Mt. Angel Heritage Trail markers coming this summer
MT. ANGEL – In a town where Catholic roots run deep, the term “contemplation” has special meaning.
It’s defined in the dictionary as “looking thoughtfully at something for a long time,” or “deep reflection.”
Soon Mt. Angel residents and visitors will have a new way to contemplate their surroundings, from the city’s downtown core to the Benedictine abbey perched on the hill above it.
Grants, totaling $25,000, are funding the creation of 10 historic markers, to be installed along a 3.5-mile walking route no later than summertime. After years of committee work, the Mt. Angel Heritage Trail is going to be more than a map – it’s going to be a physical reality.
“I’m really pleased because it grew from a concept at a chamber board meeting to become much bigger, and it involved many more people … there’s been a lot of enthusiasm for this,” said Pete Wall, president of the chamber of commerce.
Like its neighbor, Silverton, Mt. Angel will use metal podiums – topped with laser-etched photographs and text – to tell the story of 10 historic locations to anyone willing to stop and look. The committee’s intention is to add many more sites in the future, said Mr. Angel City Manager Amber Mathiesen.
Silverton High School students in instructor Scott Towery’s industrial arts classes constructed Silverton’s podiums and will now also build Mt. Angel’s.
“All the tops have been cut and laser-etched, all materials have been ordered, and everything’s sitting at the high school, just waiting to become a student project,” Mathiesen said.
She said everyone involved would’ve liked Mt. Angel students at Kennedy High School to build the podiums, but they don’t have shop equipment necessary to do it.
The 10 sites featured first on the Mt. Angel Heritage Trail are Mount Angel Abbey, Bank of Mt. Angel, Weiseenfels Blacksmith Shop, Mt. Angel Creamery and Ice Co., Glockenspiel, Queen of Angels Monastery, Saalfeld House, St Mary Catholic Church, Southern Pacific Railroad Depot, and Schmalz and Sons Warehouse.
Each podium includes at least one historic photograph, a featured building’s age, a paragraph on its history, and the Mt. Angel Heritage Trail logo. A walking tour connecting them all in a 3.5-mile loop is available on Facebook on the Mt. Angel Heritage Trail page.
Part of the project’s funding – $5,000 – is a grant from the Oregon Public Health Institute’s “Health Eating Active Living,” or HEAL, Cities initiative. The Oregon Community Foundation and Marion County awarded remaining $20,000.
Nuns at the Queen of Angels Monastery, on the southwest tip of the Heritage Trail, are delighted that a historic marker will soon be installed on the sidewalk next to the sign at their driveway entrance, said Sister Dorothy Jean Beyer, who’s lived at the monastery since she was 18.
“We are very happy this has happened,” Beyer said. “This is a great thing for our community to learn more about its history – and we look forward to more visitors to our place.”
The sisters follow a 1,500-year-old Benedictine tradition that includes contemplation – a “wordless awe … at the mightiness and majesty of God” – as one of the steps in the Lectio Divina, or “divine reading,” Beyer explained.
Visitors who take time to read the signs along the Heritage Trail will contemplate, something different, the history of a small town, but that too can bring a kind of peace and perspective.
“If someone wanted to follow the history trail in ‘walking meditation,’ then everything they see about the history here and the service provided by those who came before us … it will bring gratitude, and that is a wonderful prayer,” Beyer said.