Welcome to our website about historic Garden Home. In the People and Places pages, you’ll find almost two hundred stories and over fifteen hundred photos of vintage Garden Home and residents attending our events.
Upcoming Events
Feb. 12, Monday, 6:30 pm: Virginia Vanture will be presenting a thirty minute slide show on the old Cannery. The Old Market Brew Pub now occupies the building at the confluence of Multnomah Blvd. and Garden Home Road.
March 12, Monday, 6:30: Annual meeting, election of officers. Currently:
- Chair: Patsy VandeVenter
- Vice-chair: Elaine Shreve
- Secretary, Treasurer: Marie Pacella
- Board members: Stan and Susan Houseman, Carole Vranizan, Jan Fredrickson, Mark Kajitani, Virginia Vanture
News
Dorothy Johnson Stevens and Pat Boone – 2017
Our Holiday greetings to all of our Garden Home friends and families. Thank you for sharing your stories and photos. Thank you for your interest, your attendance at our many events and your donations to sustain our historical research and community education. Thank you to our Board of Directors for their diligent efforts to present our history.
This greeting from Dorothy Johnson Stevens reminds us of a young Garden Home girl who became Miss Oregon in 1955. Her dad had the service station and she lived next door. She went on to become the first runner-up for Miss America and then on to Hollywood! She starred in Bernadine along with Pat Boone, and still a beauty!
Thank you to all who visited us at the December 2 Holiday Bazaar! We sold all of the historic oatmeal cookie recipe jars.
Black Rock Coffee Shop: This new enterprise has made its appearance via a huge crane lifting the prefab pieces into place! This drive-through and table service café is located adjacent to the Buy 2/Shell station on SW Garden Home Road. The exit from the Shell station onto SW Garden Home Rd has been modified to prevent turning left onto SW Garden Home Rd. Harry Pinniger tells us that this was the location of the Garden Home Water District office building before it merged into the Tualatin Valley Water District (Harry served on the Garden Home Water District board).
This Spring: We’re gathering the unique features of Garden Home that we’ll unfold for you in some manner, wonderful surprises! Stay posted for the details.
This fall we enjoyed a September presentation on Garden Home through the Decades. This slide show of work by PCC student Spenser Kuroda features the building history of Garden Home since 1950. Tom Shreve presented this and reference material to an appreciative audience. Spenser’s report can be found on our Resources page.
Our October 9 program, Show and Tell from your family or a Garden Home treasure brought out some interesting items. Cheryl Clark brought a selection of old bottles she retrieved from what seemed to be an old garbage dump near SW 92nd and Fanno Creek. Anyone else remember this garbage dump? Another find was a secreted old report card, reporting on student bad behavior, presumably hidden from parent eyes!
Other News
Remembering many of our other stories. These fun excerpts from our stories are just samples of the content you can discover browsing our almost 200 articles. We hope you are writing your story for your family.
Colin Lamb: The electricity was off in the Garden Home area for about a week after the Columbus Day storm in 1962. Of course, many homes had no heat so Dad left the presto logs out in the front of the store with a note to pay for them the next day.
Dan Nebert: Therefore, the church window at all times seemed to remain unlocked, so that we were always able to enjoy our rainy Saturday afternoon ping-pong games.
Plane crash: Lt Strong managed to guide the plane over the town of Metzger to what looked like a wooded area before bailing out and landing in some nearby trees unhurt.
Zora and Sharka Becvar: We sat for a little while and, since we did not understand what the teacher was saying, we just looked at each other, got up and left the room and went home.
Bob Feldman: you might have seen young Bob Feldman riding his bike home from Garden Home School precariously toting a pail of slop from the cafeteria to feed his new baby pigs.
You are invited to our Board meetings which are held the second Monday of most months, 6:30 pm at the Garden Home Recreation Center. We had 5 thirty-minute slide presentations 2017 from 6:30 to 7 pm. Our Board then meets at 7 pm. March 12 will be a special meeting for the public with refreshments and summaries by the Chair and the Treasurer. The plans for the year’s activities will be shared. We’d love to have anyone interested to work with us.
Patsy VandeVenter, Virginia Vanture, Elaine Shreve, Carole Vranizan
Get your Historic Garden Home t-shirt now for just $14 for small to XL. Larger XXL and XXXL sizes are $17. There is an additional charge of $9 to mail your shirt. They’re fun! Available at the Garden Home Market Place.
Historic Garden Home street sign
Historic Garden Home street signs: We currently have about 35 of the Historic Garden Home street sign toppers in our community. Each sign was purchased by a friend or family member to honor their loved one. Click here to view photos of the signs and for information about sponsoring a sign.
Our generous donors permit us to print and mail this newsletter ($140) for our non-e-mail people and for the Garden Home Recreation Center. We also replace the Historic Garden Home street signs once for signs that disappear, current cost for each sign, $60. With our latest order, we’ll have about 35 signs out in our neighborhoods. We also have website costs, printing, paper, plaques and many other costs of an organization. Donor names are listed on our History Bulletin Board at the Recreation Center. Thank you to all of our donors and to all of our volunteers for their time and skills.
Garden Home History Project 