In 1964, an Oregon father began hand-building a fairy-tale park after a family road trip; Enchanted Forest opened in 1971 and now draws more than 100,000 visitors a year

Beside a major interstate in Oregon, a castle-shaped road sign topped by a nursery rhyme character marks the exit for a family-run theme park. Drivers who take the exit find a wooded hillside with shaded paths and along those paths sit hand-built figures from fairy tales and nursery rhymes, along with later additions such as rides and a western-themed town. Unlike the large corporate parks, it began as the spare-time project of a single state employee who built many of the early figures by hand and it is still owned and run by the same family.A 1963 family road trip, a $500 down payment and 20 acres bought in 1964NPR traces the park’s origin to a 1963 family road trip. Roger Tofte was a draftsman for the Oregon State Highway Division and returned home wanting to build something more ambitious. Tofte and his wife Mavis bought twenty wooded acres in 1964 for $4,000, the Oregon Encyclopedia records and NPR reports that the down payment was $500. The Spaces Archives note that his only previous cement project was a small backyard swimming pool. He worked on evenings and weekends and his coworkers at the Highway Department nicknamed the site “Idiot Hill,” though several of them ended up helping him, the Oregon Encyclopedia says.Opening day on August 8, 1971: 75 visitors, then 1,000 a week laterConstruction began in 1964 and the park opened to the public in 1971, about seven years later, KOIN reported. Tofte sculpted fairy tale and nursery rhyme characters such as Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater, the Seven Dwarfs and Little Red Riding Hood, as NPR described and his first sculpture was the castle at the entrance to Storybook Lane. As opening approached, the family had run out of money and still needed $2,000 to finish the park and at the last minute, Tofte borrowed the funds from a second bank, according to the Spaces Archives records.The park opened on August 8, 1971. Seventy-five people visited that day, according to NPR, paying one dollar for adults and 50 cents for children and by the following Sunday, after a front-page article in the local paper, roughly 1,000 visitors came through the gates. The staff included Roger, Mavis and their children Susan, Ken, Mary and Lori, the Oregon Encyclopedia notes. Tofte quit his highway department job in 1973.More than 100,000 visitors a year and three generations of the Tofte familyThe park operates from March to September and employs three generations of the Tofte family. The Oregon Encyclopedia puts annual attendance above 100,000, a figure NPR also attributed to the Tofte family in 2018, while the Spaces Archives lists up to 200,000. Nature too has not spared the place. During the winter of 1990, a storm toppled 20 trees and caused extensive damage to Ice Mountain Bobsled. In 2009, another ice storm brought down more trees. In 2014, two visitors trying to take a photograph caused the Humpty Dumpty statue to fall. Tofte continued building and developing the amusement park over several decades. OPB reported that he died on February 13, 2026, at age 96.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.