Taking a step back in time with Dairyville

Alpenrose's Dairyville opens Sunday, June 7, with just as much historical charm as ever

Written on a chalkboard in the school house at Alpenrose’s Dairyville are a couple lines of faint lettering: Tracey Cadonau 5-14-90. The handwriting is neat and tidy, seemingly belonging to someone who’d fairly recently learned how to hold a pencil or a piece of chalk.

Scattered throughout Dairyville — the Western-themed town built at Alpenrose — and among the rest of the 52 acres that make up the dairy and the site’s varied attractions, other clues to the past remain. Stepping onto the property truly is like taking a step back in time, partly because of the historical integrity the Cadonau family — which owns and operates Alpenrose — has worked so hard to maintain, and partly because there’s something about this slice of land that will always be reminiscent of a time long gone.

“Originally, we had our Frontier Days down here,” said Tracey Cadonau McKinnon, 33, great-granddaughter of Alpenrose’s original owners and the current communications and events director (and whose 8-year-old-self authored the chalkboard note). “I think back then there was such a stronger sense of community. Things have changed. I mean, people have so many places to go now, and people are willing to drive half an hour to go to some event. But this has always been free here, and it’s always been something that people would come to to hang out.”

Frontier Days was a tradition decades ago, after Cadonau McKinnon’s grandfather Carl Cadonau Sr. built Dairyville in the 1960s. It was a project he and the dairy’s workers embarked on at the end of each day, creating it little by little with no real concept as to how it would turn out. Miraculously, Dairyville still stands today and will open for summer’s Sunday Fundays beginning June 7 from 1 to 4 p.m.

“There was no real plan for anything; it just kind of materialized,” Cadonau McKinnon said. “I have some of the sketches, and they’re literally just drawings of, like, three buildings together. So they kind of eyeballed it and then built it.”

And the idea behind it wasn’t necessarily grandiose in scale. Carl Cadonau Sr. was a community man, his granddaughter said, and Dairyville was one more way to provide an outlet for the greater community. Just like it always has been, visiting Dairyville is completely free.

“It’s a way to bring people together and families together. There’s just not many things that people can do for free anymore,” said Cadonau McKinnon, with two of her children, 3-year-old twins, standing nearby. “We take our family of six out, and you can’t do anything fun for under $50. So to be able to come out here and give people options and fun things to do, and kind of take people through history — I mean, this isn’t new stuff, it’s all old — it’s kind of fun for people to see that.”

And she’s right. Dairyville isn’t new, at least if the 25-year-old chalkboard note is any indication. But it’s the years of history that make it so special, and that give it a feeling that’s hard to name. Yet buildings and artifacts aside, it’s the people who bring Dairyville’s history to life. Continuing to help run Oregon’s oldest family-owned dairy are Cadonau McKinnon and many other family members, all who grew up using and enjoying one aspect of the property or another.

While Cadonau McKinnon spent her days in the barn and riding horses, her brothers spent many a hot summer afternoon playing baseball on one of the site’s three fields, which have been home to the Little League Softball World Series for more than two decades. The first of those fields was made for Cadonau McKinnon’s father and uncles after they continuously trampled their grandmother’s rose gardens, and the quarter midget race track was built for similar reasons. Today, Cadonau McKinnon’s youngest children explore the property while she works, while her oldest son and his cousins spend their summers helping maintain the grounds.

“It’s everybody’s first job, it seems like,” she said. “It’s part of the family.”

Even with times changing as they do, the Cadonau clan has managed to keep Dairyville — and the rest of the Alpenrose legacy — up and running. While Dairyville might not be the only summer Sunday event anymore, it’s still a community staple, with plenty of history, ice cream and stories to be shared within the little western town that was built on a whim.

“Things are definitely much different, obviously, than they were back then,” said Cadonau McKinnon. “But things change, people adapt — it’s different, but it’s fun.”

And as her twins sit in the ice cream parlor, perfectly content while eating their scoops of mint chocolate chip, it’s easy to see that some things do stand the test of time.