as an urban marker and a community legacy. Regional transportation authority, TriMet, moved the statue 59 feet in 2002; for this reason the property is also being nominated under Criterion Consideration B for moved properties. It is eligible at the statewide level of significance.
ROADSIDE ARCHITECTURE
The construction of Interstate 5 through Kenton in the early 1960s marked the end of Kenton’s unique position as a gateway neighborhood for motoring travelers. It was also the beginning of the end of the era of roadside attractions, whose history is inextricably linked to that of the automobile. Roadside Architecture is not a style; neither does it describe a specific type of building or structure. The term refers to those buildings, structures, and objects built or transformed to draw the attention of passing motorists and encourage them to patronize a particular business. While some resources may conform to a recognized architectural style, more often the unique nature of these highway attractions and the eclectic application of style and materials defy easy classification. What is common to all of these resources is their orientation toward, and easy access to and from, the highways and the use of signage and design to catch the attention of travelers. Most buildings were only one story in height and often spread horizontally to accommodate the maximum number of parking spaces. In addition to buildings, roadside architecture also includes structures and objects constructed as tourist attractions. Sometimes destinations themselves, but also used to draw patrons to existing businesses, this group of resources includes colossal dinosaurs, eclectic zoos, and theme parks among many other diversions. These resources developed in the early-twentieth century in response to an economic opportunity provided by relatively inexpensive commercial land along the nation’s highways and the large number of potential customers the roads carried. As competition increased, individual business owners sought to differentiate their enterprise from similar services with eye-catching signs, building design, and unique attractions. As remnants of the nation’s transition to an auto-centric society, these resources stand as important reminders of the sweeping cultural and economic changes of the early- and mid-twentieth century.
When introduced in the late-nineteenth century the automobile was no more than a “tinker’s toy.” Like the rest of the nation, automobile ownership and the construction of roads skyrocketed in Oregon during the 1910s and 1920s. By 1917 there was one car or truck for every thirteen residents in Multnomah County. Eight years later the number had risen to one for every five, and by 1929 one in every 3.7 individuals owned an automobile. Automobile ownership continued to increase through the Depression as well. The growing number of cars and trucks required the rapid expansion of the state’s road system. In 1914 the state had 25 miles of paved road and 232 miles of planked road out of a total of 37,000 miles. To upgrade the roads, the national and state governments levied new taxes and began a construction campaign. In 1916 the federal Congress passed its first road-funding measure, and in 1919 Oregon passed its first gas tax to pay for road construction. In 1921 the state tax was doubled, and then raised again in 1923. By 1940 the state boasted 2,000 miles of paved road and a burgeoning number of auto-related businesses, such as gas stations and other roadside services.
The increase in automobile use and miles of road nationally and in Oregon quickly transformed both cities and the countryside in the early-twentieth century as services and attractions sprang up along the highways. Early “auto Gypsies” slept along the side of the road and often depended on local town eateries and service stations for food and gas. Shrewd local entrepreneurs quickly realized that the relatively cheap real estate along the nation’s growing highway system offered a unique opportunity to sell goods and services to a rapidly increasing number of travelers. The first roadside enterprises focused on offering essential services including gas, food, and lodging. Initially unsure of the economic potential of their endeavors, business owners did not build new buildings. Instead many adapted existing structures such as houses, barns, and outbuildings, or built simple shelters and shacks to house their businesses. Other early entrepreneurs simply sold their products along the road from their vehicles or a tent. As auto travel exploded so did the number of businesses, creating a competitive commercial environment. In order to attract the attention of motorists speeding by their storefront and to differentiate themselves from similar businesses, entrepreneurs created large and often brightly painted and lit signs or covered their buildings in metal “snipe” signs advertising national brands.
The backlash to these garish ad-hoc roadside businesses began immediately. Campaigns to eradicate roadside blight in the early-twentieth century were carried out by middle- and upper-class reformers who drew on the aesthetics and ideals of the City Beautiful Movement. Between the 1920s and 1950s, educator and Vasser College graduate Elizabeth Boyd Lawton led the roadside reform movement, helping redirect the energies of the City Beautiful Movement from the city to the country. Lawton founded the National Committee for the Restriction of Outdoor Advertising in 1923. With help from several City Beautiful leaders, Lawton built her organization into a national institution. The group’s focus expanded later as it began to target not only billboards, but also the expanding commercial enterprises that the group felt negatively impacted the aesthetic charms of the countryside. The group’s new name reflected its widening efforts: National Council for the Protection of Roadside Beauty. While reformers were not necessarily against commercial endeavors, these individuals felt that roadside commercial development threatened their ability to escape the nation’s urban centers and to visit “landscapes associated with a simpler and morally edifying preindustrial past.” Recognizing the needs of motorists and wishing to still travel along the highways themselves, reformers instead focused on encouraging what they felt was appropriate development. In 1927 Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the Adolf Gobel Company (a New Your manufacturer of hot dogs and other meat products), the American Civic Association, and the Art Center of New York sponsored a series of national design contests for roadside stands and gas stations. The sponsors awarded prizes for both existing enterprises and designs for new buildings. Judges favored picturesque establishments deemed neat and orderly and free of garish signs. The first prize winner of the design contest was Henry Ives Cobb, Jr., who designed a “pitched-gable, wood-cottage refreshment stand with a cozy bay window, a large veranda, and two simple hanging signs.” Second place was awarded to Malcolm Cameron who made use of “Spanish mission architecture” in his plan. The nostalgic designs favored by the reformers would later be incorporated into motels and other establishments hoping to capitalize on tourists’ romantic notions of travel.
To the consternation of many reformers, roadside entrepreneurs continued to house their businesses in inexpensive buildings. By the 1920s the economic viability of roadside commerce was obvious and some began to invest in purpose-built buildings. Early suppliers of inexpensive and adaptable roadside shelters were George and Arthur Trachete who turned their tinsmith and furnace repair shop into a supplier of prefabricated buildings. Early in their business the brothers supplied modern, efficient, and easily-to-assemble garages. Expanding their enterprise, the brothers began offering buildings in three types A, B, and C, referring to the length and width of the structural support. Small business owners turned the economical buildings into drive-ins, shoe-repair shops, auto garages, grocery stores, barber shops, and more. By the 1930s and 1940s customers could choose from a number of trim pieces that expressed a variety of styles, or order a custom building. Highly successful, Trachte Company was only one of many manufacturers offering pre-fabricated convenience for the growing number of roadside businesses.
Just as popular as inexpensive prefabricated buildings were one-of-a-kind creations and stylized corporate buildings designed to emphasize services or products sold or encourage customer loyalty. The rise of these more extravagant and intentional creations marked the maturation of roadside architecture into a recognizable, yet eclectic type of construction. Such designs allowed travelers to quickly identify a business from the fast-moving highway. Beginning in the 1920s some businesses constructed stores that were as much a spectacle as a functional building. In 1926, the owner of a California lemonade stand housed his business in a huge lemon to advertise to passing motorists. In the 1930s Shell Gasoline began constructing stations in the shape of giant shells to differentiate the chain from other similar businesses. Drawing on the aesthetic of the National Council for the Protection of Roadside Beauty, Standard Oil of California undertook a campaign to beautify its stations by developing a uniform design in the late 1920s. The company created a model station consisting of a gable-roofed station house with large glass windows, overhanging canopy, and well-landscaped grounds. The trend of branding a particular company through the appearance of retail locations continued well after the postwar period. The Trachete brothers developed a design for Kentucky Fried Chicken that was used by the chain between 1968 and 1975.
Other business owners sought to attract customers by capitalizing on traveler’s preconceptions of their region, often reinterpreting some aspect of local history, regional identity, or folklore for passing tourists. For instance, in the U.S., Southwest “tourist cabins” featured stucco and false beams to suggest the architecture of Pueblos or Spanish Missions. In the south, these same buildings used a tropical or old-south theme. The use of regional icons was particularly important in the Midwest and West where popular legends such as Paul Bunyan or Native American culture were crafted into colossal commercial images to draw paying customers attracted to the storybook legends hawked by local businesses. Through the postwar period, roadside castles, themed diners and towns, and other “must-see” attractions proliferated. Because of the general lack of local building codes and zoning ordinances in the early-twentieth century, owners were rarely limited by anything but their imagination. In Oregon, the state’s timber industry loomed large as both a source of economic vitality and regional identity, and later would serve as an inspiration for ad-hoc roadside creations in the postwar period.
In addition to the establishments that sold gas, food, and lodging, roadside attractions such as zoos, museums, curiosity shops, amusement parks, and other ventures popped up along the highways. These ventures were sometimes destinations themselves or attractions intended to bring customers to another business, such as a gas station. John Margolies, author of Fun Along the Road: American Tourist Attractions notes that “because roadside attractions were hardly a necessity, the people who built them had to scream all the louder to attract customers.” Many of these businesses used billboards to lure customers, perhaps most notably Wall Drug, which placed signs hundreds of miles from the store. Others relied on extravagant or outrageous architecture such as huge sculptures of animals, dinosaurs, food items, or historic and mythical characters. Most were creations made by the local community or a sole proprietor, and the degree of craftsmanship varied greatly from attraction to attraction. In general these creations were huge, intended to first catch the attention of passing motorists and then to impress tourists by their size. Almost all were colorfully painted. These wayside oddities proved so popular that in the 1960s and 1970s International Fiberglass, a California company, specialized in creating towering roadside statues depicting loggers, cowboys, Native Americans, “country bumpkins,” and muffler salesmen. The company created the statues for a wide variety of businesses around the nation, and designers based them all on the company’s first project: a Paul Bunyan. The standard model was about 20 feet tall. The company shaped the statues’ arms to hold a number of objects, from mufflers to picks and axes. Other businesses such as Creative Displays in Sparta, Wisconsin, manufactured fiberglass cows and steers during the same time. In 1973 International Fiberglas stopped producing the statues to focus on other aspects of the company’s business.
Roadside architecture in all its various forms flourished through the early 1970s. At that time, a growing emphasis on comprehensive planning and controlling the negative effects of urban sprawl began to limit how entrepreneurs could advertise their businesses. Advocates of these new measures echoed many of the same sentiments expressed by the National Council for the Protection of Roadside Beauty. Changing aesthetics also contributed to the construction of less garish buildings and more subdued signage and refined design seen in malls, shopping centers, and office courts.
ROADSIDE ARCHITECTURE IN OREGON
In Oregon many businesses, and sometimes inspired individuals, created roadside attractions for commerce and amusement. While many of these resources no longer exist or are altered due to the changing nature of the State’s cities and downtowns, many still survive. An exhaustive inventory of these resources does not exist and none are currently listed in the National Register; however, Harriet Baskas’ book Oregon Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff describes many of the attractions travelers still can find around the state. In Portland a circa-1950 jug-shaped building sits at 7417 Northeast Sandy Boulevard. Although the builder is unknown, the shape no doubt was a ploy to attract passers-by. In Port Orford, Ernie Nelson opened the roadside attraction Jurassic Park in 1953 to feature his two home-made dinosaur creations. By the time Nelson died in 1999 he had created twenty-three sculptures, some over 40 feet tall, and charged admission to the garden. As was true in the rest of the nation, Oregon businesses used the roadside to attract customers. A giant candle stands along Highway 30 in Sacapoose as an advertisement and publicity stunt for a local-candle making company. Originally constructed in 1971, the candle was made of 45,000 pounds of Wax poured into a silo, and was for a time listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “World’s Largest Candle.” The candle now has a neon “flame.” In Portland, several examples of exaggerated and eye-catching architecture dot the city. In the Hollywood district, the Stiegerwald Dairy was adorned with a giant milk bottle and the Pagoda Restaurant featured an oversize polychrome pagoda.
Residents also created these larger-than-life creations to mark events, or honor local fraternal groups and traditions. Damascus celebrated the 1959 Oregon Centennial with a fair and the creation of the giant “Centennial Peace Candle,” which was 21 feet tall, weighed 4 tons, and measured 3 feet across. The form for the candle was locally made out of chicken wire and welded-together pieces of cut-up oil drums. Local children collected 20 tons of colored candle wax to fill it. Lit on June 14, 1959, the candle burned at the fair for one hundred days. In 1962 the City placed a steel replica of the candle in Damascus’ downtown park. In 1973 the Barber-Shop Harmony Society held its international convention and championships in Portland, an event marked by the construction of World’s Largest Barber Pole – measuring 70 feet and toped with a 2-foot-tall Styrofoam Ball. The giant barber pole is now in Forest Grove Oregon, where the Northwest Barbershop Ballad Contest is held annually.
THE LEGEND OF PAUL BUNYAN
Given the reliance of the northwest economy on timber production, it is not surprising that the region adopted the legend of Paul Bunyan. The image of Paul Bunyan and the Big Blue Ox would find its way into local legends, books, art, and roadside attractions. The stories are filled with amazing feats of strength, ingenious solutions, and backwoods humor. Through their adventures Paul and Babe create the Great Lakes and many other natural features, cut entire swaths of lumber in mere days, and invent the tools and practices of the logging industry. Often inventive story tellers created these tales or changed yarns to fit their experience or the audience’s expectations. The legend finds its origin in the Great Lakes region in the mid- late-nineteenth century among working loggers. Some attribute the character to a French Canadian logger, others insist that the stories have an American origin, and some scholars suppose that the story is based on several people or is entirely invented. Whether the legend is based on an actual person, is a composite of many historic characters, or is entirely fiction is still debated; however, it is clear that Paul Bunyan stories were never widespread until they appeared in print. In 1951 Folklorist Rodney C. Loehr with the Forest Products History Foundation noted in The Journal of American Folklore that in many of the interviews he conducted that “many old lumber-jacks aver that they never heard Bunyan tales in the old time camps,” while others “say that they did hear stories in the logging camps.” Loehr concludes that “it seems likely that Paul Bunyan was a true folk creation and that his exploits were related in some camps before he appeared in print.” The author attributes the uneven distribution of Bunyan tales to geographic isolation of lumber camps across the nation, high turnover among lumberjacks, and other competing stories.
Among those lumberjacks who did know of Paul Bunyan, the stories offered entertainment as well as a way to cope with the harsh and often deadly working conditions in the logging camps through self-deprecating humor. Folklorist Dan G. Hoffman noted in Western Folklore that while lumberjack ballads focused on real-life tragedy, the Bunyan stories asked the listener to suspend disbelief and marvel at Paul’s “superhuman size and strength [and] his clever solutions [that] are not literally for the common run of men.” For instance, the Ballad “The Jam at Gerry’s Rocks” describes the death of six young men while clearing a log jam in a river. In contrast, when Paul Bunyan is confronted with a monumental jam “two hundred feet high” he easily solves the problem. Paul places his giant ox in the river, and then standing on the bank shoots his ox with a 303 Savage Rifle. According to the story, “The ox thought it was flies” and began switching its tail in a circular motion which drew the water up the river pulling the log jam with it. When Paul took the ox out of the river, the water and logs flowed back downstream, clearing the jam.” As Hoffman notes, the story makes light of a real-life deadly situation, allowing “the conquest of fear of death.” Paul also was more adept at dealing with the every-day inconveniences of logging life such as monstrous mosquitoes, difficult weather, and rough terrain. In every story, the natural nemesis is made huge, a fit conquest for the giant of the North Woods who easily overcomes the adversity.
Bunyan tales did not become widespread in American popular culture until the early-twentieth century when a number of widely-published authors and advertising executives re-envisioned the stories for a widening audience. In 1910 marketer W.B. Laughead used the Paul Bunyan tales he heard working in the logging camps of Minnesota to create an advertising campaign for the Red River Logging Company. Other authors published stories previously, but the Red River Company advertising campaign made the tales popular. The company used the Bunyan legends to build support for its expansion west in search of lumber to sell to its growing market in the northeast. In an interview with Laughead, folklorist W. H. Hutchinson notes that although Laughead did not create the Paul Bunyan stories, he did invent many of the characters and stories now part of Paul Bunyan lore. Laughead’s first booklet, Introducing Mr. Paul Bunyan of Westwood California, included some of the earliest drawings of Paul and the Blue Ox, which he named Babe, as well as a number of characters he created including Johnny Inkslinger, Chris Crosshaul, Shot Gunderson, Sourdough Sam, Brimstone Bill, and Big Ole. Laughead’s stories were “larded with chucks of advertising for Red River and garnished with photographs of the California timberlands,” and featured California landmarks such as Mt. Lassen, which Laughead called “Paul Bunyan’s Bean Pot.” Although not initially successful because Paul Bunyan stories were not widely known, the Red River Company’s persistence through 1944 made Paul Bunyan a popular folklore character nationally, and many other authors and novice story tellers elaborated on these tales or created their own. Other’s involved in the popularization of Bunyan tales included Esther Shephard, Glen Rounds, and Harold Felton, among others, who each published collections of stories based on the renditions of other authors or oral histories in 1924, 1936, 1947, respectively.
Hoffman notes that as stories became more popular, they lost much of their authenticity. In the popularized stories authors replaced the jargon of lumberjacks with language meant for the general public. Paul Bunyan’s character changed too as he became “a miner, a railroader, and oil driller, a rancher, a farmer a construction boss, or an entrepreneur in other industries” to increase his appeal to other parts of the nation. Writers also altered or removed the central pieces of Bunyan stories, logging humor references to camp life, to appeal to urban audiences. According to Hoffman, the result “is a superficiality of humor, a reliance upon formulas of mere exaggeration, and a tendency to caricature Bunyan and the supporting figures in the tales.” Folklorist Richard M. Dorson notes that by the late 1930s and early 1940s marketers used the figure of Paul Bunyan to promote a variety of products and local festivals, and the character’s name became an adjective for “any sort of mammoth event.” By 1941 Paul Bunyan and his companions were the subjects of seventeen full-length books, several plays, music, ballets, murals, wood-cuts, paintings, and statues. Newspapers and other periodicals across the nation regularly featured the giant logger as well.
PAUL BUNYAN IN OREGON
No doubt Oregon’s historic association with the lumber industry helped popularize Paul Bunyan legends. Writing in 1989, historian Carlos Schwantes remarks in his book The Pacific Northwest that “no economic activity today is more closely associated with the Pacific Northwest then logging and sawmilling….” The Hudson’s Bay Company erected the region’s first mill in 1827. The operation shipped lumber as far as the Hawaiian Islands. As early as 1850 a steam driven mill operated in Portland. By the following year Oregon City boasted five water-driven mills. In the nineteenth century Northwest mills sent timber to markets along the west coast, especially to San Francisco where the California Gold Rush created a demand for building materials. In the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Washington State with its large inland waterways dominated the industry because logging could only occur where timber could be easily transported by water. Historian Carl Abbott notes that logging in Oregon went “big time in the Coast Range and the shoulders of Mount Hood [in] the early-twentieth century” as the expansion of railroads in Oregon undercut the Puget Sound’s shipping advantage. Cutting accelerated in the Northwest as companies from the East Coast and the Great Lakes moved to the region after exhausting their own local supplies of lumber. In Oregon, large-scale cutting occurred in Washington and Columbia counties, following railroads into the Coast Range and to Tillamook Bay. Loggers and logging railroads also operated on the lower slopes of the Cascades on the Clackamas and Columbia rivers. Oregon’s timber industry grew steadily through the twentieth century, overtaking Washington in 1938. The transition was symbolically recognized by the relocation of the West Coast Lumberman’s Association from Seattle to Portland in 1945, marking an era of “unparalleled affluence” in Oregon’s lumber industry. In the 1940s and immediate postwar, period advances in logging technology made harvests and milling more efficient, and the development of new forest products, such as plywood, expanded the markets for Oregon’s timber industry. From the 1940s through the 1960s Oregon remained the nation’s top timber producer, cutting a relatively steady nine million board feet annually.
Bunyan legends migrated to Oregon from the Great Lakes region in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, about the same time as the logging industry moved to the Pacific Northwest. It is not completely clear if the stories arrived with the logging companies, or if wide distribution of Paul Bunyan stories by the Red River Logging Company spread the legend of Paul Bunyan. Evidence suggests that both forces contributed to the spread of Bunyan stories. What is clear is that the legends were immediately popular. Abbott notes that in Oregon “the culture of the woods ran on rugged individualism,” and the Paul Bunyan character appealed to this sensibility. Despite harsh working conditions in the industry, Oregon loggers and mill workers were more likely to identify with the image of self-sufficient mountain men like Paul Bunyan than to join “One Big Union.” In contrast, Washington State was a center of activity for the Industrial Workers of the World, which sponsored a timber workers strike in 1917, “free speech campaigns” in Spokane and Seattle, and precipitated violent confrontations in the Everett and Centralia massacres. Unlike Washington, Abbott notes that “Portland was the headquarters of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, a cross between a company union and a patriotic society organized in 1917 to combat the I.W.W. The result is the persistence of a strongly individualistic ‘pioneer’ culture.”
Oregonians quickly adopted the Paul Bunyan legend. In 1916 Oregonian Ida Virginia Turney wrote the first Bunyan narrative specifically aimed at children. In 1928 Turney, an English instructor at the University of Oregon, wrote Paul Bunyan Comes West, a collection of children’s stories, and in 1941 the now former instructor wrote Paul Bunyan: The Work Giant, published in Portland by local company Binfords & Mort, which quickly sold all 3,300 copies of the first printing. The short and colorfully illustrated stories credited Bunyan as the inventor of the stump puller and breaking plow, among other tools, and portrayed him as a logger, lumber camp boss, builder, farmer, and mill manager as they follow Paul’s successful effort to tame a wild wilderness into farms and towns. Although the material for Turney’s books were collected from Oregon, the change in Bunyan’s professions, the inclusion of women in the narrative, and simplification of the text illustrate the growing gap between the Bunyan stories told in Lumber Camps and those marketed to a general audience. During the same time Turney was writing her stories, the Works Project Administration immortalized Bunyan in a three-panel glass mosaic in the Tap Room at Timberline Lodge. The mosaic is still an integral part of the space.
Another prolific Oregon writer, James Stevens, perhaps did more to promote the legend of Paul Bunyan nationally than any other author. Born in Iowa in 1891, Stevens traveled alone to Idaho at the age of 10 and by 13 was working in the region’s logging industry. Drawing on these experiences and the work of others, Steven’s published his first Paul Bunyan story in H.L. Mencken’s American Mercury Magazine in 1924. The next year he published the nationally acclaimed Paul Bunyan. In 1931 Steven’s published a second book, The Saginaw Paul Bunyan. These volumes took literary liberties with the original Paul Bunyan tales, with the author beginning with a Bunyan folktale and then elaborating on it. Dorson notes that Stevens did not see himself as an academic folklorist, but instead as a “literary artist drawing imaginative inspiration from the well of folklore.” Stevens admitted that in his experiences that lumbermen spent little time telling stories, and he did not hide his ambition to emulate great authors such as Hawthorn and Irving in creating literary fiction from folk tales. Nevertheless, Steven’s popular books shaped the American’s perception of Paul Bunyan, including the origins of the legend. Steven’s claimed that the Bunyan legends were based on a French-Canadian solider in the Papineau Rebellion of 1837 – a claim contested by many. Still, Hoffman observes that “the Paul Bunyan most people know more closely resembles the concept of the character in Stevens’ books than it does the Bunyan of any other popularizer.”
For their work Turney, Stevens, and the WPA artists drew on an already well-developed local folklore, much of it adapted from earlier Bunyan legends. In 1942 the Oregon Writer’s Project of the Works Project Administration placed the “Oregon Folklore Studies” collection in the Oregon State Library in Salem. The files contain a wide variety of folk literature, including logger’s songs. Some of the material was previously published in books. In his reviews of the files, folklorist Wayland D. Hand noted that “the tall tale is a genre of folk literature that flourished on the frontier and nowhere does it seem to have enjoyed a more rank growth than in Oregon.” A full folder of the collection is dedicated to Paul Bunyan. Like stories from the Great Lakes region, Paul is portrayed as industrious, creative, and ab |
