Local History Comes Up for Bid on July 26

The Cadonau Family’s locally famous dairy opened in southwest Portland in 1916.  The family owned the dairy for five generations before the sale in 2019.  Their brand was named after the alpine rose by the Swiss-born wife and early co-owner of the dairy.  The 52-acre grounds of the dairy included a velodrome that was built to host the 1967 National Championships, a baseball/softball field that hosted Little League World Series games from 1956 to 2019 and a quarter-midget racing arena.  One of the highlights of the property was “Dairyville” which was a replica of a western frontier town added in the 1960s.  It had false-front shops, a doll museum, an ice cream parlor, a harness-maker’s store, a music shop and a 600-seat opera house with a 4000-pipe pipe organ salvaged from the Portland Civic Auditorium.  For decades, Dairyville hosted an annual holiday event called “Christmas in Dairyville.”  In addition to a gift shop and a house where children could get their picture taken with Santa Claus, there was “Storybook Lane,” an elaborate, walk-through attraction.  Visitors would wander through a snowy, moonlit mock-village inhabited by farm animals and displays based on Mother Goose’s fables.  The attraction also included a tiny fire station for kids to play in.  Choir groups from local schools would perform.  The opera house hosted nightly screenings of comedy shorts with The Three Stooges and Laurel and Hardy.

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