A VIEW OF DOWNTOWN COTTAGE GROVE. Photo provided
”Walking down Main Street getting to know the concrete, looking for a purpose from a neon sign.” Those opening words to the Son Volt song ”Tear Stained Eye” often come to me as I stroll down the Main Street Historic District in Cottage Grove.
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992, the downtown is one of the best preserved turn of the century town centers in Lane County. Walking down the wide sidewalks and peering in the windows of the shops and eateries now housed in the old brick buildings, it’s easy to see why it was chosen to represent a typical small town in the 1978 film ”Animal House.”
Although officially the boundaries of the historic district are more tightly defined, I tend to think of it as from ”park to park.” If you start on the east side of Highway 99 with Bohemia Park and Row River Trailhead, then follow Main Street to the west bank of the Coast Fork crossing via the Centennial Covered Bridge, you will find yourself at the Veterans Park. You can there enjoy a quiet sit by the river or pore over the markers honoring both our veterans and the settlers who once passed this way in wagon trains.
If you haven’t visited here lately now is the perfect time. The trees on Main are getting their fall colors, there is a crispness in the air and the promise of the coming winter. There are some really neat shops providing quite the variety of interesting items, as well as victualers catering to your culinary and liquid refreshment needs.
There are two events happening on Main Street I would like to recommend. The first is the last of this season’s Art Walks. It will be this Friday, Oct. 26 from 6 to 8 p.m. Besides the usual guest artists displaying their talents, street musicians and open house locations offering noshing opportunities, there will be a special ”Witches Dance” performances sponsored by the South Lane Ballet Academy (8th & Main 6:15 p.m., 6th & Main 7:15 p.m.).
If you can’t make the Art Walk, I would like to invite you then to the Halloween Howl from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Halloween Day. Main Street will be blocked off starting at 1 p.m. and all of downtown will be tricked out and booths lining the streets. It’s a time for both you and the kids to get into costume (there will be a kid’s costume contest at 4 p.m. in the Opal Whitely Park) and pumpkins galore. The Witches Dance will again be performed.
So we hope to see you in our town just down the road from Creswell. If not at one of these events, then soon for a journey to the past while enjoying the present!
