STAYTON

How a city acquired 15 acres and turned it into a public park for a couple of pizzas

Bill Poehler
Statesman Journal
A deer is seen at Turner Park.

TURNER – For the cost of a few pizzas, Turner has one of the most ecologically preserved public trails at a park in Oregon.

Using a rebate, hard work by sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students from Jane Goodall Environmental Middle School, donations and lots of volunteers, the half-mile Chickadee Trail opened on 15 acres on the north end of Turner’s 5th Street Park in May.

“With virtually zero money changing hands, the city has doubled the size of its park,” Turner city administrator David Sawyer said.

In 2013, the city of Turner switched out its traditional street lights for LED lights, for which Portland General Electric paid the city a $40,000 refund.

The 15 acres north of 5th Street Park – which features an old-school baseball field – had been purchased years before, sight unseen, by an investor from Hawaii with the idea of a housing development.

But the property sat untouched until the city took the money from PGE and used it to purchase the land.

The city decided to keep the land as natural as possible after a master planning process with graduate students from the University of Oregon.

In addition, a botanist from Oregon State University told the city "this is the most virgin 15 acres left in the Mid-Willamette Valley,” Turner Mayor Gary Tiffin said. “That’s believable when you look at it.”

Sixth-grade students from Jane Goodall Environmental Middle School help clear invasive vegetation in 2016.

The land remained untouched until Sawyer’s daughter, Sophia, was chosen in a lottery to attend Jane Goodall Environmental Middle School.

The Jane Goodall Environmental Middle School is a public charter school established in 2000 in Salem, located on the Oregon School for the Deaf campus, with a curriculum heavy on field-based science.

Its students have performed habitat restoration and research projects throughout the Willamette Valley and from the Oregon Coast to the Cascade Mountains, including at Pringle Creek, Little Pudding River and Aumsville Pond.

At a work-a-thon – the school’s version of a jog-a-thon – performing wetland habitat restoration at McKay High School in 2015, Sawyer met Michael Weddle, the board chair of JGEMS, and the idea for the park was born.

Shortly after, the city signed an agreement to allow the school to use the property for their classes if they built a trail for the public.

The Chickadee Trail Head signs at Turner Park were an Eagle Scout project by Seth Powell.

“And they would help us sort of disseminate education in the school systems here in Turner so that the elementary school here would have a chance to learn from them,” Sawyer said.

Much of the first work-a-thons was about clearing out invasive species like Himalayan Blackberries and Scotch Broom, but the work was done so to not disturb the native plants and animals.

That’s where the pizza comes in.

“With middle school kids, an hour of work, an hour and a half of work is about it and then you’ve got to feed them,” Weddle said. “It made a dent and we realized this is going to work.”

The Jane Goodall students have been back for more trail work. At other times church groups and inmate work crews have cleared the trail.

Sixth-grade students from Jane Goodall Environmental Middle School help clear invasive vegetation in 2016.

A Boy Scout, Seth Powell, designed and constructed the kiosk proclaiming it Chickadee Trail at the trailhead, Turner Lumber donated the wood chips and Lowe’s donated materials for the kiosk.

Botanists have called the area of the trail an example of a Willamette Valley Gallery Forest and an Oak Savannah gone to seed.

Weddle said another work-a-thon at the park is scheduled for October 20, and the goal of that is to widen and improve current trails.

The vegetation around the current trails regrows and covers the trails quickly as it is native.

There is still a large portion of the parkland that extends to the north on which more trails could be placed.

“We go about 2/3 way to the end," Weddle said. "I went out there this morning and tried to bust through to the end. We may say this is the wilderness area of this park. I was literally on my hands and knees.”

There is a clearing near the start of the trail that could be used for a classroom, a butterfly garden or raised beds for more plants.

“We’ve talked about all sorts of things,” Weddle said.

But the plan for the rest of the park is to keep it as natural and undisturbed as possible.

bpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com or Twitter.com/bpoehler