Oregon Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum Grows
Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose Joined by Titan Missile, IMAX Theater
May 5, 2009
The Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum, opened in 2001 in McMinnville, an hour's drive south of Portland, was created specifically to display billionaire Howard Hughes' eight-engine "Spruce Goose," the world's largest wooden aircraft. A prototype for a military troop and cargo aircraft , Hughes flew it only once, on Nov. 2, 1947. The end of World War II also ended the government's contract for the plane, but left intact the world's largest wooden airplane, an engineering marvel.
Home to Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose
Evergreen's original building was specially designed to fit the giant plane's 320-foot wingspan. Under its wings the "Spruce Goose" sheltered many smaller historic aircraft, including a 1928 Ford Tri-Motor, known in its time as "The Tin Goose."
Other aircraft on display include the SR-71 “Blackbird,” the world’s fastest and highest flying “spy” plane, and more than 80 other historic aircraft, including a Grumman F6F-3 “Hellcat,” B-17 “Flying Fortress,” F4U “Corsair,” P-38 “Lightning,” Bf-109 Messerschmitt, TBM “Avenger,” P-40 “Warhawk,” and a replica of the Wright Flyer, the first aircraft to successfully achieve powered flight.
Explore Interior of A B-17 Bomber
Visitors can explore the interior of the B-17 and stand on the giant cargo deck of the “Spruce Goose.” Docents throughout the museum share their personal stories with visitors about the aircraft on display. The aviation museum also offers food at the Spruce Goose Café and memorabilia at the Rotors, Wings & Things store. A playground designed with aviation and space themes is a major attraction for children visiting the museum.
The recent addition of an identical 120,000-square-foot building, facing the aviation wing, boosted the museum's status in a quantum leap.
Evergreen Is Largest Western Air and Space Museum
“With the addition of our new space exhibit wing in 2008, Evergreen became the biggest air and space museum west of the Mississippi River,displaying 150 world-class exhibits of aircraft and spacecraft, plus hundreds of artifacts.” said Nicole Wahlberg, director of marketing and public relations. "We’ve been regularly attracting 300,000 people a year but with the addition of the new space wing we’re expecting to see 500,000 visitors a year.”
The new wing's major attraction is a 114-foot-tall Titan II missile resting in a 30-foot-deep pit. Halfway down is a fully-equipped launch control center where visitors have an opportunity to participate in a simulated launching of a Titan II. Liquid-fueled Titan missiles launched Mercury and Gemini space vehicles from Cape Canaveral, Fl., for astronauts’ first earth-orbiting space flights in the 1960s.
During the Cold War, in the ’60s and ‘70s, Titan II intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads were based at 140 sites throughout the United States to deter a Soviet nuclear missile attack. The museum's Titan II once launched space satellites from Vandenberg AFB, Lompoc, Calif., into orbit.
Exhibits Include Meteorite, Space Capsules
Inside, the space museum provides a look at such exhibits as the 32,000-pound Willamette meteorite discovered in Oregon, a Russian Photon space capsule and replicas of the Lunar module and Lunar Rover that carried men to the moon and over its surface. In a 65,000-square-foot gallery are dozens of space artifacts, many in the museum’s permanent collection and others loaned by the National Air & Space Museum and the Kansas Cosmosphere museum.
Among them are an X-15 rocket plane, a Redstone rocket, a Gemini astronaut capsule for early two-man Earth orbiting, and an Apollo three-crewman capsule that was part of the journey to the moon program. A collection of space suits, space food and full-scale replicas of other spacecraft tell the story of space flight and exploration. Interactive exhibits and simulators make up another major part of the space wing’s displays.
The air and space museum’s dedication to learning opportunities includes plans for a series of space camps and other education programs. In September, the new facility also will become the home of McMinnville High School’s new Engineering and Science Academy, providing local students with half-day sessions in labs and classes in the museum’s education facilities.
IMAX 3D Theater Features
Flight to Space Station
In 2007, the museum added an IMAX 3-D theater with a six-story-high screen. Offering a variety of IMAX films, the theater’s latest is a three-dimensional experience aboard a space shuttle visiting the International Space Station. Wearing high-tech glasses, viewers are immersed in a virtual world of space travel.
Produced by Lockheed Martin and NASA, Space Station 3D presents the story of the building of an orbiting laboratory that’s supported by 16 nations to further human space exploration. Actor Tom Cruise narrates the film, which includes scenes taken 220 miles above the Earth by space explorers from the United States and Russia.
Located an hour’s drive south of Portland, and five miles south of McMinnville, the museum has easy highway access. For visiting pilots, the giant museum is located less than a mile from McMinnville Municipal Airport (MMV), where free shuttle service is available. The museum is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, except for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.
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