Finding enchantment in an Oregon forest

TURNER, Ore. (CN) — Along Interstate 5 just south of Oregon’s capital city, a giant egg sits atop a castle.

Known to both friends and foes as Humpty Dumpty, this egg shows drivers the way to Enchanted Forest, an amusement park and one of Oregon’s most unique landmarks. Picture something like a funky and surreal Disneyland, or a roadside attraction of unusual strength.

Enchanted Forest has welcomed visitors of all ages since 1971. This sprawling, wooded amusement park in Turner, Oregon, was all created by a man with 20 acres of land and a dream of building something larger than life.

That man, Roger Tofte, died in February at 96 after pouring decades of imagination and hard work into this place. His daughters now run the park, keeping Tofte’s vision at the heart of the operation.

“In our family, supporting your dream was what love was,” one of Tofte’s daughters, Susan Vaslev, explained on a sunny afternoon this spring.

Like those parks repped by a certain anthropomorphic mouse, Enchanted Forest submerges visitors into an immersive fantasy land.

Unlike those parks, though, this one is noticeably homegrown.

“A lot of people have said, ‘You know, I like you’re not really high-tech,” said Mary Tofte, another daughter.

From the freeway, only the top ridge of a castle structure can be seen.

The rest of the enchantment lies beyond, within the forest.

At the entrance, a cobblestone path winds up a hill into a fantastical re-creation of an old English village. Keep walking and the setting transforms into an old Western town, then a haunted house and bobsled ride, then Storybook Trail — the park’s original attraction and arguably its crown jewel. This section features entertainment based on classic children’s stories, including a replica of the gingerbread house from “Hansel and Gretel” and a slide inspired by “There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.”

Along the way are dozens of nooks and crannies, all filled with intricate details. Windows in the English village show glass slippers, a sword lodged in a stone and a villager looking out from a second story. The Tofteville Western Town features a museum, a shooting gallery and even an explorable cave system.

On opening day 55 years ago, Enchanted Forest was advertised as open with a handwritten sign. Just 75 people wandered along Storybook Trail.

By the following weekend, the park was slammed with 1,000 curious visitors. Some had watched Roger Tofte build the park slowly over seven years. It was all hands on deck — but for Tofte’s children, it made for a pretty sweet first job.

“We don’t look back and go, ‘Oh, my gosh, our dad made us work,’” Vaslev said. “No, we wanted that.”

In those early years, the sisters — then just in their adolescence — worked night and day with the rest of the family. They helped handle everything from ticketing to helping their dad with park designs to operating a precarious electric hot dog machine.

“It’s what we did,” Mary Tofte said. “It’s all we knew.”

“ Our family didn’t have money,” Vaslev added. “Dad was working four jobs. And, you know, three of those jobs paid for building Enchanted Forest.”

With the park’s visionary creator now passed away, his daughters say loyal return visitors can rest assured that the dream of this place is still alive. Vaslev said, “Our best thing is to continue carrying on that legacy.”

Enchanted Forest has expanded since the 1970s. It now has nearly a dozen rides: classics like roller coasters, bumper cars, a carousel, a small train ride and bumper boats.

“I think he was happy just creating — continually creating,” Vaslev said of her father. “For a small park, we have a huge variety … When we made those decisions about what to do next, we didn’t just go, ‘Ride, ride, ride, ride, ride, ride.’

Which is to say, rides are merely a part of what Enchanted Forest offers. In one corner of the park, there’s a theater where Vaslev puts on original plays, season after season.

“Basically, dad just built me a theater,” she said. She’s the brains behind the operation, writing and directing plays that run all season long with a full cast.

There’s a couple resident musical groups, too, including an Irish band Vaslev leads called “Possibly Irish.” They pop up around the park, holding free performances.

“That’s the thing a lot of people don’t understand,” Mary Tofte said: “ You also get entertainment for your price.” All of it — the rides, the plays, the bands and the immersive art — are included in the cost of admission. Vaslev says they’re constantly brainstorming new ideas, figuring out “what is the next thing we need that is different from what we have that satisfies kind of a niche that isn’t being satisfied right now.”

Over the years, Enchanted Forest has garnered blips of national and international attention.

In 2014, it became a brief viral sensation when — true to his nature — the park’s Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. It was perfect fodder for clickbait stories, including one outlet that observed: “You can’t make this stuff up.”

Vaslev didn’t find it so funny. “The day it happened, it was so devastating,” she said. “We were all crying.” Just like the storybook Humpty, this one on Storybook Trail cracked to pieces when he fell. Roger Tofte, then in his 80s, took on the challenge of rebuilding another.

The park experienced another surge of interest in 2018, after the Travel Channel show “Ghost Adventures” examined the park’s allegedly haunted grounds. Hosts of the show investigated whether the purported remains of a bloody battleground might be leading to residual paranormal activities.

The sisters aren’t so convinced, especially about the existence of malevolent spirits. Since the park’s inception, they’ve seen no clear signs of ghoulish behavior.

“I’ve never seen anything myself,” Mary Tofte said. Still, they thought the episode was fun and get asked about it more than anything else. They’ve started leaning into the joke. “If something falls off a shelf or something, we go, ‘Oh, that must be dad,’ or ‘That must be mom.’”

The desire to see a ghost may draw some sightseers, but what keeps visitors coming back is the sentimental value.

“My favorite thing about the Enchanted Forest is the people that come back,” said Michael Bentley, a stage actor in the park’s theater.

Bentley has been performing in the wooded amphitheatre on and off since 2000. In the 16 or so seasons he’s worked here, he’s formed relationships with some returning visitors.

Last year, a teenager approached him and asked to recreate a picture his family had taken of him and Bentley when the teenager was just 4 years old.

“I was like, ‘That’s crazy,’” Bentley remarked. “That’s a weirdly magical thing.” He felt lucky to work a job “where people want to come see you, and it makes their day better.”

“I make people laugh for a living,” he said. “There’s kind of nothing cooler than that.”

Like most amusement parks, seasonal staff here are mostly youngsters, high school and college students working a summer gig for extra coin.

A smaller subset including Bentley constitute a core group of returning and year-round employees. Another is Timothy Ward, who started as a stage actor in 2014 before moving up the ladder and eventually becoming Vaslev’s full-time assistant in 2019.

“ I haven’t met anybody who works there and then is like, ‘Nah, I’m out of here. I don’t wanna be here anymore,’" Ward said. “It’s personal, and there’s heart behind it.”

Another is Kyle Cuitti, who has been with Enchanted Forest for more than a decade. He’s worked all around the park, for a time living on the grounds during off-season and at one point serving as Roger Tofte’s assistant.

“It’s all a labor of love,” he said. “Every piece is thought about very meticulously.” Take Storybook Trail, where every detail and character was sculpted by Roger Tofte with the help of Cuitti and other staffers.

“Everything is uneven — but a lot of it is intentional,” he said. “It’s a huge honor to be able to continue working here like this.”

So much is Enchanted Forest like a home to Cuitti that a few years back, he even got married at the park. A brick placed into the path in the English village forever commemorates his matrimony.

“It was just such a nice place,” Cuitti said. “I just really love the park, and it’s been a very big part of my life.”

All of it is credit to the family that started it all.

Homages to the Toftes are hidden in almost every corner of the park. Their voices appear in the Haunted House (Vaslev is a spooky woman in the attic; Roger Tofte and his son are singing skeletons), as well as displays based on “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” and “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” At another, based around the nursery rhyme “Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater,” Mary Tofte’s hand was used for a mold. For the Tofte sisters who now run this place, all of it made for a charmed and unique childhood. To paraphrase Mary Tofte: What other kids get to do stuff like that?