Fort Yamhill State Heritage Area

We decided to take a nice little Sunday drive today. It was nice and sunny and with rain in the forecast it was a much needed outing. We talked about several places we could go to just take a walk, but decided on this Oregon State Park called Fort Yamhill State Heritage Area. It wasn't too far, and we'd never been there, both things we wanted to stick to for this outing. Not only was this a nice Sunday walk and drive, it was also a history lesson! Some Oregon history!

The Blockhouse

 

Fort Yamhill was built in 1856 and was in use for about 10 years. I won't get too much into the history, but there were soldiers stationed there for a time to help ease tensions between Native Americans who were living on the reservation and white settlers. If you'd like to read more about it you can visit the Oregon State Park page all about Fort Yamhill (just click on the link). 

Our first stop was a park in Dayton where The Blockhouse (pictured above) is located. This Blockhouse was originally at Fort Yamhill, but they had moved it when the fort shut down and they sold all the buildings in 1866 and it eventually ended up here at this park. It was used as a jail and storage for some artillery, I think.

The inside of the bottom of the Blockhouse

We parked across the street in front of some other lovely buildings. See that open door? Yep, that's our van with the older 2 boys inside who didn't want to get out. Guess seeing a blockhouse was not too appealing to the teens.

 

I was reading the signs on the blockhouse to Alex. We were trying to figure out if this was the original house or a model of the original. It's the original!

 

After we were done looking at The Blockhouse we headed over to the Fort Yamhill State Park. As you can see in the picture below, it was super busy! Okay, maybe not. We pretty much had the whole park to ourselves. Everyone must have been home watching the super football game. Not out doing cool history walks like our family.

 

The walk itself was a fairly easy and short walk. The path was gravel to start and went in a loop. It was beautiful and quiet.

 

As we walked around the loop/trail we saw a lot of signs that said kitchen, mess hall, bake house, etc., but there was nothing there, they were just signifying where those things might have been when the fort was in full working order. Unfortunately they didn't have any of the pamphlets that had all the information for each sign. We could have read about each and every thing. It would have taken us way longer! And, it would have been a bit more interesting than just seeing a sign. I'm guessing the kids weren't too sad about that one though.

 

There were a few signs that had more information. This one about the Blockhouse was there, but remember where The Blockhouse is? Not there, it's at the other park. But, this was where it would have been at the fort.

 

See there's one of those pictures! (Picture above) Right in front of that tree is a sign that says "Company Quarters." Obviously they didn't sleep in the tree. There must have been a building or structure of some sort there once upon a time.

 

 This is another one of those signs, but this one does have an actual "sentry box" it looks like.

 

Then we hit the part of the trail that didn't really have anything. It just took us back to the van/parking lot. It was very pretty in the trees.

 

 That wraps up our Sunday drive and history lesson. Now it's time for a weekly wrap-up!