Pixieland, a would-be Disneyland on the Oregon coast, is explored in new documentary – Right here is Oregon

Again within the days when Oregonians snacked on Blue Bell Potato Chips, when a motor journey to the coast was an journey, and what’s now Lincoln City was a set of cities with names like Nelscott and Taft, a meal at Pixie Kitchen was a particular deal with.

Longtime Oregonians could keep in mind the restaurant, with its kid-friendly décor consisting of cartoon pixie figures, fun-house mirrors, and a menu that includes such beachy dishes as clam chowder and fried fish.

Much less well-remembered could also be an formidable offshoot of the once-popular restaurant, a park impressed by the success of California’s Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. The story of that doomed-to-fail enterprise is instructed in a documentary, “The Forgotten Story of Pixieland.”

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The hour-long movie, produced and directed by Peter Dibble — whose different historic documentaries embody “How the Spruce Goose Was Moved to Oregon” and “Interstate 305: Salem’s Canceled Freeway” — is offered on YouTube.

For many who discover themselves in Lincoln Metropolis this Labor Day weekend, there’s additionally a possibility to look at the documentary on the massive display. “The Forgotten Story of Pixieland” will display at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 2, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 4, at the Bijou Theatre.

Dibble’s movie tells the story of how Jerry Parks and his spouse Lu went from shopping for a seafood restaurant referred to as The Crab Broiler close to Seaside, to buying the then-struggling Pixie Kitchen in what was identified on the time at Wecoma Seaside. The city was situated within the stretch of space extending from Otis to Depoe Bay, which within the Fifties was promoted as “The 20 Miracle Miles.”

The entrepreneurial Parks renovated and later expanded the Pixie Kitchen, which opened within the early Fifties and have become such a sizzling spot that households lined up outdoors the door, ready to get in. The expansion of the Pixie Kitchen coincided with modifications in Lincoln Metropolis. Parks bought concerned in native politics, and supported the concept of Wecoma Seaside being annexed by the neighboring city of Oceanlake. That transfer was a forerunner of the 1965 institution of Lincoln Metropolis, which merged Oceanlake, Delake, Nelscott, Taft and Cutler Metropolis.

Towards the backdrop of the evolving neighborhood, Parks had give you the idea of an amusement park, to be constructed on land he had bought north of Lincoln Metropolis. In 1967, he introduced the attraction can be referred to as Pixieland, and Parks recruited two Disneyland alums to make his imaginative and prescient come to life.

The park featured a log-flume experience, a practice referred to as “Little Toot,” and meals cubicles sponsored by the likes of Darigold and Franz Bread. Tom McCall, then the governor of Oregon, spoke at Pixieland’s grand opening, which occurred throughout a gentle rainfall on June 28, 1969.

However, regardless of Parks’ hopes of making a Disneyland-style establishment, Pixieland in the end fizzled. As The Oregonian reported, a two-year part out started in 1975, the U.S. Forest Service acquired the land, and efforts to revive the world to a wetland had been undertaken.

With its use of archival photos and interviews, “The Forgotten Story of Pixieland” can be a reminder of how, within the Fifties and Sixties, fashionable photos of the perfect coastal trip had been distinctly not various, and included no point out of Native individuals or of Oregonians who didn’t match the postcard picture of cheerful, white, nuclear households.

Dibble additionally addresses the environmental issues that grew to become extra outstanding within the Seventies. Pixieland had performed a significant position in damaging the Salmon River estuary, and it was far out of step with efforts to protect the world’s pure habitat, together with close by Cascade Head.

The demise of Pixieland, Dibble’s movie says, is an instance of the bigger conflicts that had been taking part in out by the Northwest within the Seventies, as conservationists advocated for defense of pure environments, and a few longtime Oregonians felt they had been being pushed from their property by governmental businesses.

Although Pixieland failed, for a time the Pixie Kitchen saved going sturdy, as a separate enterprise. However, in the end, the fanciful household restaurant got here to look kitschy and outdated, and, after closing and briefly re-opening, it closed for good within the mid-Eighties.

— Kristi Turnquist

503-221-8227; kturnquist@oregonian.com; @Kristiturnquist

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