We are celebrating National Park Week 2023 with a donation milestone of over $1.5 million in contributions to the National Park Foundation since 2016. Through sales of the National Park Collection, Pendleton is proud to support the National Park Foundation, the nonprofit dedicated to protecting and preserving America’s more than 400 national parks.
Our Projects
Pendleton’s partnership has supported two landmark park preservation projects. Our first project was in Glacier National Park, at the beautiful Many Glacier Hotel. Restoration of the historic lobby included rebuilding the iconic helical staircase, which had been displaced by a gift shop.
Our second project is restoration and preservations of the historic Grand Canyon Train Depot in Grand Canyon National Park. The historic station is a landmark. Its restoration is currently ongoing, with a special focus on enhancing the accessibility so all guests can enjoy the train.
We are excited to announce a new project. We will be contributing to the development and support of the Desert View Inter-Tribal Cultural Heritage Site at Grand Canyon National Park. This includes the Desert View Watchtower, designed by architect Mary Colter.
“The national parks have been an important part of Pendleton’s heritage from the very early days,” said Pendleton CEO John Bishop. “Our National Parks Collection dates back to 1916. It is an honor to be able to continue to partner with the National Park Foundation to help support the inspiring work they do across our treasured national parks.”
We couldn’t do it without you. Thank you all for your support.
This time in styles that honor America’s National Parks! The new collection for men and women features iconic UGG® boots and slippers paired with the historic National Park Stripe designs of Pendleton’s National Park blankets.
The limited-edition UGG® X Pendleton® Collection will be available at all UGG®concept stores in North America and Asia, online at UGG.com, pendleton-usa.com and at select wholesale partners beginning August 15.
Inspiration
You probably recognize the stripe patterns from our Yellowstone and Yosemite blankets, shown here in photos by two of our #pendle10park explorers; Corey Jenkins (@ourfreeways) and Allie Taylor (@alliemtaylor).
The boots, like our blankets, are part of our initiative to honor and support the National Park Service in its mission to preserve America’s treasures, our National Parks.
Learn More
See our selection here: Pendleton x UGG Australia. We would love it if you bought from our site, but we have already sold through some styles and colors. So please head to UGG Australia to find anything you don’t see in our selection. And please don’t wait. The collection is honestly flying out the door. And we are not supposed to play favorites, but this style is our favorite.
…and it’s time for an adventure! You can join us for the Pendleton Picnic event in our retail and outlet stores, starting today, April 27th, and continuing through May 1st. We have so many fun things going on, and we are topping it off with double Perks.
So pay us a visit and get your picnic going! You can also enter to win this fantastic gift basket online here: ENTER TO WIN.
Oxbow Regional Park
As much as we all want to visit our National Parks for a day of fun and picnicking, sometimes it’s a long trek to visit one of America’s Treasures. But if you live in the Pacific Northwest, you’re never far from the wilderness.
So let’s stay local, and visit Oxbow Park, one of the Portland area’s regional parks. Oxbow is only 25 miles from downtown Portland. It offers 57 drive-up tent campsites and 10 RV sites, so you can spend the night. Pack the car, and let’s go!
This getaway isn’t remote, but it’s restorative to the spirit. Oxbow Regional Park stretches along the Sandy River, near Troutdale. It gets its name for the long, lazy curve that slows the current and makes the river a favorite for summer swimming.
When it’s cooler, the river is perfect for kayaking, boating, tubing and fishing.
The river might be one of the main attractions, but the park’s thousand acres hold fifteen miles of hiking trails through old-growth forests.
Bring your bird book. Along the river, you can watch the majestic osprey(also known as the fish eagle) swoop to the river and catch its prey.
When you hit the trails, listen and watch for the songbirds that flit among the centuries-old trees.
While you hike, watch for signs of the mink, beaver, raccoon, deer, elk, black bear and cougar that populate these ancient woods. Please note: pets are not allowed in Oxbow Park for the safety of both domestic and wild animals. No matter how fierce your dachshund might be, a cougar will win. So please leave him at home and tell him about it later.
The drive-up campsites are all equipped with picnic tables and cooking grills. This is a perfect opportunity for some outdoor cuisine, especially if it involves the Catch of the Day.
The park is home to the Oxbow Salmon Festival, one of the most popular fish festivals on the west coast. For two days, as many as 10,000 visitors come to experience spawning salmon, along with music, food, art, storytelling, and a fish maze. The fishing tribes of the Columbia Basin, including the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Yakama, and Warm Springs tribes, host cultural exhibits and activities at the Wy-Kan-Ush-Pum (“Salmon People”) village. This is a chance to learn about traditional fishing methods of the original Americans.
Oxbow Park is a beautiful place to experience the sunset with friends.
And of course, we hope you’ll take us along. We have been making National park blankets for 100 years, but we’ve expanded our offering for 2016, the centennial year of the National Park Service. Every purchase from Pendleton’s National Park collection supports special projects through the National Park Foundation.
The American Buffalo, or American Plains Bison, is a majestic symbol of the American West. Its story is rife with controversy and tragedy, and its resurgence stands as an important step towards a new beginning.
This month, a group of 89 genetically pure buffalo calves will return to the Blackfeet of Montana tribe. These calves are descendants of a small group of buffalo that were husbanded in the Canadian wilderness preserves.
According to Smithsonian.com:
Back in 1872, Chris Peterson of Hungry Horse Newsreported that a Salish and Kootenai Warrior named Running Coyote was having trouble with his tribe. As an apology, he and several friends rounded up buffalo calves on Blackfeet land and brought them over the Continental Divide to the Salish and Kootenai as a gift. The apology didn’t really work out, and ranchers Charles Allard and Michel Pablo took charge of the bison herd, eventually growing it to 300 animals over the next 25 years.
Near the turn of the century, disputes over grazing rights meant the herd had to be sold. Teddy Roosevelt reportedly wanted the animals, but Congress wouldn’t release the funds. So Pablo sold the buffalo to the Canadian government, which shipped the animals to Elk Island National Park, outside Edmonton, Alberta, where the herd has stayed for over 100 years.
To celebrate the return of these animals to the US, we want to share a look at our Pendleton buffalo blankets. The names link to pendleton-usa.com, where you can find out more information on each of these beautiful blankets.
Big Medicine
The rare white bison occurs only once in every 10 million births. In 1933, a white buffalo was born in the wild on Montana’s Flathead Indian Reservation and was called “Big Medicine” to reflect his sacred power. Many Native American tribes consider the return of the White Buffalo the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy and the beginning of a new era for the peoples and Mother Earth. Tradition spoke of the coming of a herd of pure White Buffalo. The seven bison on this blanket represent the seven directions: North, South, East, West, Above, Below and Within. Together they symbolize wholeness for mankind and the earth. Prayer pipes signify mankind’s communication with the Creator. In the center of the blanket, within the circle of life, are four hands representing the diverse peoples of the world and a new beginning. Shades of brown and green reflect the natural beauty of Mother Earth.
We have been asked over the years if this blanket contains real white buffalo hair. There was a VERY limited edition of this blanket woven with the hair of a rare white buffalo (and those will have a special patch to identify them) produced in 2010. Sales of the blanket helped benefit a nonprofit that, among other endeavors, funded the buffalo sanctuary where a rare white buffalo lived. You can read about that here: White Buffalo Blanket
Buffalo Roam
The buffalo was revered by many Native American tribes. The meat gave them food. The hides provided robes for warmth, tepee covers for shelter and shields for protection. Horns were crafted into bowls and arrowheads, and fat was rendered for candles and soap. The Buffalo Roam blanket captures the power of that mighty beast of the plains. The design by Native American watercolor artist Joe Toledo puts the sacred buffalo in perspective. Looming large in close-up and appearing smaller in the distance, it was ever present in the lives of the Plains Indians. Mr. Toledo mixes soft rainwater with his colors to reflect images from his Jemez Pueblo culture. His works are exhibited in collections in the United States, Canada and Europe.
Buffalo Wilderness
The Buffalo Wilderness design recalls a peaceful time long, long ago. It was the time when millions of buffalo roamed grassy plains from Oregon to the Great Lakes, from Canada to Mexico. Today our National Parks protect the wilderness, and the remaining buffalo there roam free. One of the largest herds (more than 4,000) of free-ranging wild buffalo lives in and around Yellowstone National Park. It is thought to be the only place in the United States where bison have lived continuously since prehistoric times. You can also see herds in Badlands, Grand Teton, Theodore Roosevelt and Wind Cave National Parks. A portion of the sales of this blanket are donated to the National Park Foundation to support projects in Yellowstone and Grand Canyon National Parks.
Prairie Rush Hour
The bison, often referred to as the buffalo, is the largest land mammal in North America. A big buffalo can weigh a ton (2,000 pounds!) and stand six feet tall. And they can run as fast as 35 miles an hour. Long ago millions of these mighty buffalo roamed the plains, prairies and river valleys. It was a time when there were no houses on the hills. When countless forests were green and the trees grew tall. When deer grazed by mighty rivers. Today you can see wild buffalo only in our National Parks, where they are protected. You can see one of the largest herds of wild buffalo in the United States in Yellowstone National Park. A portion of the sales of this blanket are donated to the National Park Foundation to support projects in Yellowstone and Grand Canyon National Parks. The Prairie Rush Hour is a jacquard throw that measures 64″ x 64″. This blanket is also available in crib-size.
Buffalo Creation Story
Buffalo are not typically associated with Navajo culture. So when contemporary Navajo artist Andrew Hobson discovered a story of how the buffalo evolved in Navajo creation stories, he was fascinated. Hobson’s original painting of the Buffalo-Who-Never-Dies of the White Buffalo Tribe inspired this Pendleton blanket. In the tale, Buffalo became angry with Holy Man for having two buffalo women as his wives. Holy Man killed the angry buffalo with magic arrows and wands. But to his dismay, all the buffalos began to die. Then sad, Holy Man brought the buffalo back to life and showed him how to revive all the other buffalo. The central figure shows the angry buffalo fractured in pieces to symbolize his death and journey back to life. Four buffalo tribes are shown inside protective medicine hoops, and the four sacred mountain ranges of the Navajo surround the central buffalo. The artist frames the work in the abstract rainbow symbolizing his personal Yeii, or protective deity. This blanket is part of the Pendleton Legendary Series.
Bring your Pendleton blanket and find a spot while it’s still dark. Watch the sky turn from black to deep blue as you listen to the calls of waking birds. Hear the rustle of ocean air as it raises waves to lap against the shoreline and skims through the forests of this peaceful paradise. Look to the distance, where the sky meets the Atlantic, and wait for the first rosy rays to brighten the horizon.
This is how you welcome daylight at Acadia National Park.
An Eastern Wonder
Acadia National Park is our easternmost national park. Its 47,000 acres reserve most of Mount Desert Island off the Atlantic Coast. Cadillac Mountain, named for French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, rises on the eastern side of the island. Its granite summit catches the first daylight in the continental United States each New Year’s Day.
Acadia National Park is part of the area known as the “Dawn land” by its original inhabitants, the Wabaniki people. A confederacy of five First Nations and Native American nations, the Wabaniki includes the Abenaki, Maliseet, Mi’maq, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot people. Ten thousand years before Mount Desert was sighted by Samuel de Champlain, these Algonquian-speaking natives lived in settlements along the Eastern seaboard.
Acadia’s Atlantic coast is a wonderland of ancient, lichen-covered boulders and rugged shoreline. President Woodrow Wilson established it as Sieur de Monts National Monument on July 8, 1916. On February 26, 1919, it was named Lafayette National Park. The name was changed to Acadia on January 19, 1929, to honor the former French colony of Acadia.
George W. Dorr is called the “father of Acadia National Park,” but its financial benefactor was definitely John D. Rockefeller, Jr. He paid to develop over 50 miles of gravel carriage trails, with features that include 17 granite bridges and two historic gate lodges that remain today. Along the paths are many cut granite “coping stones,” which act as rustic guardrails, and are known as “Rockefeller’s teeth.” The Rockefellers helped greatly with the reconstruction of the park after the wildfires of 1947, which destroyed over 10,000 acres.
Today
Today, as one of the most-visited parks in the country, Acadia welcomes hikers and bicyclists to its trails. Forty different species of mammalian wildlife call Acadia home, including (from the small to the large) red and grey squirrels, chipmunks, white-tailed deer, beaver, porcupine, muskrat, foxes, coyotes, bobcats, black bear and moose. Acadia National Park is aided in preservation efforts by the Friends of Acadia, which has worked to create a private endowment that will maintain the current 44 mile carriage trail system in perpetuity.
Acadia National Park is waiting to welcome you, and the dawn, every morning.
