Evergreen Museum, home of the Spruce Goose files bankruptcy.

[Kirk W]

A major war-bird museum just filed for bankruptcy. The Evergreen Museum has one of the better collections on the west coast.

[BooneDocks]

Sad news. We were just there in August http://boonedocksllc.blogspot.com/2014/07/spruce-goose.html We hope they will be able to emerge from bankruptcy and keep the Spruce Goose available to the public. It was a monumental undertaking to ship the plane up to McMinnville,OR from Long Beach, CA. Not sure another museum would take on the challenge. And can't quite figure out what would become of it if Evergreen didn't emerge from bankruptcy.

[LindaH]

That's too bad. I, too, hope they emerge from bankruptcy. We visited there several years ago and enjoyed it.

[budeneighe]

It was only about 3 months ago that they said it would not go into bankruptcy along with Evergreen Aviation. We really wanted to see it but could not get into any suitable RV parks in the area at the time for the time we wanted to spend in the area.

I can't help but believe that someone will make something good out of this. There is too much of value in that museum and location.

[Cyberdave]

That's sad. Before being sold, it was the Champlin museum at Falcon Field, Mesa, AZ. It was an amazing collection of flyable WWI and WWII aircraft. I flew from Tucson to Falcon field twice to visit the museum. First time got lucky and met Greg "Pappy" Boyington while he was being interviewed for some documentary. During a break he sat and talked to all of us and somewhere I have an autographed picture. I've only been to three museums with flyable aircraft and this was the best.

 

Hopefully, someone will pick up the collection and keep 'em flying.

[wa_desert_rat]

Terrible news! Hard to keep a museum like this going; especially where it's located.

 

I worked on a big project at a wharf in Long Beach, CA back in the 1970s and next to where we parked our cars was a big hangar that held the disassembled Spruce Goose; stored for years. We got a peek at it thanks to Hughes Tool Co. but seeing it put back together and intact would be better.

 

It's a big lpiece of American aviation history (even if it wasn't flown very far) and I cannot imagine it not being picked up by another outfit.

 

Met Pappy Boyington at Arlington Airport back in the 1980s where he was also being interviewed for something. I had my 1946 Luscombe parked at the airshow that year. Very interesting fellow.

 

WDR

[N TX Dave]

I was just there in October and was impressed by the museum in general as well as the Spruce Goose itself, that is bad news. I was there with a group of US and British Airmen that were stationed at an airbase in England and they had a blast.