Chun M.
Yelp
Huge museum with tons of airplanes, space capsules, missiles, rockets, engines, you name it. The museum is housed in 4 huge buildings across the street from the old Evergreen International Aviation airfield. The main building houses most of the airplanes, including the biggest prized gem, Howard Hughes' H-4 Hercules, better known as the "Spruce Goose", the biggest airplane ever built and flown. It was bought from the Walt Disney Company in the early 90's, disassembled in Long Beach, CA, barged up to Portland and trucked down to McMinnville, where it was reassembled & totally refurbished in the current building built for it. Many other historical planes are nestled under its huge 320 ft 11 in wingspan. The docents are very knowledgeable about the plane and enthusiastically answered all my questions. Some other notable planes in this building are a PBY Catalina flying boat, Focke-Wulf FW-190, a replica Messerschmidt Me-262, F-4 Phantom, F-105 Thunderchief, A-7 Corsair II and a replica of Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis.
The equally sized building across the tarmac houses most of the space exploration related artifacts plus many post-war and modern jets planes and helicopters. There are a couple of Titan ICBMs like the type that launched the Gemini capsules with one standing upright in a simulated launch silo dug into the ground. Some planes have spilled over into this building as well with modern jets such as the F-15 Eagle, A-10 Thunderbolt II and rare MiG-23 "Flogger" and MiG-21 "Fishbed".
If you walk around the grounds outside, you'll also find a few more recent planes such as the F-14 Tomcat and a Russian MiG-29 "Fulcrum". Also outside is a rare, but odd-looking CH-37 Mojave heavy-lift helicopter from the 1950's sitting by itself behind the Space building. Out in the rear parking lot, you'll also find carcasses of an F3D Skyray, another Titan missile and an F-89 Scorpion, waiting to get some restorative love.
The middle building houses the theater, but was closed and doesn't seem it will be reopened anytime soon. The other building to the west houses the Wings & Waves Water Park with outdoor water slides going around and through an old 747 cargo conversion. It was also closed for renovation being so late in the season, but I'm not holding my breath for it to reopen.
Even though I loved everything I saw, my star holdout is that EASM seems to be on rocky financial ground. The original founder of Evergreen International Aviation and the Museum died in 2014 and after some bankruptcy shenanigans, parts of the museum were sold to another stakeholder. Some of my favorite planes from WWII were sold off to raise money including the FG-1D Corsair, P-51 Mustang and B-17 Flying Fortress that I never got to see. Many other planes that were on loan to EASM were recalled by their owners when their loan agreements were not renewed. If you are planning to visit, go soon or the doors may be shuttered before long