Kelly: 0:00

Hey everybody. A little while after recording this episode, we learned that Jeff Galloway had passed away at the age of eighty. Jeff was a person that was synonymous with Disney running, uh the Run Disney uh events, Disney marathons. He was an Olympic gold medalist. He was the official trainer for Run Disney. His program, the run walk, run method, or sometimes is called Jeffing, uh, is the method by which a lot of us who are really too old to have started doing marathons were able to actually finish our first one. He was a deeply loved man. Uh I did not know Jeff. I uh was around him at events from time to time. But in some ways, if you're part of the Run Disney Marathon community, Jeff knew you. Uh if you got to the end of a long race for at Disneyland or Walt Disney World, you were going to see Jeff at the finish line. You know, as in his late 70s, he was there for the entire time, for hours and hours and hours. And if he caught your eye as you were about to cross the finish line, he gave you a smile and and a pumped a fist and and gave you a way to go, you did it. When I finished my first marathon at Walt Disney World, that happened to me, and it was just so powerful and so moving. Uh Jeff was known to tell people over and over again, you can do it. And hey, we get to do this. We get to go out and run. We get our bodies are letting us do this, and and we are so privileged. Jeff meant a lot to that community. Um he is close to people that I consider friends. Uh his granddaughter Carissa is the main Run Disney race announcer. She's at pretty much every race uh that you would run at a Disney park. He he was wonderful, and he is going to be deeply, deeply missed. So thanks a lot, Jeff, for everything you did for all of us. And now uh we hope you enjoy this short episode, a tribute Pete and I wanted to do to Roger Tofty, uh builder, creator, and mastermind behind Oregon's Enchanted Forest. Hey Pete! Yeah. What are we talking about today?

Pete: 2:57

Well, today's little shorty short is uh gonna be about a handcrafted, family-owned theme park, and we're actually gonna focus on its founder. Yeah. Because sadly he passed away recently, and we thought this was be a great episode to put out there as quick as we could. And our story is about the enchanted forest in Oregon. Oregon, right around Salem. Yep, right around Salem, Oregon. Its founder. Roger Tofte. Roger Tofty.

Kelly: 3:23

Yeah, Roger Tofte, rest in peace. He just passed away a couple weeks ago now, uh, February 13th. He was ninety-six years old. Wow. 96. And you know, I when I think about things that I love about America, and I do love many things about America. I like the qualifier. I like many things about it. I like guys like Roger Tofty. Yes. That is that is to me the the the kind of great American story that I love. This guy, Roger Tofte, he was a guy that was a commercial draftsman. He made signs for the highway department in Oregon. Yep. He learned watch repair. He did a bunch of commercial printer art. He was just, he was a really, really interesting character. You know, he lived around Distoria, Oregon. He he would take his family back to uh the ancestral homeland, Wisconsin, whatever, and he kept driving through Oregon going, Hey, there's nothing here for kids and families. I wonder, like maybe I should just make something.

Pete: 4:30

Mm-hmm. Yeah, rather than complaining about it, he took it into himself, so he went to Turner, Oregon. Yeah. Turner, Oregon, which is right near Salem. He bought 20 acres of land. And he bought four grand.

Kelly: 4:44

Right. So he he put he put down money, he paid five hundred dollars down and paid fifty dollars a month. Yep. That was that was his deal with the banker. For the rest of his life. For the rest of his life.

Pete: 4:56

No, I don't know if that's true or not. When he so he uh Well, this is in 1964, by the way. Let's let's count for for inflation, the price that he paid for the land was about forty-one thousand dollars. So it's still not a lot of money.

Kelly: 5:08

So, you know, he he still got he got a good deal. He and he just started building. He was like, what uh what should I build? So he starts he he knew how to do sort of concrete fabrication, so he started building like fairy tale characters very similar to what they have in Oakland's uh Children's Fairyland. He just just started kind of putting things together, and because he was a commercial artist and because he was a watch repairer, he he knew his way around some mechanics. Yeah, absolutely. And he worked on it for seven years.

Pete: 5:44

Right, before he even opened it. Before he opened it. He worked on this thing for seven years, like this is gonna be my theme park for seven years. Okay, guys, it's gonna be theme park, my theme park. It's got a village square, and it's got the Humpty Dumpty that greets people. Some people think it's charming. Yeah. I find it kind of terrifying, but that's me. Yeah. No, no offense, uh, Mr. Tofty or the Tofty family, but the Humpty Dumpty always, even when I was a little kid, yeah, it was kind of terrifying.

Kelly: 6:09

Um Yeah, and when when he opened the park, all they really had was the the kind of nursery rhyme area with the the Humpty Dumpty and I think the witch's hat, which the giant witch's hat with the slide in it. When they opened up, they literally just took a piece of butcher paper and wrote open and stuck it out front. That's what they did. Like he put one of his daughters taking tickets, another one of his daughters was selling hot dogs. So his daughter Sue, and they're and all the kids are still involved. Still now. So his daughter Sue is like 14, she's selling tickets out of a cigar box. Mary is 10, she's selling hot dogs, she's like figuring out the money on her fingers to figure out change. That's so great. His wife was managing the business, and they they had like what about 75, 80 people the first week. Mm-hmm. But then someone from the paper showed up. Yep. And the second week, they had 1,500 people.

Pete: 7:06

Yep. Everything changed. Suddenly, like this little thing where it's like, maybe there should be something for families and kids. The families and kids went, You're right. Yep, here we are. We need something. We want something. He really filled a gap in a region that was kind of bereft of that.

Kelly: 7:22

And and he just, it was just his vision. He he drove around, saw this thing, was like, This is pretty. This is like a fairy tale here. I'm gonna buy it. I'm gonna build a fairy tale land. Great. Yeah.

Pete: 7:34

I I went when I was, I think I was four or five years old. So this is probably 1979. Yeah. Okay. Hadn't been open long because it opened in 71. Oh, it was it was still a relatively young park. I remember going to this, and it was it was perfect for a kid who had who was in a car for a long period of time. Because we were driving from San Francisco to British Columbia was like our goal. But when you're a five-year-old kid and you're stuck in the back of the car and your parents are used to driving long stints, yeah. It was a thing. And there's pictures of me standing in front of the witch's mouth.

Kelly: 8:09

Yeah.

Pete: 8:10

Going through going through the witch into the tunnels and climbing on the mu concrete mushrooms. And they had these giant story books that have like little vignettes in front of them. Like Hansel and Gretel were going through the woods before being attacked by a cannibal witch. That's not on there. I'm sorry, Tufty family. I've got a weird sense of humor. Yeah, he built a lot of fun for a kid.

Kelly: 8:30

Yeah, like after after the fairy tale area, he built a western town because that's just what you do when you built making a theme park. Right. So he built this kind of cool little western town that's where they put in that log ride. They put in a theater, which later the theater just started doing these shows that his that uh Roger Tofty's daughter Sue just wrote. She would just write the shows. And that was what they put on.

Pete: 8:53

I love this because it's the family aspect where the family is all in. Yeah. They're all into this. Like this is our this is our place. My dad dad built it, but I believe in it too, and this is our world.

Kelly: 9:04

It's what we did as kids. Yeah, and they're still doing it. They're still doing it. Like some of some of the detail work with you look through stuff with this, like the the haunted house that he built. It's a little low rent. They didn't have a lot of money, but it's clever. It's super clever. He did this cool thing where he painted shadows at the ends of corridors, so you got the sense that someone was waiting around the corner for you. And it's just like it's so simple but so effective.

Pete: 9:34

The whole thing opened with Storybook Lane. Yes. Which was that was in 1971. Yep. And the the Toftyville, Western Town, and Old European Village were added later. And that very haunted house was added the year I was born, 1974. So yeah, all the all the all the the amazing, the amazing stuff that was there. Uh and they do have rides, folks. Those who are listening going, oh, it's just a walkthrough for kids.

Kelly: 9:57

Yeah, oh no. Oh no. They have rides. Yeah, there's there's a log ride, there's uh a kind of cool little the Ice Mountain Bobsled roller coaster. Yeah. They have a uh much, much later, like in the in the 2000s, they opened a thing called the Challenge of Mondor. And here's the thing, here's the thing that really endears me. So you go look at, say, what goes on at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, and I love the Santa Cruz Beach Board. Sure. So they they, you know, what a decade or so ago, they put in this kind of cool haunted house ride. Yeah. And it is cool. But they bought it. And they they bought it from a company who did the design and did all the work on it, and it's neat. But what the Tofties did, so they're they're gonna do put in a high-tech ride in the 2000s. What they do is one of the daughters, Sue again, stuh writes a story. She writes a story for the ride. She writes a musical score for the ride, and then they go and work with a company that builds this sort of thing to get the thing that they wanted. And it's hell, and it's so it's so different, it's so hands-on. Like everything, the details are so important to them. Wow. Yeah. Oh, and and the challenge of Mondor, it's so I say I first say, well, it's kind of a shooter ride. We've all seen a million of those, but it's a trackless shooter ride. So it's super high tech. Oh, yeah. For for a little indie park. When did that open? 2006.

Pete: 11:31

Wow. So that's pretty cutting edge. Uh yeah. No offense to our Oregonian brothers. Yeah. But this is not there's a difference between Oregon money and California money when it comes to tourist influx. Yes. And just knowing how much a trackless ride system can cost. Yeah. That's pretty impressive. And that actually that's actually a complement to the Enchanted Forest is to be able to make enough money and revenue to be able to afford to install something like that. Right. That's really impressive.

Kelly: 12:03

Well, and one of the interesting things that ha happened with the Enchanted Forest, one of the kind of most beautiful parts of their story is that when COVID happened, because you know when you're running a business like this, you were on a knife's edge. Yes, you are. You were always just kind of barely making it. And people grew up with it. It has people love the park, people went there. Yeah. But when COVID hit, it all but destroyed them. I know. They almost went under.

Pete: 12:31

There are a lot of attractions in Oregon that actually did not survive. That's right. There's a wildlife park near not Brookings, abandoned. That is no longer there. But that that also had something to do with how they were treating the wildlife, but that's a different story. But COVID also did them in. And there was and some of the mystery shacks that we have talked about in the past also suffered because of that.

Kelly: 12:51

They and by the way, this it had they had a gravity shack. And Tofty built it himself. It was Sir Newton's gravity factory. And it it has many of the uh much of the same shtick, like thing things are tilted in funny ways that really disorient you. But it doesn't, it doesn't do the like all the obvious gags. He just kind of puts you through it and and just disorients you. But he just did it off the top of his head. He's like, I'm gonna build this thing, it's gonna do this weird thing. But he he put a gravity shack in. That's so great. Yeah. But after COVID, there was also like like it's right towards the end of COVID, like 2021, there was a huge ice storm in that area. Yes. Uh a bunch of trees fell, it destroyed some things, the one of the small train rides was destroyed. Humpty Dumpty got lightning. Yeah. Yeah. And at that point, Enchanted Forest wasn't gonna be able to make it. Like they were like, okay, COVID and this ice storm have destroyed us. So someone just put out a call for help. 8,000 people donated. Oh. Five hundred thousand dollars, half a million dollars got donated by people just to save Enchanted Village. That is so fantastic.

Pete: 14:07

Yeah. That shows the love that people have for this place. Yeah. I I still have very fond memories of it, and I only went to it once. Yeah. When I was five. But I remember what the interior of the haunted house was like, shock of shocks. I remember I remember the feeling of it. I remember it being actually a very nice warm summer day and walk around in shorts. And I remember it very vividly. And I was a very little kid. Yeah. But it was that memorable.

Kelly: 14:32

Yeah.

Pete: 14:32

And to know that that was made by a family makes it all the more all the more enchanted. And yes.

Kelly: 14:42

And is still run by the family. Even after Roger's death, like his family still runs it. And you think about something like Knott's. So Knott's Berry Farm run by a family for a very, very long time. Predates Disneyland and makes it what up until the nineties before they finally sell out?

Pete: 15:02

I don't remember when they got purchased by Cedar Fair, but they yeah, they it took 'em it took 'em a long time.

Kelly: 15:07

But they did eventually sell out. And and uh I'm not casting aspersions at all. I don't I don't blame them for what for doing that. No, no, no, no. I'm sure they're tired of it. No. But but there's something just really beautiful about uh Tofty and the family did with Enchanted Forest, and that they've just kept it in the family. And they continue to keep it in the family, and they've never tried to turn it into a corporation or expand it to other locations. It's just this is their thing, and it's here, and this is what they wanted to do.

Pete: 15:39

Absolutely.

Kelly: 15:40

And I just think that that's beautiful.

Pete: 15:41

I agree, I absolutely agree. So please, Hofty family, please accept our condolences for the loss of your father. He was a very influential man, and by all accounts, a very nice man. Yes. And we we here at the Low Down the Plus Up really revere people who do this. Like Kelly and I have talked about this for years, in which we both really revere people who have this hands-on roll up your sleeves. I'm just gonna do this myself attitude towards entertainment like this. Yeah. Like the the Knott's family and like the Tofties and like all the gravity shacks out there. There's just something about that that makes it all the more special rather than having it like a mega corporation like Disney or Six Flags, Cedar Fair, whatever, you know, Universal or whatever these bigger corporations, they got the money, they got the money to clean your clock. Yeah. But these smaller people don't. They don't have that money. Yeah. And yet they still put something together that is remarkable, special, and memorable.

Kelly: 16:45

Means a lot to a lot of people. Absolutely. Yeah.

Pete: 16:47

So just as a as a we don't normally do this, but because that they these people are so special, I do want to put a shout out their season. If you are interested, if you are an Oregonian or someone who's going to be taking a road trip through Oregon, please take a minute and visit their website, enchantedforest.com. Yeah. And if you really want to show support in their off season, because they're not open until the end of March, but then they will be open for business and rock and rolling through the summer. Yeah. Visit their visit their apparel store. They've got a marvelous assortment of t-shirts and hats and ties and socks. And the designs are not terrible. They're really, really whimsical and just as whimsical and fun as the park itself. So you're not buying just something that's corny. Like they're actually really cute. And one of my favorites is their march apparel, which is it just says possibly Irish. So I will be ordering some stuff this evening because I look you through this while we've been talking. And I'm, oh, I gotta get a couple of these things just to just to wear them in future shows.

Kelly: 17:53

Well, and then just like the rest of the park, the designs on the merch and stuff, it's handmade.

Pete: 17:57

Exactly. Yeah. I'm a big fan of handmade amusement. As we move forward with this show, I think we're gonna do a lot more of these little shorty shorts to talk about these more handmade attractions. But we wanted to make sure that we gave a shout out to the Tofty family because of their loss of their dad this this month when we recorded this. Yeah. So all right. Well, I'm Peter Overstreet. And I'm Kelly McGubbin. And you're listening to Low Down on the Plus Up.