The Logging Museum at the Collier Memorial State Park near Chiloquin, Ore., offers visitors a glimpse of Eastern Oregon logging from the primitive harvests of the 1860's through today’s large-scale operations.
At first, men and animals worked together to harvest trees, the men chopping down the trees with axes for oxen and horses to pull to nearby mills. By the 1980's, giant machines single-handedly cut, de-limbed and de-barked up to 400 trees a day in forests scouted and identified by helicopter.
The park got its start in 1945 when brothers Alfred and Andrew Collier of Klamath Falls donated 146 acres of land to the State of Oregon as a memorial to their parents, Charles and Janet Collier. Two years later the museum received a collection of antique logging equipment from the brothers. Alfred Collier had established the Swan Lake Lumber company east of Klamath Falls after World War I.
Today, the park covers 525 acres and contains a logging-related equipment collection of thousands of artifacts from Eastern Oregon, a pioneer village and a gift shop housed inside a homesteader’s cabin.
The park has a day-use picnic area and a campground for tents and recreational vehicles.
Sources: "Collier Memorial State Park." Oregon State Parks. 2015. Web. 19 Mar. 2015. http://www.oregonstateparks.org/index.cfm?do=parkPage.dsp_parkPage&parkId=165; Dickman, Craig. "Collier Logging Museum and State Park." The Oregon Museum. Portland State University and Oregon Historical Society, 2015. Web. 19 Mar. 2015. http://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/collier_logging_museum_and_state_park/#.VQtJiTd0ypo; Collier Memorial State Park and Logging Museum. Friends of Collier State Park, 2015. Web. 19 Mar. 2015.
