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Show cards for our 42nd Antique Paper Round-Up, which will be held September 19-20, 2025 at Lloyd Center in Portland, are now available. The 2025 card features Fresh Air Wagon No. 99. After a little research on the Fresh Air Wagon, this is the story that has unfolded so far.
This photo postcard has Sellwood written on the back. Sellwood is the home to Portland’s first and Oregon’s only remaining amusement park, The Oaks Amusement Park, where one-day events for needy children in the Fresh Air Movement were held. Eligible children had to be between the ages of 8 and 16. Fresh Air Wagon No. 99 was presumably one of several wagons providing transportation for the children to and from Oaks Park.
The Fresh Air Movement began in 1877 in Pennsylvania at a time when tuberculosis was a threat to society. Pennsylvania clergyman Willard Parsons wanted to help children of the poor. The public was asked to donate money to the Fresh Air Fund so they could bring poor children who lived in the big city tenements in New York City to the country for “fresh air, good food and the sights of the rural life” for two weeks during the summer. The movement is mentioned in Oregon newspapers beginning about 1883 in Roseburg. Later newspaper references state that the movement was active until the 1960s.
References to the Fresh Air Fund in Portland from The Oregonian on July 23, 1913, revealed that Miss Hazel Dolph was chairwoman of a committee called the Junior League and she was coordinating with the Associated Charities of Portland.
Secretary of Associated Charities, V.R. Manning, dispatched letters to the newspapers in other towns in Oregon to join in the movement. They solicited their neighbors for country places to take mothers and children of the city into their households so they could obtain rest and fresh air.
Manning explained that it is desired that 50 children a week be sent to the seashore or country. He added that where 400 children were given outings last year, 600 would be made the beneficiaries of the fresh air fund this year, if present fundraising plans are realized. In 1914, plans were floated to develop a Fresh Air Farm and Fresh Air Camps to help children get a good start in life. The most active years for the Fresh Air Movement in Portland were in 1913 and 1914.
Many merchants donated to the fund, sponsored fundraisers, and helped with costs for activities. Outings were organized to take 50 to 70 children and their mothers to places outside the city. One newspaper article showed a father accompanying his sons. The Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company offered excursion trips by train or by boat, mostly to the Oregon Coast and the Willamette Valley. The Southern Pacific Railroad also offered fresh air excursions.
Destinations for these excursions included Carlton, Dallas, Forest Grove, Independence, Lebanon, McMinnville, Nehalem, Newberg, Oswego, Pendleton, Silverton, Tillamook and Turner, Oregon as well as Ilwaco, Washington, among others, for ten days to two weeks.
Residents in the town of Silverton held Oregon’s most successful fundraisers and they organized the most activities for the children and their mothers. Many of the fathers were focused on earning a living for the family and weren’t able to go along. It is mentioned that some of the Fresh Air activities at Oaks Park were for wards of the court and orphans.
Portland merchant Edward Wortman was an ardent supporter of the Fresh Air Fund and in 1914, Portland’s Olds Wortman and King was advertised as “The Fresh Air Store.” Patrons would donate their coins to the fund. Fresh Air fundraisers were also held in churches and theaters to provide dairy products, groceries, clothing and shoes for impoverished families and also gave children the experience of a life time, vacationing in rural Oregon.
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