How to walk the Oregon City Bridge and not die (*hack* *cough* *gag*)

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Today's installment of this humble blog's ongoing bridge series takes us south, to the Oregon City Bridge, which crosses the Willamette River down in, uh, Oregon City. It's a bit far afield for this project of mine, but it looked interesting and not excessively unsafe, so I thought I'd go check it out. It's outside my usual haunts and I'd only ever driven over it once or twice, and I thought it might be good for a few photos.







The bridge is pretty, but it's in terrible shape. To my untrained eye, at least, it looks like it's worse off than the Sellwood. I do realize the big trouble with the Sellwood is stuff you can't see easily, but it sure looks like the Oregon City Bridge is in a bad way. There are cracks all over the place, and places where the concrete's fallen away, sometimes exposing the bare metal skeleton underneath.





Updated: As a user comment below points out, ODOT already has a repair project in the works, scheduled for early 2009. Yay! So when I gripe about the current state of disrepair in the rest of this post and complain nobody's doing anything, just ignore that part, ok? Thx. Mgmt.



I wouldn't care so much if this was just another anonymous concrete girder bridge, but this is one of the state's collection of Conde McCullough bridges. There's a lot of those out there, but I think this may be the only one in the Portland area. I could easily be wrong about that. It's an unusual example in that the bridge deck is angled a bit, because the West Linn bank is higher than the Oregon City side. It's not as obvious in my photos as I hoped it would be. I think you may get a better view of that if you go uphill on the Oregon City side, but I didn't do that. Sorry.





Also, a couple of commenters below sort of get on my case for not recounting the long and illustrious history of Oregon City. I'd just like to point out that's intentional, as this post is just about the bridge, hence the title. Also the text and photos. I mean, there already are -- or were -- multiple museums devoted exclusively to that subject. So it's been covered already. And honestly I've never found pioneer history all that compelling. If you really wanted me to write about it, I would feel obligated to make up exciting new facts to make the story more interesting. I'd tell readers about how Oregon City lost the state capitol to Salem due to their rabid Confederate sympathies, a talent for picking the wrong side that persists to the present day, hence the big gold Saddam Hussein statue at the corner of Avenida Manuel Noriega and Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße. I'd even let people in on the city's dark secrets. For example, the townsfolk used to offer human sacrifices every full moon to appease the great foul kraken that lived beneath Willamette Falls. In fact this practice continued up to the early 1970s, when Governor Tom McCall personally captured the kraken with his bare hands and sent it back to California (where it quickly found a job as a record industry lawyer). Because it just isn't a proper Oregon myth unless Tom McCall shows up at some point. Anyway, you probably see where I'm going with this: Do you really, seriously, want me creating the internet's official record of Oregon City history? Yeah, I didn't think so.





Anyway, another unusual detail about the bridge is that it was designed with public restrooms built into the bridge piers, supposedly. While walking across, you'll come across a couple of wider areas with spiky art deco bits standing up. These were, supposedly, the locations of stairs down to the restrooms. And if you look closely at the bridge from the side, just beneath the bridge deck you can see what look like (and supposedly are) balconies. Balconies! I keep saying "supposedly" because it's such a bizarre idea. I mean, restrooms in the middle of a bridge? Who would dream this up? And who would use it, if someone dreamed it up? And yet, there's a certain appeal to answering nature's call while enjoying a grand view of Willamette Falls and the river. Too bad, then, that the restrooms were closed due to vandalism, way back in 1937. Or so says Wikipedia. I'm still not sure I believe a word of it.



The bridge has all the standard bike/pedestrian hazards. Not enough sidewalk, and too much traffic, going too fast. The bridge is on the narrow side, but this time vehicles bear the brunt of the narrowness. Parts of the bridge are scraped and battered from vehicle collisions over the years. I saw at least one pile of recent debris that looked as if someone had lost a side mirror by banging it against a bridge girder. Driving it in a sensible midsize sedan wasn't so bad, at least. But there wasn't a lot of oncoming traffic at the time, so maybe I was just lucky.



There's an additional, somewhat exotic hazard to worry about here on top of the standard ones. Wikipedia asserts that the concrete used in the bridge is something called "gunite", which was chosen specifically to resist corrosion due to sulfur dioxide from the nearby paper mills. Ah, the sulfur dioxide. Which brings us to the "not dying" part of this post.



If you've ever been to Yellowstone, or to any hot springs up in the Cascades, you'll instantly recognize the scent of sulfur dioxide. But this time it's a byproduct of making newsprint, not some kind of allegedly-health-giving natural mud concotion. So you've got no reason now to pretend to like it. There is one big advantage here, compared to hot springs in the Cascades, in that there are far fewer unattractive naked people. Which is something, definitely. The really bad thing about sulfur dioxide isn't the smell, though; it's that it forms sulfuric acid when it reacts with water, and there's a lot of water here. Eeeww. Gross.

The whole undertaking was a little gross, come to think of it. The air smelled really bad, something unidentifiable and foamy was flowing into the river just upstream of the bridge, and the bridge itself was practically rusting and dissolving away before my eyes. Ick! When I got back to my car and drove off, the back of my throat was still burning a little just from breathing the air. So I do think I've semi-legitimately covered the "not dying" angle this time around.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those snobby people who hate all things industrial and can't wait for those icky jobs to leave for China. That's crazy, and I don't see how you can expect to have a viable economy based on everyone making lattes for each other. The paper mills at Oregon City aren't pretty, but if you read the Oregonian, this is where your newsprint comes from. Basically I just didn't like the smell, or the subsequent tingling, burning sensation. I can't even imagine what it must've been like before modern Clean Air laws.

But if you ignore all that stuff, the bridge itself sure is pretty. There's no denying that. And a bit surprisingly, the businesses around either end of the bridge aren't notably sleazy, unlike the Sellwood & the Ross Island. So there's that.



Walking across the bridge? Oh, there's not much to that. Just park somewhere close if you need to, and walk across. There's no crosswalk immediately on the West Linn side, but if you feel like turning around, jogging across when there's no traffic is feasible, or at least it was when I was there. The heavy-duty bridge pillars stand between you and traffic, so it's really not all that scary. Relatively speaking, at least, compared to some of the other bridges out there. A bit stinky, yes, but not too scary.



If you park on the Oregon City side of the bridge, note that downtown OC has parking meters. Not the fancy green European boxes like we have in Portland, no, these are the real deal, old-sk00l parking meters. Ok, they're digital, and you don't have to turn a crank when you put the money in. But other than that, they're totally old-sk00l.

Also, there's the municipal elevator, just blocks from the bridge. I could've made it a twofer and checked out the elevator too, but I had other priorities. I've been on the elevator before, way back in my Cub Scout days. I remember back then there was this weird old guy operating the elevator, and it creeped me out a little even then. It creeps me out even more looking back on it.

Apart from the goofy 50's elevator, Oregon City looks pretty much like your classic, prototypical blue collar town. It's blue collar with a Portland-area twist: There's a homebrew supply shop right next to the bridge, and while I was walking around town I was passed by a Prius with the windows down, blaring country music. Seriously. The whole place is too perfect -- if Oregon City didn't exist, Hollywood would have to invent it. Maybe I'm just one of those dreaded Portland creative types, but when I look around, I see plotlines everywhere. Well, cliches, mostly, but that's about the same thing. Picture our hero, a fresh-faced all-American working class kid here in Oregon City. Daddy works at the paper mill, just like his daddy did, and his grandpa before that. Mama works long hours down at the diner. Our hero knows this will be his life too, but he wants out. If only he could land that football scholarship to State U. Then he meets our heroine, a rich girl from across the river in ritzy West Linn, home to the rich kids' school -- which is, coincidentally, the football archrival of our hero's school. Her daddy's a plastic surgeon, his trophy wife is a former spokesmodel, and they're usually away at the vacation home in Palm Springs. Our young protagonists quickly fall in love, but it's a problem, because he's from the wrong side of the tracks, the tracks in this case being a river. Cue outraged parents on both sides. Cue friends and teammates who all feel terribly betrayed. The bridge is our young lovers' special place, and several touching scenes are filmed there. The standard plot twists ensue, and there could very well be a climactic football game, as there often is. Our hero nails that scholarship, and finally makes daddy proud, for the first time ever. And then, it turns out that our heroine's going to State U. as well. Possibly her father's had a reversal of fortune, or the school has the #1 program in the nation for some obscure academic specialty she's interested in. Or she's merely giving up her own dreams to be with our hero. Something along those lines, anyway. Just so everyone lives happily ever after. Cue the credits.

Ok, it's not a very original plot. Successful movie plots never are. If it got greenlighted, I'd want to film on location (unless Vancouver BC made me a really great offer). To film on location, the bridge would need to be gussied up a little. Maybe ODOT could do it, since they're responsible for the bridge, at least in theory. Or if not ODOT, maybe the studio. Chances are the studio has more money anyway. So, ok, it's a longshot. If you have a better suggestion on how to get this poor little bridge repaired, feel free to chime in.