Goldendale Observatory State Park Heritage Site History

Goldendale Observatory State Park Heritage Site offers visitors an opportunity to peer through a telescope to glimpse other worlds far beyond planet Earth, thanks to the dedication of people who generously gave their time and skill to build a 24.5-inch telescope for the sole purpose of providing the public an extraordinary experience.

An Observatory for the Public

In 1960, four men in Vancouver, WA came together to pursue their dream of building a telescope.

Omer W. “Van” VanderVelden had a career as machinist but retired early for medical reasons. He worked nights and weekends at his former shop to create the gears, shafts and fittings needed for the telescope.

Don Conner, an auto parts worker and self-taught amateur astronomer, had also retired for medical reasons. He drew on a skill he had developed during the Great Depression, crafting mirrors from glass furniture coasters, to painstakingly grind, polish, and figure (modify the surface curvature to precisely reflect light) the telescope’s mirrors.

M.W. “Mack” McConnell was a former glass engraver retired from a job in the city public works department. He worked with Conner to grind the telescope’s mirrors.

John Marshall was a retired electrician. He designed and built the wiring, switches, motors, and other electrical components for the telescope.

The four men completed a 12.5-inch telescope that they donated to Clark College in Vancouver in 1963. Purportedly, Marshall then asked the college to purchase a mirror blank for a larger telescope. The college agreed, and acquired a 205-pound, five-inch-thick Pyrex glass disk for a 24.5-inch telescope mirror.

As the four builders began to work on the larger telescope, they realized that they needed a better location, away from the light pollution and cloudy skies of Vancouver, for the telescope to provide optimal viewing.

According to many accounts, the seed was planted for the Goldendale Observatory on a trip to Goldendale made by John Marshall with his wife. They stopped at a café for lunch, and their waitress turned out to be the wife of City Councilman John Tol. A meeting with Tol, Mayor George Nesbit and all four of the telescope builders followed on May 28, 1964, and an agreement was reached for the City of Goldendale to provide a location for the project on land the city had acquired from the State of Washington on a hill overlooking Goldendale. All parties agreed that the primary function of the observatory should be for public education.

The builders fabricated a Cassegrain telescope using two mirrors to reflect light from the sky into the eyepiece. In a Cassegrain telescope, light entering the structure reaches the concave primary mirror, reflects backward onto a convex secondary mirror, then reflects forward again into the viewer’s eye.

The exacting requirements of grinding the reflecting surfaces to the precise curvature required to transmit and magnify light without distortions took the four men nearly ten years to complete.

Meanwhile, the City of Goldendale had received a federal Economic Development Administration grant to fund much of the building construction for the observatory. Tom Hargiss, a Yakima architect, designed the building based on the University of Washington observatory at Manastash Ridge near Ellensburg. The building was completed in September 1973, and the finished telescope was carefully installed.

Making a Park

After the observatory’s dedication on October 13, 1973, the non-profit organization established to operate the observatory experienced difficulty raising sufficient funds for maintenance, improvements, or hiring a director. Consequently, the facility was closed from 1973 to 1975. Beginning in 1976, the City of Goldendale began to contribute 2/3 of the facility’s operating budget, but in spite of the help, the project faced foreclosure by 1978.

The Observatory rose to national fame with the February 26, 1979, total solar eclipse, when thousands of viewers came to the area along with major media coverage, recognizing that Goldendale’s dry climate ensured one of the best viewing sites for the event.

On March 19, 1979, Washington State Parks and Recreation (WSPRC) Director Charles Odegaard met with Goldendale community members to discuss possible operation and preservation of the Goldendale Observatory. On December 30, 1980, the WSPRC acquired the observatory and five acres surrounding it from the City of Goldendale.

Volcanic Foundation

Goldendale Observatory is situated on a slope of the Simcoe Mountains, part of a feature geologists call the Yakima Fold Belt. The belt is an area of central Washington where tectonic compression of the layered Columbia River Basalt lava flows results in a series of parallel ridges that run perpendicular to the force of the stress—kind of like kicking a rug creates ridges in the fabric.

The Simcoe Mountains have a unique twist, though. This area is overlaid with hundreds of volcanic vents and lava flows, many with their source at small conical hills called cinder cones, some of which can be seen from the observatory. These features formed during relatively recent geologic time, within the last four million years. The observatory itself sits on one of the largest and earliest flows of this sequence, predating the cinder cones.

Indigenous Land

The park lies within the traditional territory of Sahaptian Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Reservation.

The valley of the Little Klickitat River that meanders below the Goldendale Observatory was frequented by Indigenous people travelling along a corridor that connected major fishing sites on the Columbia River with favored horse pastures in the Yakima Valley. The route was used as a part of the seasonal rounds that were used to harvest resources at optimal times in specific places.

A Park for Creative Curiosity

WSPRC staff present daytime programs for the public to learn about the sun’s surface features and inner workings, then view the sun through an eyepiece on a specially filtered telescope. Evening programs offer opportunities to view planets, star clusters, nebulae, galaxies and many other space objects.

Rising visitation prompted a major renovation of the facility beginning in 2018. Space for public interpretive programs was tripled and equipment was upgraded throughout the facility. The upgraded facility was opened to the public in April 2021, but the dedication was delayed due to concerns in the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the inauguration of the upgraded Goldendale Observatory on April 7, 2022, Governor Jay Inslee noted the Goldendale Observatory’s distinction as the largest publicly accessible telescope in the United States, saying:

“This is the perfect example of what our parks do because it brings literally the universe to Washingtonians. When you look out through the telescope, you’re kind of seeing humanity. You’re seeing the infinite capability of humans, and the infinite creativity and innovation of the amateurs who built this telescope.”