Located within Collier State Park Logging Museum are a number of historical interpretive displays that highlight the rich logging history of this region. This display is the first that visitors encounter while experiencing a self-guided walking tour of logging exhibits. This display's main verbiage reads:
Welcome to the Logging Museum
at Collier Memorial State Park
Logging and lumbering were dangerous hard work that helped shape the vast region along the eastern flank of the Cascades. Collier Memorial State Park has the largest collection of machinery and objects associated with the evolving technology of logging and lumbering in the Pacific Northwest. American inventors in the nineteenth century produced machinery and tools that transformed the production of forest products.
Oregon's timberlands were a treasure richer than gold. Majestic stands of pine, larch, and fir as well as hardwoods supplied materials for housing, paper products, boxes, lath, broom handles, and roofing. Felling and processing forest products generated tens of thousands of jobs and stimulated the building of roads, railroads, and towns.
Two Brothers, One Vision
In 1945 Alfred Collier, a Klamath Falls lumberman, and Andrew Collier, a Klamath Falls banker, gave this park to the State of Oregon as a memorial to their parents--Charles M. and Janet McCormack Collier. Possessing a strong sense of history, the Collier brothers assembled logging equipment, tools, transportation devices, photographs, and publications about logging and lumbering industries that helped transform the American West.
Collier Memorial State Park includes the logging museum, pioneer village, a rest area, campground, and natural areas surrounding the confluence of Spring Creek and the Williamson River. The park's setting is typical of the timberlands of Central Oregon that drew investors, laborers, and settlers.