Our walking tour season has officially ended, and it was definitely our most successful year yet!
Our public walking tour program started in May 2023, with our Executive Director Zachary Stocks leading our first public tour of the Albina neighborhood. That October, Public Programs Manager Mariah Rocker led a tour in Jacksonville, allowing us to showcase place-based history in two different parts of Oregon. Both of these tours sold out almost immediately, and the response was clear – people were hungry for ways to engage with local Black history in their communities.
In 2024, we expanded our tours to three additional cities: Astoria, Eugene, and Oregon City (along with Portland and Jacksonville). By partnering with KinCultivate, we even created an Albany tour! These tours all sold out as well, which encouraged us to prioritize these experiences for 2025.
The Collins Foundation provided generous funding which allowed us to reduce the cost of our Portland tours. Their support also helped us support a wonderful volunteer, NoraJane, who was willing to help us significantly increase the number of tours we could offer in Portland. NoraJane led a total of nine tours for OBP this summer, sharing this important history with nearly three hundred people!
Mariah and Zachary once again took on tours throughout the state, with stops in Jacksonville, Astoria, Eugene, Oregon City, and Salem. In each location, we found a thirst for this history. 98% of available tickets for these tours were sold and we received many requests for more tours. Our team is currently exploring ways to grow our tour program even further in 2026.
In addition to our standard public and private tours, we were also able to co-develop and lead a few special tours with our partners. We were honored to collaborate with the Willamette Heritage Center in Salem for the third year of the Juneteenth “In Freedom’s Footsteps” tours. We also partnered with the Wisdom Workshop to create the “Moving Forward, Looking Back” tour, exploring the overlapping histories of Black and Asian communities in Old Town.
We aim to expand our offerings further, including new walking tours in other parts of the state and continuing our regular tours in Portland.
Haven’t been to a tour yet? Here’s how one attendee described it:
“In a place where so many of the historic buildings no longer exist, our guide did a great job of remembering them for us, giving us a kind of x-ray vision to ‘see’ thru the present into the past. The beauty salon & barber shop stood out as still extant, and vibrantly so. The family portraits of the founders inside, and a chance to speak with their granddaughter who’s continuing their legacy, was very special. Like when a piece of history gets up and starts talking back to you.”
Special shoutout to Dean’s Beauty Salon & Barbershop for their enduring legacy in the community and their willingness to share this history with us all!
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