The Oregon Story; Tourism

[film leader countdown] Funding for production of the Oregon story was made possible through a generous grant from the United States Department of Agriculture: Rural Development. [theme music] [theme music] [theme music] [theme music] Tourism. The art of making a living from people coming to visit. Tourism in Oregon is intertwined with Oregon's history from the beginning. It has been driven and changed by the nature of the people who have lived here and who visit it. And by the nature of Oregon itself. And it seems that the more it changes the more it reconnects with the past and revels in it.

So the story of tourism takes us back. To the very beginning. [flute music] For perhaps 10,000 years natives have lived in what is now Oregon, a a dozen tribes or more. And they learn stories of what had happened here even earlier, of people who were animals and spirits, as well. Of coyote, the powerful trickster. Mt. Hood, the story said, was once a human being, a chief, who fought with another chief across the big river over an Indian princess. Coyote turned all three into mountains. Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, and Mt. St. Helens. But the jealous chiefs continued to quarrel over the mountain princess, throwing molten rocks at each other. The Columbia River didn't exist, it was only a vast lake crafted by the Cascade

Mountains. Coyote knew that salmon would come from the sea to feed the people if there was a way, so he tore a hole in the mountains and water from the lake rushed to the sea as a great river. And the salmon did come. As the years went on the stories would grow and they would change. One of my favorite stories about the Columbia River was that the salmon lived in the ocean, and as human beings below the surface of the ocean, and every year when it was time to come to spawn, they would change themselves into salmon and go up the Columbia river to spawn, and to give themselves as food to the Indians so that they might survive. And they did this willingly and knowingly. And when the Chinooks would catch a salmon [bubbling water] they would [unclear] celebrate with the Great Spirit and then they would return the bones to

the water, and it'd be swept back out to sea where they would regain their human status again. [ocean waves] Except for flights of fancy, the ancient stories often parallel the scientific accounts of Oregon's formation. [ocean waves] And few spots on Earth offer more opportunities for such stories than Oregon. [flute music] A mysterious lake, thousands of feet deep, filling the crater of a massive volcano. The result, according to folklore, of a battle between two spirits, one who lived in the air, the other underground. Mountains giving way to gorges and great rivers. [birds chirping] Desert giving way to towering forests filled with countless kinds of vegetation and wildlife. [ocean waves] And a spectacular seacoast. There are stories of

the evil spirit of the ocean tearing at the beaches and cliffs, sometimes swallowing canoes and warriors, or even climbing onto the bluffs to pull unwary maidens into the sea. Always be careful in down this area because it's easy to fall. In case the treacherous sea spirit is still at work, guide Mark Gurkman of Curry County is there to thwart him. A lot of people want to see that spectacular beach stuff and they want to run right up to the edge. We've got a lot of under cuts in there so you might be thinking you're standing on solid earth, and you might be only stand on about this much soil. It isn't easy to understand exactly what Mark Gurkman and his wife, Laurel, are trying to do. They themselves are not entirely sure where it's leading them. One of the reasons I like to come down this section of trail and here and stop in this area is it's really easy to just pass stuff up. But, if you look a little closer, the diversity here is truly amazing.

The Gurkmans are part of the newest direction in Oregon's tourism. In a sense, it is uncharted territory. And risky. No one's even sure what to call it. Eco-tourism? Nature-based tourism? Adventure tourism? But even though it's new, it's linked to the distant past. What geologists can't figure out is, you have a 148,000,000 year old rock and it's all tipped sideways because the plates collided? What it amounts to is selling a fragile concoction of history, mythology, geology, botany, beauty, and fun. But can they make such a thing pay? And can they sell unspoiled nature without spoiling it? We're gonna run across the evidence of early Native Americans in this area, which the best evidence would point toward somewhere around 9,000 years of continuous habitation. Can they offer their clients the ethereal enjoyment of sensing the presence of people here long ago without harming that presence?

But we don't want to disturb their sites. Out of respect for their culture that they had. The modern history of tourism in Oregon, according to the executive director of the Oregon Historical Society, probably began about 200 years ago. Lewis and Clark, the expedition of 1803 to 1806, is the great American saga, our 'Odyssey,' if you will. Lewis and Clark never use the word "expedition," they use the word "tour." And they they considered themselves tourists. They didn't see themselves strictly as scientists, in the way we might look at them today, but as much as people who were out here to gather information, to learn, to be inspired by what they saw. So, to a certain extent, what they were experiencing was the same thing that tourists experience today. William Clark's Journal, as he and Meriwether Lewis worked their way along the Columbia River in

October 1805, does not exactly read like a tourist brochure. I determined to pass through this place, notwithstanding the horrid appearance of this agitated gut-swelling, boiling and twirling in every direction. [rain] The expedition encountered Oregon's weather. Our party has been wet for eight days and it's truly disagreeable. Their robes and leather clothes are rotten from being continually wet. [seabirds singing] Two weeks later, Clark's Journal had a happier entry. Ocean in view! Oh! The joy! The joy was short lived. Oh, how horrible is the day! Waves breaking with great violence against the sea. But, along with the accounts of their ordeals, Lewis and Clark journals carried entries about the fantastic number of salmon the Indians pulled from the river, [birds chirping] about the breathtaking conical mountain they had passed, and the

profusion of wildlife. People who had been on the expedition itself or were related to them or in business with them, those men in turn became the guides for the Oregon Trail pioneers who came out here in the 1840s and '50s. The name "The Oregon Trail" actually was given to that route by a man named Francis Parkman, who never went the full length of the Oregon Trail. He only went into the Midwest a bit and he went specifically as a tourist. [fiddle music] explorers were soon followed into Oregon by trappers and prospectors, looking for gold in the hills and along the Pacific beach. By ranchers and farmers and fisherman. And loggers. But it was a rugged journey. No one came for a casual visit. Most of America remained oblivious to Oregon's natural wonders. [Train whistle] The railroad arrived in the 1880s.

[music] By train and steamboat, more than a million people managed to travel into Oregon for the 1905 World's Fair celebrating the centennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. And all went home with stories to tell about Oregon and Portland. This city grew by about 50 percent, the state by about 70 percent as a direct result of the Lewis and Clark exposition. Again, something to draw tourists to Oregon. [metal clinking] But if any one event can be credited with opening the door to tourists, the people who would come to Oregon for the sheer enjoyment of what they might find, it was an engineering feat in 1915 that some have labeled miraculous. A highway was built along, and through, the bluffs beside the Columbia River. What had once been a long, perilous expedition was transformed into a spectacular drive. The highway's builders, using prison labor, carefully avoided damaging the great beauty the road passed through. In some places,

the road itself seemed a work of art that paid homage to that beauty and its history. The new highway led past Multnomah Falls, a 620 foot cataract seemingly spilling from nowhere. [cascading waterfall] According to legend it was created by the sacrifice of the daughter of the chief of the Clatsop tribe, whose people were dying of a plague. When the warrior she loved was stricken by the plague, the princess climb to the top of the cliffs and threw herself self onto the rocks below. The waterfall has recreated her dive ever since. [classical music] Motorists coming from the north or south didn't have to wait for a highway to be built. They simply drove along the beach.

There was something characteristic about the assumption that everybody had a right to use Oregon's beaches. Successive legislatures and governors would make that official. The Pacific shore would be forever public in Oregon, free of private development. [music] The next big boost for tourism in Oregon was, of all things, the Depression. Unemployed craftsmen were put to work building a majestic lodge halfway up Mt. Hood. They used massive timbers cut from Oregon forests. [classic jazz music] Mountain climbers named the Mazamas helped inaugurate the new lodge by climbing Mt. Hood in mass. President Franklin Roosevelt came to Mt. Hood to dedicate the Timberline Lodge, taking note of Oregon as a prime tourist destination. [people clapping] Here, to Mt. Hood, will come thousands and thousands of visitors in the coming years.

In the euphoria following World War II, cars and gasoline and prosperity returned. [jet noise] Jet travel arrived and tourism was "in." People flocked to America's beaches and resorts in search of warmth and sports. The sweet life. They headed for the Rockies to try the fast growing sport of skiing. And into places like Yellowstone Park for something different, something poets called "primeval," ancient forests and wildlife and natural phenomena, having to do with our roots. Somewhat gradually it dawned on those who'd seen Oregon that just about everything people were looking for was here. World class skiing and climbing were available just a short drive from sunbathing on a Pacific Beach. Whale watching or deep-sea fishing. And, on the way, there was unsurpassed scenery. And wilderness with no human footprints or, in some cases, footprints leading into an earlier age.

[voices] By the '70s coastal villages in Oregon had become boom towns, tourist towns. A lot of the tourists liked what they saw on vacation so much, they returned to live. Portland became a major city. Oregon was flourishing. But a lot of Oregonians were uneasy about the state's growing popularity. I think Oregon has recognized from the very beginning that uncrowded, unspoiled natural beauty is something that the traveling public hungers for. The opportunity to come out and be part of a pristine natural environment, the rivers and the lakes and forests and the beaches, has long been a part of the Oregon mystique. So, protection of that resource, in conjunction with the promotion of the resource have always been part of the Oregon tourism industry. I made a living being a-- Governor Tom McCall, only half-joking, issued a message of limited hospitality to tourists which became famous nationwide. Have a good

time. But please don't stay. [flute music] Indians found no joke in the fact that visitors had stayed on their land and taken it over. Many regretted the hospitality they'd shown the first white tourists, Lewis and Clark. To the Indians, in the beginning, was that they welcomed the white man. Then they began to see problems. As Chief Seattle says, coming of the white man, he conquered the land, and the land was not his brother but it was his enemy, and when he conquered the land he would move on and take over some more land. And he wasn't interested in protecting the resources or the environment. By the 1990s tourism in Oregon passed the 5,000,000,000 dollar a year mark. 70,000 people in Oregon were now making a living at it. Tourism had become the state's third leading industry, after timber and farming.

Nowhere in the state did tourists have a greater impact than in the area around Bend known as the high desert, in Central Oregon. Bend became Oregon's Cinderella. Far from the Pacific Coast and a considerable drive from any major city. Oregon's high desert was late coming to the ball. Loggers knew about it because of the great stands of forests on its western rim. Geologists knew about its volcanic wealth. Outdoorsman knew about its fish and animals. But only recently did the news leak out that this place was a hidden beauty. [skiing sounds] Ski slopes on Mt. Bachelor rivaled those of Mt. Hood or anywhere else. Smith Rock was composed of cliffs considered by some daredevils as the best rock climbing experience in the world. [metal clink] And the high desert offered day after day of sun in moderate temperatures and the cleanest air many visitors had ever tasted. Suddenly, little Bend

was a hit. [metal clink] And in 1990 we had a population in the city of Bend of 20,000. Today our population is just over 33,000. So, obviously, that's a lot more people, a lot more traffic [cars], a lot more growth that comes with that. 70 percent of the new businesses that came to Bend from outside the area first visited Bend as a visitor. So, tourism is certainly a catalyst in bringing new business to the area. But we do have to be smart about it. This is the magnificent Ponderosa. This is the beloved tree of central Oregon. It is also the tree-- But some, like nature guide Dave Nissen, see Bend's new popularity as a mixed blessing. --right here, these are the-- It is inevitable that people are going to come here. I mean, the word is out. It's in books, it's in publications, it's everywhere. People will come here there's no question about it. You see the black little-- or brownish-colored seeds way down at the base down there? There's a long debate about tourism causing an area to expand beyond its capabilities of handling the people and I think that Bend is

kind of in a transition right now. I think that, in terms of the development, we've in Bend had a little bit of short-sightedness. That in this case the almighty dollar has prevailed and some pretty widespread development has happened in some pretty pristine areas. [power-sawing wood] As housing developments encroach upon the river canyon or as bridges are considered to be built across an otherwise very peaceful canyon where you have 45-mile-an-hour traffic going back and forth, where are the gangs of elk going to be going? Please be careful walking on it, you know, just kind of watch your step because the rock could slide out from underneath you. Nissen is part of the tourism explosion in Bend that he worries about, but he and a growing number of other outfitters are trying to lead tourists to explore Oregon in a different way. Through us, dollars are pumped into the community. But I hate to break down what we do into dollars because what we do is allow people to understand the

fascination and wonder of this area. Let me just throw a couple of pieces cinder around for you. What I hope to do with Wanderlust Tours is-- is, particularly with children, instill a sense of appreciation for nature and how to tread lightly when we're out on tours. Welcome to the High Desert Museum and the home of our two porcupines. The little one-- The High Desert Museum is at the heart of tourism around Bend. A sort of conscious reminding everyone who comes here that the skiing and golfing and resort development going on all around is merely a byproduct. The vital elements of the high desert are the animals and birds and trees and the history of the place. We are the plateau people and I'm a member of the Yakama. Vivian Adams is curator of native heritage at the museum. Her message is respect for the land and the people who were here before.

Plateau people believe they are connected, one with the earth, and so it's a very spiritual connection to the earth and everything that grows or flows and lives upon the earth. Yes, she says, Native Americans have been very leery of the tourist and the development of desecration they have sometimes brought with them. To see this kind of vandalism on them is something that is very distressful to us as Native American people because we feel that that's such a disrespect. But, maybe, that's beginning to change. We have to enter into tourism ourselves. What I'm hoping is that the people who are moving here, or even go through and enjoy what we have to offer in hiking, boating, winter sports, whatever, that they will learn to respect the earth and the creatures who use the earth, and live here and share this whole environment and that it won't be damaged.

A lot of the tribes believe that we are part of the Spirit. We are part of the land. We have to live with the land and we have to learn from the land. What a day! Isn't it though? We get to see the winter forest in its pristine magnificence. Naturalist Dave Nissen likes the high desert best when the snow falls and he can take his clients into the Deschutes National Forest on snowshoes. You know some animals, like a bobcat, if you've ever looked at the bobcat's foot it's-- you know it's-- it's foot is fairly large in proportion to its body. This kind of travel does the least harm of all, leaving the ground and its vegetation untouched. So the Native Americans said that's what we need to do! We need to get a bigger foot. Many of Nissen's clients are from overseas. Foreigners, in particular, prize the combination of wilderness and sun and education that a trek like this offers. So, they took branches from a tree, they bent those branches-- Most of these tourists are from Hawaii. --and all of a sudden they could now

float on top of the snow like animals. And they said, "Ah, hunting made easy." No part of Oregon is gambling more heavily on the new approach to tourism than Curry County. The southwest corner of the state bordered by California on the south and the Pacific Ocean on the west. 80 percent of the county is National Forest, the Siskiyou, and much of it is designated wilderness. A lot is happening here. A lot has happened from the beginning. Prospectors were among the first outsiders to arrive in Curry County, working their way up along the beach from California after the 1849 Gold Rush there fizzled. They discovered flecks of gold mixed in with the sand of the Pacific beach. A town sprang up and they named it Gold Beach. The gold would soon play out but not before miners and profiteers that turn the next few years into very bad news for the several tribes of Indians living in the region.

Historian Walt Schroeder. The miners were in here, they were lonely, they saw the Indian women, they started molesting Indian women. The Indians got smallpox and measles because they were not immune to those diseases that many of the whites had been exposed to as young men. And then there were some whites that we're real ashamed of because they thought that the only good Indian was a dead Indian, and they would shoot Indians just for sport. But eventually the military started fighting on behalf of the whites to protect them from the Indians. And the Indians, of course, were all taken up to Siletz or Grand Ronde Reservation, where many of them died because of home sickness, diseases, and so on. The gold and the Indians were gone. What was left was fish and trees. Unlike the gold, it looked as though the forest here could never run out of trees. There are more different species of trees in the Siskiyou Forest of Curry County than in any other spot in the United States. Many of them gigantic cedars. Here, it seemed, was paradise for the timber companies.

And, so, the Indians and the miners and the trappers were replaced by loggers. Curry County thrived. At its peak there were about two dozen timber mills kept busy by the trees of the Siskiyou Forest. But in the 1970s America was having second thoughts about the mass harvest of great forests. The government began to agree with environmentalists that much of what stood in the Siskiyou was irreplaceable. And so were the animals it sheltered. More than 300 species of birds, more bears than in Yellowstone. Gradually, then not so gradually, the loggers were being evicted from the forest. Without jobs, they drifted away from Curry County, and by the nineties only two lumber mills remained. I'm gonna shut this one down there! [logging machinery sounds] It's gettin' bleak.

Fishermen were finding it harder and harder to survive, too, as fish stocks dwindled and regulations tightened to protect what was left. It's a great lifestyle but there's not much of a future in it right now. You know, the outlook looks grim. Here were three towns, Port Orford, Gold Beach, and Brookings, perched along the Pacific on some of the most beautiful real estate on Earth. But most of it now practically useless, economically. Except for tourism. Sport fishermen had long ago discovered that the steelhead fishing in Curry County's rivers was very good indeed. Stroke! Stroke! Stroke! Stroke! And thrill seekers knew those rivers as some of the most adventurous and scenic in America for rafters and kayakers. Especially the Rogue River, a whitewater masterpiece. Unlike most wild and scenic rivers, the Rogue offers a sample of its excitement without the visitor having to be either an aquatic athlete or a daredevil.

High-powered jet boats that once delivered mail upriver to miners and loggers have been converted into sightseeing boats. They travel the lower third of the Rogue and have become Curry County's star attraction to tourists. Tens of thousands ride the boats every year. The passengers are sure to see eagles perched in the trees above them and otters that seem to lie in wait for the jet boat so they can play hide and seek. Not everyone believes the jet boats should be allowed on the Rogue. One travel writer compared them to riding a motorcycle through a cathedral. That's something we've been battling for a long time. Court Boice uses one of the high-powered boats to bring guests to his lodge overlooking the Rogue. The motorized boats are an aspect of- of being able to even operate up here. Everything comes in by boat. There are people that- it's the only way they can see this part of the river. We take care of a lot of folks that are- that are in trouble. And so, over the years, we have built a real

friendship with those people and- and we just don't overstep our bounds. During a sudden flood in January of 1997 the Rogue rose to cataract level. Rafters who had started out days earlier upriver were caught in a murderous current. Rafts overturned in the rapids about a mile above the lodge owned by Court Boice. A hiker with a video camera spotted one of the rafters clinging to the cliff on the other side as the swollen river tried to tear him loose. The photographer's companions ran to Boice's lodge for help, knowing that he owned one of the high- powered boats. With the two hikers, Boice roared up into the maelstrom. Even with the popularity of the jet boats, the fishing, and the rafting, the Rogue River alone can't support a tourist industry. The people who take the half-day ride on the jet boats are often gone before they can spend much money here.

Nowhere near enough to make up for the lost jobs in the timber industry. That's a really nice spot right there-- Something more was needed. Something to appeal to a different kind of tourist. This is a beautiful time to be out walking. What we're talking about is the kind of visitor that, once they cross the county lines, is here to spend a week. The county commission sought out Bob Harvey, an international tourism consultant. What we have done here, Curry County is bigger than a million acres, has fewer than 23,000 people, is mostly forested, has a 100 miles of spectacular coastline, and has no economy. Nothing going for it. Nothing moving it in any direction at this point. It was an interesting puzzle, how to market pristine nature in solitude. Harvey and the other planners in Curry County began to talk about other places around the world that were

turning their wilderness areas into booming tourist industries. Yet at the same time preserving that nature. Places like Kenya, South Africa, and Ghana, each offering vast reserves of African animals. Peru with its incredible rainforest. The Galapagos Islands, Darwin's natural laboratory. Belize, on the Yucatan Peninsula. And Costa Rica, in Central America. While many other countries in Central and South America had watched their great rainforests go up in smoke to make way for farms and people, Costa Rica, in the late 1980s, elected to turn the forest into a financial asset by preserving them. Costa Rica became the poster child of a new brand of tourism: eco- tourism. Trails were carefully laid through the forest, past a stunning variety of exotic birds and animals and historic sites. The world was invited to come enjoy it and learn about it, but asked to tread softly.

It worked. By 1992, tourism had overtaken bananas and coffee as the number one industry in Costa Rica. There are problems. The tourist boom has overloaded some fragile areas and much of the profits wind up with foreign owners of the biggest hotels. Still, Costa Rica is considered the envy of Central America. Curry County could not expect to copy Costa Rica. It hasn't the climate, airports, or the cruise ships to bring in masses of tourists. Nor could the little towns in southern Oregon handle great numbers if they did come. The planners would have to think small, yet attract enough tourists to make a difference. The art of this kind of tourism is finding the right people to share it with without opening the flood gates of visitors and flowing hundreds of thousands of people into a spot and taking away all those magic things that make the place special.

The newspaper publisher in Brookings, Charles Coacher, was skeptical at first and so were some of his readers. I've had people come up to me and- and say that it's a harebrained idea. Who's going to pay to come walk in the woods? Who's going to pay a guy to take them tide pooling? Who's going to pay a guy to take them fishing? Who's going to pay a guy had to take them on a bicycle trek down the mountain? And that's a hard concept for them. If you've lived here all your life, if you can take the dog to the beach anytime you want, if you can see the trees from your bedroom window, if you can see the ocean from your living room window, if, driving through town, you get to- to marvel at the sunsets every afternoon, it's hard to imagine that it's something saleable. But, then, Coacher and some other county residents traveled to Belize, where consultant Bob Harvey had helped plan an eco-tourism industry. Sure enough, there they discovered tourists from all over the world paying lots of money to see the forest and animals and to learn about the history of Belize.

I went and buttonholed people who weren't necessarily attached or assigned to us and talked to "just-folks" in Belize about how they felt about nature-based tourism, they all knew about it, how they felt about the change from hunting monkeys to protecting monkeys, how they felt about the change from hunting panthers or fishing to guiding tourists, whether they felt like tourism was- or tourists, in general, were taking over their country or their life, and they didn't feel that way at all. They really had- they really had adopted it, embraced it. And when we got back, we were driving south from Portland to Brookings and we came around the corner in Port Orford where you first see the ocean, where you come up on a little rise over Battle Rock State Park, and looked down the Pacific coastline of Curry County and we all went, "Wow! We have something to offer here!" It needs a definition, it needs a name, it needs some marketing, it needs some packaging, it needs a reason to come. But we have a very beautiful corner

of the world. The name Curry County chose for the venture was "sustainable nature-based tourism" rather than "eco-tourism," hoping to avoid antagonizing timber workers who might associate that name with the environmentalists some blame for getting loggers expelled from the forest. See these, now be very, very careful don't walk around and step on any of these guys. They're a flycatcher, Cobra Lily, they eat insects. This is-- Alan Wilson had already been doing something like it for 30 years, guiding tours in the Grand Canyon and on rivers in Central America and now in Oregon. This plant has the ability to attract the bug to come in underneath here and, once it gets there, there's a hole it goes up and the little hairs sticking down prevent him from flying b- back up out. Wilson is licensed to take people high into the Kalmiopsis Wilderness Area outside

Brookings and bring them down a wild river, a trip of several days during which his clients may encounter no other humans. Horses haul inflatable kayaks on the trek to the upper reaches of the Chetco River. The concept is not to bring thousands of people here, just a few. My permit states very specifically what I can and can't do. I stay within those guidelines and I use a principle of hiking and camping and river-running that, completely, we leave nothing behind. We take everything out with us. The type of person that I can see doing these trips, where we hike in for 10, 12 miles and then paddling down the river for four, five days, are folks who live in the big cities, work in offices but have access to a gym and- and use it, a lot. You know, just stay in fairly good physical condition.

This is a very rare place. It's very remote. It's hard to get to. The river has carved these rocks into these sculptures that are fantastic and the water is some of the cleanest water in the nation. And you can snorkel and see fish 75 or 80 feet away. It's really something and the fish will come right up and look at you in the mask. Wilson was well-established as a tour guide before Curry County began its campaign to lure nature loving tourists to this remote area. But even he finds it a difficult, unpredictable, and seasonal way to make a living. Journalist Charles Coacher sees the secret to success in the county's tourist campaign as a kind of riddle. It's a chicken and egg thing. You've got to have customers to- to be able to make a living at it. You have to have guides to be able to attract customers. It's evolving, it's very slow. You notice the

trees are tipped way over, leaning into the river, that's an indication that we've had a lot of land movement. The nature tourism business, unlike, say, a basic retail business, takes about five years to turn the corner of profitability. So, you know you need somebody with a lot of stamina and a backup income, those sorts of things, to start a business and stay with it and make it go turn the corner. Is Curry County, and are people in other places in Oregon, kidding themselves and hoping that eco-tourism can be both an economic answer and a preservation answer? Can they attract enough tourists to make an economic impact without spoiling the very things they promote? Martha Honey of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. investigated the eco-tourism industries in seven other countries and wrote a book about the successes and failures she found, and the delicate balancing act of inviting people to come explore nature.

The tendency of tourism and, frankly, of eco-tourism, also, in many places is to want to increase profits by increasing numbers. And the problem is that, oftentimes, increased numbers leads to degradation of the environment. Certainly, two uncontrolled tourists can in theory, and sometimes in practice, do much more damage than, say, 50 well-controlled and well-guided eco-tourists who stay on the path and respect the rules about litter and so on. But, in general, more numbers of tourists mean more adverse impact on the environment. In Curry County, some people are not only skeptical that eco-tourism or nature-based tourism will work but distrust it for other reasons, as well. Some still consider this timber and fishing country, not a tourist spot. And others don't want a bunch of outsiders trampling on "their" wilderness. When we started this project, Curry County was and continues, at the state,

to still be in the throes of the Timber War. The community is very much divided between the people that would stop timber harvest completely and those that would put it back to the levels it was 20 years ago. And those factions continue to battle with each other. [logging machinery sounds] Tourism promoters insist they are not enemies of the timber interests but their allies in efforts to spark the county's economy. The dynamics of everything, here you go, well, that's Mother Nature right here working-- And some people who once worked in the mills and forests are trying to make a living in tourism now. Hey, Mark, we got a few hits today. Like Mark and Laurel Gurkman. Mark's parents and grandparents owned timber companies and he helped build logging roads through the forests. Now the couple has opened a website hoping to attract tourists who are looking for an adventure and an education in the wilds. Business has been slow coming and through the first two years both have had to work other jobs, but they seem confident that will

change and they are heartened to see messages on their website even in the off-season. Those are people who are just visiting our site and saying, "Let's see what this is about." Those types of hits are coming from all over the world, from England, from Ireland, within the U.S., Canada. Chris, do you have any particular interests or are you familiar with the area at all? We came in this wide-eyed, wide open, with- our expectations were, we weren't getting into it to become millionaires or become famous. Our normal times are May through October, but for those willing to bundle up a little more more, or they don't mind the occasional shower, we can arrange things year-round. Mark spent an entire dry-season just combing these hills, finding the special places, identifying all the trees. Now, the Native Americans ate the bulb and they're quite tasty, they're supposed to be kind of peppery tasting, you'd use it

in soups and stews and stuff like that to add a little flavor-- But what takes the big time and the thing that's is going to take them some time, is finding a constituency of people that's 500 or 1,000 miles away, or further, that will come out, experience their product, go home, tell their friends and neighbors, send more visitors back. Even if the world should discover Curry County, the Gurkmans still must overcome the question of why a person needs a guy for a walk in the woods. Right in that area, right there, we know that there were Native Americans that-- Well, Mark suggests, in a place this diverse and dense with wildlife and history, the hiker might benefit from knowing the most interesting trails and the hidden beaches and when the tide will reveal them and swallow them up again. And right in the middle of that you'll see Oregon grape-- From knowing which wild berries are delicious and which are poisonous, and how to negotiate with a bear, and how it all came to be like this, and a hundred other things he and his wife have spent their

lives learning. They're landing right on the beach out here. This particular area just happens to be blessed. It's got a coastline that is, I say, second to none, combined with the Native American spirit that lives along that coastline that takes you back 9,000 years as you're walking through some of those areas that you know they were at. And you can picture, in your mind, children running around campfires and the feasts that they had. Mark and Laurel need to be commended for their courage because they stepped in when this industry in Curry County was very much in its infancy and they will, as such, be one of the pioneers in that industry. Despite the risks, other people in Curry County are beginning to see nature-based tourism as an opportunity. You can only fish for so long, anyways. Fisherman Orion Ashdown wants to convert the family's fishing boat into something that could carry tourists. 22,000 gray whales go by here every year.

Lately, some seem to be staying year-round. And there are seals and sea lions on the rocks along the coast. I thought a lot about running some tours and boats out of here for whale-watching, and for sightseeing, and just to check out, you know, let other people experience what we have here, the uniqueness of this area. I mean, there's no other place like this on earth. What I tell people is that I'm kind of like a concierge at a nice hotel. If somebody comes into Gold Beach and finds me, and they ask, "What is there to do?," the obvious things are people come here for the jet-boat rides up the river-- Jeff Ferguson is so confident that tourists are coming, he set himself up in an A-frame by the docks of Gold Beach, a sort of a tourism broker. I'm just now formulating a menu of services. It's horseback trail riding, fishing, charter-fishing, sightseeing tours, interpretive hikes, rafting, kayaking, and, by next season, I hope that doubles. And it looks- it looks like it's a concept that's going to work. And there's

still some huckleberries. Just covered with them. Lydia Donnelly fell into the eco-tourist business almost by accident. She escaped from Poland when it was still part of the Soviet Union. Then, with her husband, bought 900 acres, which included an old-growth forest overlooking the Rogue River. The land had never felt chemicals and she hoped to strike it rich as an organic farmer. We planted the corn and the corn grow and it was beautiful. Alas, her forests contained a herd of almost 50 elk. Elk would jump this amazing fences we have, we have fences that concentration camps would be proud of. And this maximum security prisons, too. The elk can plough through anything. That was the end of organic farming and the beginning of a tiny tourist business, offering guests luxurious accommodations, a great forest, and the companionship of elk. When you stand in the middle of 900 acres and you hear the silence and- and- and you see the

forest and you see the sky and the ocean, and just interacting with that space is very healing and necessary, all of a sudden. Lot of blue huckleberry in the underbrush. We have some Oregon grape there. Rhododendrons. In late fall the number of hikers wanting guides slows to a trickle. Laurel Gurkman runs the couple's tourism business by herself. Her husband Mark has gone off to sea with the fishing fleet for three months to make ends meet. --and here it's got the bottom layer of vegetation, then very Spartan in between. Laurel guides us through a section of old-growth forest near Gold Beach, forest left mostly to its own devices from, maybe, the beginning. Laurel talks a little about the trees and the creatures that live in them. But she suggests that, in such a place, often it's best to say nothing at all. [flowing water, majestic orchestral music, birdsong] Here seem to be a perfect example of the puzzle facing Curry County. A fragile

treasure, practically undiscovered, that might enrich those who visit and those who show the way. But that might also spoil it. The Gurkmans and others in Curry County think they may have an answer to both parts of the puzzle. How to bring the people here and protect the forests too. They called it the Canopy Project. The idea of the canopy project is to take people into the treetops, to see what's happening as you move from the forest floor up into the tree tops. The trees that we have here can be very tall, you know, some over 200 feet high. So, there's a certain amount of adventure in- in the process, as well. 20,000 board feet you can build-- What the planners were proposing, taking tourists into the tree-tops, was practically impossible to explain. No one really knew how they would get people up there or what it would look like.

It was kind of like a- just a- the ultimate tree-fort, really. It was very high in the trees, definitely. And it was- it was fantastic. The canopy project was not universally embraced. I'm totally against that one. I mean, you know, there's going to be a select few that want to walk up in a tree. It sounded like a cross between Disneyland and a pipe dream, but it was neither. It is already a reality in Australia, near the northern tip of Queensland. Called "Skyrail," it runs through a fantastic rain forest. Australia wasn't trying to lure more tourists to the area. Tens of thousands a month were already visiting the forest. So many that the ecosystem was being degraded. A skyway system was devised to lessen the impact. It was built so carefully that no trees were cut down, no foliage trimmed. Where the towers were erected, small plants on the ground were carefully transplanted. Worker boots were cleaned as they arrived each day, to prevent introduction of outside vegetation. Managers

of the forest say the Skyrail has not only succeeded in protecting the forest, it has had the unintentional effect of greatly increasing the number of tourists. Costa Rica has a less ambitious aerial tram. And Ghana, on the west central coast of Africa, has a tree-top walkway through a spectacular part of the forest. There's another in Peru, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. All have been popular attractions. Despite early skepticism by Curry County residents, the county commission has voted to spend several hundred thousand dollars to design some form of walkway and interpretive center in an old-growth forest area. The canopy project is not what this kind of tourism is dependent upon. What the canopy project does, though, is to take a part of the forest

that's been set aside from the timber harvest, and essentially off-limits to the local economy, and find a way to share it with visitors at a scale that puts this region on the map and generates a number of jobs out of sharing it with- with people from outside the region. We call it the jewel in the crown. We're looking at it as a way of extending the tourism season, as well, to bring destination travelers rather than pass-through travelers. It's one thing to say, "We have beautiful nature, come see us." It's another thing to say, "Come walk through the tops of the trees. Come ride the mail boats." Will it ever be Disneyland? No. Will it ever be as much income as the timber industry of the late 1970s? I kind of doubt it. Will it be something where my kids and other kids in the community can choose to live and work here after high school graduation? I hope so.

I hope so. Researcher Martha Honey thinks eco-tourism must succeed, not just in Oregon but worldwide. I believe that it's vitally important that eco-tourism succeed and succeed not simply as kind of a niche industry, but that it rather be viewed as a set of principles and practices that should infuse the whole tourism industry. Because it's clear we can't continue to travel the way we have in the past. 200 years after the arrival of Lewis and Clark, as Oregon's other traditional industries, fishing, logging, farming, find themselves struggling, tourism keeps becoming a more vital part of the economy. And keeps turning in new directions. Three native tribes, the Umatilla, the Cayuse, and the Walla Walla, once roamed a huge area of northeastern Oregon. They mostly welcomed the visitors who arrived along the

Oregon Trail. The visitors stayed, and pushed the tribes off the land and onto a reservation where they sank into poverty and hopelessness. Their children were made to attend white-run schools and to unlearn their native culture and languages. Now, a century and a half later, those three tribes have been busy building a resort and are again welcoming visitors. Like other Indian tribes all over Oregon, they are using tourism to stage a comeback in. --38 dollars. There's 20, 30, then five and six and seven and 38 dollars. More than two thirds of a million people visited the Wildhorse Casino last year, leaving millions and millions of dollars behind. In just four years, tribal budgets on this reservation rose from 7,000,000 dollars to 68,000,000. Unemployment fell by almost a third. When we have that kind of success, it allows us not only to reinvest the income from that casino, this retained earnings into tribal programs and

infrastructure that we've been lacking. Our fire department, our police department, our education programs, including preservation of our languages, three of which are still spoken, one of which is extinct. It allows us to invest in our youth, it allows us to-- Roberta Conner is director of the resort's cultural institute. We've had 200 years of bad news. And, occasionally, we have been, I think, ourselves, worried about our own extinction. This is an opportunity for us to, not only invest in our community's future, but for us to be whole, to be well. And we have not been well. We've been a wounded people. Much of our history has been about what wasn't good for us. And this is something that is good for us. The resort, she says, is not just about money, although income from the casino started it all. That money paid for the new cultural institute, allowing the three

tribes to tell their version of Oregon's history. What we're asking people to do when they visit here, especially the cultural institute, is to come with an open mind and hopefully live with a little bit of a changed idea of who we are. One gets the feeling that the old spirit-trickster Coyote played a part in all of this. I think he has fun here regularly. Coyote changes forms and revels in really simple pleasures. But he also does, even if he doesn't intend, it great things. Coyote has taught us a few tricks, I think, as well, along the way. It's as though tourism were trying to bring Oregon's history full circle. Native Americans once again serving as host to outsiders but this time on their own terms. Just as non-Indians are discovering a new type of tourism, eco- tourism. And that turns out to be not so new at all but rather

a rediscovery, a return to a respect for nature and for customs that existed long before the first tourist arrived. This is of the many spectacular viewpoints we're able to bring people to. The Siskiyou tribe, which lived along this stretch of the coast, learn the story of Ewauna, their princess, long ago. Ewauna was warned to stay away from the cliffs and the beaches because the ocean's evil spirit, Seatka, might seize her. But she couldn't resist. With her dog, she went swimming and running on the beach and through the coves. The ocean spirit, Seatka, caught her and ordered her to look in his eyes. She refused. In the morning, her tribe found the princess and her dog in the surf. The spirit, Seatka, was there, too, still waiting for the princess to look him in the eye. They had all been transformed into giant stones. [Native American flute music plays over ocean waves and seagulls] [Native American flute music plays over ocean waves]

[Native American flute music plays over ocean waves and sea lions] [Native American flute music plays over ocean waves] [Native American flute music plays over ocean waves] [Native American flute music plays over ocean waves and sea lions] Funding for production of 'The Oregon Story' was made possible through a generous grant from the United States Department of Agriculture: Rural Development.