Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum

Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum
Established	1991 (as the Evergreen Museum)
Location	McMinnville, Oregon, United States
Type	Private: aerospace
Director	Larry Wood
Website	SpruceGoose.org

The Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum is an aviation museum which displays a number of military and civilian aircraft and spacecraft, most notably, the Hughes H-4 Hercules "Spruce Goose". The museum is located in McMinnville, Oregon, across the street from the headquarters of Evergreen International Aviation. Oregon Route 18 separates the museum from the company operations and McMinnville Municipal Airport (KMMV). An IMAX theater opened in 2007, and a second exhibit hall focusing on the Titan II ICBM and space technology opened in 2008.

History

First envisioned by Capt. Michael King Smith, son of Evergreen International Aviation founder Delford Smith, the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum is the realization of his dream. The museum first began with a small collection of vintage aircraft on display in a hangar located at the headquarters and was called the Evergreen Museum. In March 1990, the current owner of the Spruce Goose, the Disney Corporation announced that it was closing the exhibit located in Long Beach, Calif. The Aeroclub of Southern California was notified and they immediately began the search for a new home for the Spruce Goose. In 1992, the Evergreen Museum won the bid with a proposal to build a museum around the aircraft and feature it as a central exhibit.

The disassembly of the aircraft began in August 1992. The plane was disassembled and shipped up the coast and up the Columbia River from Long Beach, Calif. to Portland, Ore. From there, it went up the Willamette River to Dayton, Ore. where it was transferred to trucks and driven to Evergreen International Aviation. It arrived in February 1993.

For the next 8 years, the plane went through a detailed restoration, where volunteers removed all the old paint and repainted the entire aircraft. This was only a small part of what was done as restoration.

In September 2000, the main parts of the aircraft were completed. The fuselage, wings, and tail were all transported across the highway and into the new museum building, which was still being built at the time. For the next year, crews spent their time assembling the wings and tail to the fuselage. These were completed in time for the museum's opening on June 6, 2001. The control surfaces (flaps, ailerons, rudder, and elevators) were assembled later. The last piece was put into place on December 7, 2001.

Evergreen Museum was renamed the Evergreen AirVenture Museum in 1994. In 1997, the name was changed again, to the Captain Michael King Smith Evergreen Aviation Educational Center.

New buildings at the museum; IMAX on left, space portion on right

The Evergreen IMAX theater was completed in 2007, after much delay (initially, it was supposed to have been completed mid-late 2006).

Work began on the space museum building in September 2006. The building is identical to the aviation museum. It was completed in May 2008 and had its grand opening on June 6, 2008, exactly 7 years after the aviation museum had its grand opening.

Michael K. Smith was killed in a car accident in 1995. The F-15 displayed on a pedestal in front of the EIA headquarters (across the highway from the museum) and a new bronze statue on the pathway between the aviation and space museum are in memory of him.

As of mid-June, 2008, there are now two main large exhibit centers open to the public, consisting of aviation, where the Spruce Goose acts to anchor the other exhibits, and space flight, in another, matching, new large building. The current center of the space flight exhibit building is occupied by the SR-71 'Blackbird', which originally rested under one wing of the Spruce Goose. The museum is reportedly in talks with NASA officials to obtain one of the retired Space Shuttles at some time in the future, when it will become the centerpiece in the space flight exhibit center.^[1] Flight simulators for landing the space shuttle, as well as for Gemini capsule docking and the Lunar Excursion Module moon landing, are available for use by visitors now.

The newest exhibit building sits just east of the smaller IMAX theater building. The Titan II missile (never flown) which had rested beside the Spruce Goose, horizontally, during construction, now sits upright in a specially constructed display that includes two floors, silo fashion, below the ground floor. The Titan II exhibit also includes a recreated missile control room furnished with furniture and equipment donated from Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Key holdings

Panorama of the museum, taken from under the wing of the Hercules

Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress 44-83785
de Havilland D.H.-100 Vampire Mk.52
Douglas A-4 Skyhawk
Douglas C-47
Douglas DC-3A
Ford 5-AT-B Tri-Motor Tin Goose
- This is a flying Trimotor.
Foton-6 Space Capsule
- Unmanned version of the Vostok spacecraft (Russian space capsule)
Hughes H-4 Hercules
- This is the famous "Spruce Goose," a flying boat with the largest wingspan of any aircraft ever built.
Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird
- This Blackbird was one of three that were reactivated and used by NASA and the USAF in 1995. Its last flight was February 1, 1996.^[2]
Martin Titan II SLV Space Launch Vehicle
- This particular missile is the last of 13 Titan IIs that were selected to be converted and used as weather platform launch vehicles. This was the only one out of the 13 not to be launched.
McDonnell Douglas F-15A Eagle
- This aircraft is displayed on a pedestal at the Evergreen headquarters in memory of Michael King Smith
McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II
Mercury Space Capsule
Messerschmitt Bf 109G-10/U-4 610937
- This is one of a very few Bf-109s that is capable of flying in its current condition.
Mikoyan i Guryevich MiG-17A "Fresco" (true Russian version)
MiG-21 Mikoyan i Guryevich MiG-21MF "Fishbed-J"
Mikoyan Guryevich MiG-29 "Fulcrum"
NASA X-38 V-131R