From Berry Preserves to Nature Preserve

When you visit the Environmental Learning Center (ELC) today, you see trees and flowers, scenic ponds, trails, birds, and wildlife. But it wasn't always this way. Until 1972, the site before you was a Smuckers berry processing plant.

When the plant closed, the president of Clackamas Community College challenged art students to develop ideas for reclaiming the site. Through the "Ecology Pond Project," Smuckers' settling ponds, roads, and parking lots were transformed into a landscaped nature center.

Over the years, volunteers planted thousands of trees, shrubs, and flowers. They also brought in rocks, snags, and logs for wildlife, created paths, and built bridges across the ponds and nearby Newell Creek. Later, buildings were added, creating a center for nature study and community education.

The ELC is neither a natural area nor a park. It is an ongoing experiment, an example of what people can do to reclaim industrial sites and restore wildlife habitat in urban areas. Today, we use this living laboratory for a variety of programs, classes, and tours.

1. Waste not, want not
ELC's motto could be "waste not, want not." These three buildings - the Pavilion, Haggart Observatory, and Lakeside Education Hall - were made almost completely from salvaged and recycled materials. The Pavilion's wood floors and cabinets came from an old ship, while its support posts were once telephone poles. Building materials for the observatory included discarded bleachers, wood salvaged from the Smuckers plant, and recycled tires.

2. A pond reclaimed
This pond was once a settling pond for Smuckers. With help from the National Guard, site designers dug out the rectangular ponds, deepening them, and shaped the pond edges with natural curves. They also added an island, plants, logs, and underwater rocks to provide animal habitat. Today these ponds are home to turtles (look for them sunbathing on rocks and logs), ducks, fish, and many tiny water creatures.

3. Shallow waters
From the bridge, you can easily see the pond bottom. These ponds collect runoff from the college's roads and parking lots, runoff that carries in lots of soil and dead leaves each year. If left alone, the ponds will continue to fill in with sediment, one day becoming shallow wetlands.

4. An ode to art
The bright pink and green building across the pond is the only Smuckers building left. It is now used as the college's Art Center, where students create sculpture, pottery, and paintings.

5. A view to the stars
The silver dome across the pond houses a 24-inch telescope, allowing visitors a close-up view of comets, stars, and planets. One of the largest public observatories in the Northwest, the Haggart Observatory is open on clear Friday and Saturday evenings. The dome was crafted by Harold Haggart, who built it originally for an observatory at his home.

Next to the observatory, the Lakeside Education Hall provides a space for seminars, retreats, and community education.

6. Nature's re-cycling
This small stream, Newell Creek, meanders through the ELC site before entering a forested canyon west of Highway 213. Newell's waters flow through the canyon into Abernethy Creek, then into the Willamette River, the Columbia River, and eventually the Pacific Ocean. In time, water from the ocean rises as vapor to form clouds, which carry rain back to Newell Creek.

7. Plenty of plants
At the ELC, you'll find more than 250 species of trees, shrubs, and flowers. Like many landscaped areas, some of our trees - such as Japanese maple and weeping willow - were selected for their beauty and are not native to this area. These days we plant only native plants here and are removing some invasive non-natives, like Himalayan blackberry and English ivy, that compete with our native plants.

8. A great spot for fish!
This small rock dam was built during a project to improve fish habitat in Newell Creek. The dam creates a cascade of water, followed by a pool where young fish can rest. We often use this area for ELC's science programs, as it provides good access to the creek.

9. Damming the waters
The small dam upstream is part of an elaborate system of dams, pipes, pumps, and artificial waterfalls that once manipulated water throughout the site. We no longer use the pumps, instead allowing the creek and ponds to rise and fall with the weather. In the winter, the dams are used to control water levels and prevent flooding in the ELC ponds and nearby Art Center.

10. Saving the soil
What are those sticks poking out of the near streambank? They're young willow trees planted as part of a restoration project to prevent soil erosion. First, rock "riprap" was used to protect the streambank against rushing water. Then, volunteers planted willow stakes in the ground. Before long, these sticks will grow into tall willow trees.

11. Warm water, cool creek
On a cold winter day, the water running down this concrete flume steams as it enters the creek. This mysteriously warm water comes from the nearby Oregon City High School Freshman Campus, which runs the water through its heating and cooling system. Although the water raises the creek temperature, it also keeps Newell Creek flowing during the dry summer months.

12. Ballfield beginnings
You are standing at the "headwaters" of Newell Creek. Just across the road, the creek begins, seeping out of underground springs into a baseball field. The creek's waters are fed by rain and melting snow, as well as stormwater runoff from the college's roads and parking lots. Depending on the season, Newell's headwaters may look like a rushing waterfall or a shallow trickle.

13. A Japanese garden?
As you walk along the path toward the pond, notice the birch tree arching over the pond edge and the carefully placed rocks. You can imagine the college's art students modeling this peaceful setting after a Japanese garden.

14. Milk jugs and soda bottles
You could be standing on a milk jug. This bridge looks like it's made of wood, but much of it is actually plastic lumber. Feel the bridge railings and pilings. This "lumber" comes from milk jugs, plastic bags, yogurt containers, and foam products that have been recycled into a very strong material that outlasts some wooden bridges.

15. Ten uses for a tank
The empty concrete tank before you was once part of Smuckers' wastewater storage. In the 1980's, the ELC began using the tank to raise rainbow trout that were smoked and canned for sale. After the pumping system broke, the tank was emptied. Today it sits unused as we debate possible future uses.

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