WALLOWA — There may not be an airport in Wallowa, but there’s now a museum of aviation history that includes plenty of facts, whimsy and fun.

Laureano Mier opened his new digs, Melincko’s Air Museum, and its companion, Melinko’s Café, on Friday, July 3. Both are painted an eye-catching yellow and red on the east end of Wallowa. The name comes from a toy monkey that has been carried by aviators on a number of globe-circling flights.

“The whole idea,” Mier said, “was to create a family environment where we can have ‘fun and zany’ all in the same place. It’s important for kids to have fun first to become engaged in an educational environment.”

Mier, who fell in love with airplanes and flying at age 8, was the educational director for the Evergreen Air Museum in McMinnville and also directed the museum at Pearson Air Museum in Vancouver, Washington. His new museum endeavor evidences the same enthusiasm for eclectic aviation history that was evident in the McMinnville and Vancouver museums.

“The reason these buildings are painted yellow and red goes back to the Gilmore gas stations,” he said. “Gilmore was actually a lion — a flying lion. In the 1930s, Roscoe Turner (who owned the stations) embodied the golden age of aviation with his mustache, tall boots and breeches and his pilot wings. He flew with a lion, whose name was Gilmore, until the lion weighed 150 pounds. Gilmore the lion flew 25,000 miles and participated in two transcontinental races,” Mier said. “The lion had his own parachute custom-built by the Irvine Parachute Co.”

Museum visitors are greeted by Gilmore — in this case, a large toy lion — along with information about his life and adventures.

To Mier, the most compelling information in Melincko’s Museum is the contribution of women to the history of flight. The museum’s walls are lined with tributes to pioneering women aviators.

“The Wright Brothers would never have gotten off the ground without their sister’s support and encouragement,” he said.