Thank you to everyone who joined us for our Tombstone Trick or Treat event in Lone Fir Cemetery last Saturday! We hope you had as much fun as we did.

About 3,500 people — children and adults — wandered the Cemetery, we gave out 6,500 pieces of candy, and in addition to our merchandise sales, we received about $300 in donations. Several hundred people stopped by our information tent to ask questions about Lone Fir Cemetery, including a few descendants of Colburn Barrell, and more than 50 of you expressed interest in volunteering for Friends of Lone Fir Cemetery next year. And we will definitely be in touch soon!

We also want to thank everyone from Metro who joined us for the day including Matt, Noel, and especially Lupine, who not only arranged for us to borrow equipment, but personally delivered it herself!

We had an immense array of children and adults show up in costume: ghosts and goblins, witches, warlocks, and wizards (including representatives from every house of Hogwarts), sea creatures, dinosaurs, shoes, video games, superheroes and comic book characters, hobbits, historical figures, jungle animals, and just about every other person, place, or thing you imaginable.

Thank you and thank you again. We planned a little event that we though might attract several hundred or a thousand people. We were absolutely floored to see over double that number arrive (even if we did run out of candy a couple times). You brought an afternoon of life and laughter to the cemetery and its residents

We hope to see you again in the future at tour, headstone cleaning workshop, or other event. Please leave us comments, suggestions or other feedback, and if you took any photos on Saturday, we would love to see them!

If you are interested in joining Friends of Lone Fir, please join us for our Annual Meeting on Thursday, February 7, 2019.

Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for cemetery updates and news about other future events.

Tombstone Trick or Treat is a free, family-friendly Halloween trick-or-treat party hosted by Friends of Lone Fir Cemetery and featuring some of Lone Fir’s most prominent ghosts. On Saturday, October 27th from 12 to 3 in the afternoon, the cemetery’s gates will be flung wide for guests to wander the grounds and mingle with historic Portland spirits who have made impressive — and sometimes unusual — contributions to our community. The ghosts will hand out candy and chat about their historical lives.

This is a FREE event for all age groups. We will have our FLFC info booth along with opportunities to purchase merchandise such as t-shirts, hoodies and more.

Halloween is a popular time in cemeteries and the purpose of holding family friendly and educational events this time of year is to invite you in and share our love of this wonderful historical cemetery. Statistics have shown that if you invite, include, educate and share with the community it will foster local stewardship and ultimately mitigate vandalism which can be so rampant this time of year. So with that said we invite you to take part in this fun event and fall in love with Lone Fir Cemetery.

This year we are excited to offer for sale a 2019 Friends of Lone Fir Cemetery calendar. They will be for sale at this event for $15.

Looking forward to seeing you out at Lone Fir at our Halloween inspired event or at our monthly tours which are the first and second Saturday of the month!

 

 

Due to heat and smoke, the times for the Headstone Cleaning Workshop will be changed in August and September to:

• August 18 – 10 AM to Noon
• September 15 – 10 AM to Noon

 

 

Metro has decided to no longer run the Tour of Untimely Departures. This was not an easy decision; we know the tour is popular and beloved by many. It also requires a large amount of staff time and resources to produce. With all the community engagement efforts Metro Parks and Nature is committed to over the next few years, we are simply unable to host the tour.

We are interested in collaborating with community partners to welcome visitors to Lone Fir through inclusive and accessible activities, where people can share and engage in the diverse history of Lone Fir and Portland through free, family-friendly events. While we don’t have a timeline for a new event, we are interested in building on the Community History Fair that was started last year. Stay tuned for more information.

 

Need a good beach book this summer?

Check out our recommendations for Portland History books!

Friends of Lone Fir Cemetery needs enthusiastic volunteers for two upcoming events:

Saturday, May 12th, 2018 is Oregon Cemetery Clean Up Day. We need as many volunteers as we can get to help spruce up Lone Fir for spring as part of this state-wide effort.
The shift runs from 10:00am to 12:00pm and the duties include picking up debris and weeding around headstones. Tools, training and snacks will be provided. The more hands we have the more fun it will be for everyone. This is a cooperative project between Friends of Lone Fir, METRO, and SOLVE. To sign up for this opportunity please fill out the form here.

Memorial Day Weekend is May 26th, 27th, and 28th and Friends of Lone Fir needs volunteers in the cemetery all three days.
We need 12 people to help Central Catholic High School students put flags on the graves of veterans from 8:30am to 12:00pm on Saturday May 26^th.

On all three days we need 4 people to staff a welcome table and help families find  graves from 930am to 3:45pm. We hope for volunteers to work the entire shift, but we will
take your help if you can only attend for part of that time.

Shift duties include:

• 9:30 – 10 a.m. unload information supplies, erect canopy, set up tables and chairs
• 9:45 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. staff information table: assist visitors with finding graves (records and field work)
• 12:30 – 3:15 p.m. staff information table
• 3:15 – 3:45 p.m. load tables, chairs, canopy, supplies

Lastly, we need one or two volunteers to lead the Historical Tour for guests at 11:00am,1:00pm, and 3:00pm on Monday May 28th.

Contact J Swofford to get on the schedule and to get your questions answered, info@friendsoflonefircemetery.org

 

Please join us on the evening of Thursday, February 8, 2017, for the Friends of Lone Fir Annual Meeting at Revolution Hall. Revolution Hall is located at 1300 SE. Stark St Portland, OR 97214.

The doors will open at 6:30 p.m. for socializing (refreshments and appetizers will be provided) and our program will start at 7:00 p.m. We’ll be sending you more information by mid-January, but we are planning to have a guest speaker and a few interactive conversations about future opportunities for our organization, plus a calendar of events for 2018 and an official announcement about our next tour, the “Politics and Polemics Tour.”

If you are not an official member of Friends of Lone Fir, now is the time to join for next year! And if you are already a member, now is the time to renew your membership for 2018!

Membership options are:

• $30 contribution for a regular membership
• $15 contribution for retirees and seniors
• $10 contribution for students

 

You can submit your contribution online at the Friends of Lone Fir Cemetery website. To make other payment arrangements, please email us at info@friendsoflonefircemetery.org.

 

To qualify for a student membership, all you need to do is provide some proof of enrollment at any school or participation in any apprenticeship program. For more information, please email us at info@friendsoflonefircemetery.org.

 

If you plan to attend our Annual Meeting, please provide your RSVP as soon as possible. We have reserved a meeting space that can accommodate up to 50 people and space will fill up quickly. More importantly, if we need to reserve a larger meeting space due to popular demand, we will need to do so by the end of December.

 

On behalf of the Board of Directors, thank you — friends and members — for helping us out this past year. Our members and donors provided us the sustained financial support we need to carry out our overall mission:

 

• To educate the broader public about the history and importance of Lone Fir Cemetery through tours, workshops, and special events.

• To preserve Lone Fir Cemetery’s legacy and historic significance, especially in a rapidly changing city.

• To restore and replace headstones and other cemetery features for future generations to enjoy.

• And to collaborate with other like-minded groups in pursuit of this mission.

Those of you who joined us for a tour, workshop, or other event helped us put that mission into practice, and we genuinely enjoyed your company. We had over 150 people take a tour this past year plus another 50 help us out in our Headstone Cleaning Workshops. Our success as an organization depends on donations of both time and money, and we are truly grateful for all of our donors and contributors. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback about any aspect of Friends of Lone Fir, please get in touch.

May your end of the year holiday season bring you peace and joy, and we look forward to seeing you in February!

Warmly,

Joel Corcoran
Chair of the Board of Directors
Friends of Lone Fir Cemetery

Email: joel@friendsoflonefircemetery.org
Mobile: 503-381-5251

“I enjoyed the Historical Tour – I’ve taken it twice! – but what about the rest of the cemetery? What is that structure? Who is this and why is their name familiar? Is this granite? What does this symbol mean?”

Lone Fir is 30 acres and 25,000 (est.) burials. It’s too much for one two-hour tour. We’ve created two tours: one covers the area north of the main road, the other covers the area south.

Come join us for the North Tour in October, then the South Tour in November – we’ll continue to alternate tours/months.

Begins Saturday, October 7, 2017, North Tour; continues Saturday, November 4, 2017, South Tour.

10 a.m. – 12 p.m., meet at the Soldier’s Memorial.

Tickets for the 2017 Tour of Untimely Departures go on sale this Friday, September 15th!

Full details on the event at Metro’s Website

Volunteers Needed for Tour of Untimely Departures!

Volunteers are needed now for the Tour of Untimely Departures at Lone Fir Cemetery. All positions are available; actors, guides, set up, and logistics, starting now and up to the evening of the event, Saturday October 28th. We need you on the team to make this popular Halloween event amazing. You will help protect the cemetery while learning about Portland history and having fun.

For more information and to sign up please contact J Swofford at jswofford@abnormalimage.com

Volunteer opportunities available (listed in order of time/experience requirements from most to least). Please contact us for details:

Actors:
Dress in costume as a cemetery resident from long ago and tell your tale of untimely departure to groups of 20 as they stop by your grave site. You will get to create a first-person story approximately 4 minutes in length based on facts, articles, photos and information provided to you by our team. Here is your chance to make history (again!) by sharing your tale! 

Tour Guides:
Dress in costume and act as historical tour guide (basic script provided, with some facts and figures for ‘chatting’) for a group of 20 guests as you set out through the cemetery on a 45 minute tour. Guides stop at different gravesites to listen to the actors, provide bits of history and general information, while answering questions and having fun.

“Tails” for Tour Guides:
In costume, ‘tails’ keep the group together, follow along and act as the second tour guide…answering questions and sharing information as you move the group from site to site.

Greeters
Dressed in costume, greeters welcome guests, provide information and help set up tour logistics as folks get on their way. Help at the front gate or the exit with the flow of visitors on this special night.

Ghouls
In costume, “ghouls” roam the cemetery re-lighting candles and torches, checking on actors, giving breaks, monitoring gates and lurking around groups to provide a bit of frightful ambiance for guests. The ghoulish catch-all helpers of the evening.

Logistics Volunteers
Help set up and/or take down tents, tables, candles, torches. Assist our site maintenance coordinators with all of the little and big details that help set the stage for this night to function without a hitch.

Gate
Seeing 1200 people, some with pre-sold tickets and some buying tickets walk up, all of them will need help. We’ll have long lines that need organizing with questions that need answering. We’ll also need folks to queue up groups of 20 guests for the Guides to lead every 8 minutes. 

Musicians/Entertainers
Do you love to perform? Or have a skill to share? Lend a bit of ambiance to the tours. Station yourself, or wander the grounds. Contact us for more information on shift options.

Friends? Family? Sign up together as Tour Guide/Tail combination and share the duties of the night. Team up with your club or group to become Ghouls or Greeters. Actor friends? Share a role and support each other with breaks. Enjoy your Halloween together a fun, unique way for a good cause! Proceeds from this event go towards the historic preservation efforts at Lone Fir Cemetery.

For more information and to sign up please contact J Swofford at jswofford@abnormalimage.com