Milestone P14

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So here we have the last Stark St. milestone on our tour: Milestone P14 is way out on the far end of Gresham, on the campus of Mt. Hood Community College. It's near, but not quite at, the intersection of SE Stark and 257th Ave. / Kane Drive. The milestone is east of the intersection, on the south side of stark. There's a low tree-lined berm separating the MHCC parking lot from Stark, and the milestone sits on this berm between a couple of trees. Just a few steps east of it is a big greyish (or maybe green-greyish) utility box of some kind. It's bigger than the milestone and closer to the street, and may be easier to find.



The most convenient way to visit P14 is to park in the college lot just steps away from the thing. As far as I could tell, there's no parking permit system similar to what PCC and Portland State have, and you can park here without getting tased by a campus rent-a-cop. They usually have signs up for that sort of thing and I didn't see any. However, if you do run afoul of a zap-happy security guard, it's not my fault, and I hereby disclaim and renounce all responsibility, real or imagined, for anything that does or doesn't occur here, and you hereby accept that this is one of those inherent dangers that come from acting based on information you found on some random site on the interwebs. A random site with a peculiar and obscure name, no less, run by some random guy with a stupid anonymous nym he doesn't even like very much anymore and is seriously considering changing. Just so we're all clear on where things stand, I mean.



If worse comes to worse, you could always park at the gas station across Stark, or in one of the strip-mall parking lots across 257th. Although they're probably patrolled by predatory towing companies, come to think of it. So there's always TriMet, but the nearest #20 stops are a bit of a walk. Actually this is as far east as the #20 goes; at 257th it turns south and meanders its way down to the Gresham Transit Center. The area's also served by the #80 and #81, which I'm not very familiar with.

Basically the point of all of this handwringing is that I'm trying to conjure up a little excitement around P14, and it's not really working very well. Other than the college, the area is your basic suburban mix of fast food chains, drugstores, big box stores, a few offices here and there, and I'm sure it's perfectly nice and everything... but it leaves something to be desired in the (sub)urban exploration department. You could be anywhere, I mean, if there wasn't a milestone here to tell you exactly where you were.



The stone itself has a pronounced Pisa-like lean to it. If you've arrived here at the tail end of the hypothetical milestone pub crawl I keep going on about, it may help to be aware of this and know that it's not just you. You could probably do some trick photos like people do with the Leaning Tower of Pisa, where you pretend to hold it up, or push it over -- the difference being that your accomplice needs to stand behind the stone instead of in front of it to get the perspective trick right. Which you could easily figure out for yourselves if you were sober, which you aren't, because this is the last of 9 (or so) stops if you're just doing extant milestones, and the 14th of 15 otherwise. Which either way is a whole lot of stops. Speaking of which, there's what looks like a sports bar across from the college on 257th/Kane, or there's a Starbucks just west of here if you'd rather have some coffee at this point, which would be understandable.



The Stark Street Mile Markers blog argues that, as part of conserving and restoring the milestones, P14 should be reset in an upright position. I'd argue "not so fast" on that particular point. The milestone's so old that the lean itself may have some historic value worth preserving. I mean, it's one thing if it started leaning 15 years ago for no reason and it leans another degree or two every year. You'd want to correct that, obviously. But if, hypothetically, it leans due to an accident with an errant Stanley Steamer in 1903, the Northwest's first recorded DUI incident -- or possibly was the work of especially dimwitted Nazi saboteurs in 1942 -- you may want to leave it the way it is. Don't laugh; stranger things happen all the time in the historic preservation world. I'm not saying it should or shouldn't lean; I'm just saying the matter requires further research, and no messing with it in the meantime. There's no rush, after all. It's a rock, it's operates on geological time, and it's survived close to 130-150 years already, which is way more than we can say for whoever put it here.

Besides, I think I kind of like it this way. It's a distinguishing mark. It gives P14 a little character. It's almost jaunty, even. But then, I've been spending far too much time of late staring at old rocks. So it might be best to just ignore me. At least on this particular topic.

Milestone P13

So we've reached the penultimate stop on our tour of the Stark St. Milestones, namely Milestone P13, in the 23600 block of SE Stark. The closest cross street is Cleveland Avenue, about a block west, so we're squarely into suburban Gresham at this point. At the corner of Stark and Cleveland is the Olympic Gym fitness club, and the milestone sits in a little landscaped triangle at one corner of the gym grounds. Immediately east of the milestone, Stark is bordered on both sides by one of those grey concrete sound walls. Concrete sound walls are usually a clear sign that a road was widened from two to four or more lanes, probably no earlier than the mid-1980's. The Stark St. Mile Markers mini-blog says of P13: "This stone was rescued by the Gresham Historical Society and reset in 1987." I think the story is that it was knocked down by a thoughtless road crew during the road widening, and the local historical society had to go track it down and find it a new home near its original location.

Updated 9/10/11: Thanks (once again) to the magical Historical Oregonian database at the Multnomah County Library, we have a bit more detail on the rescue of milestone (or "mile post") P13. The May 14th, 1987 Oregonian had a piece about the milestone being restored to its rightful place: "Historic Baseline milepost saved in Gresham":

At the 13th hour of the 13th day of the month, a stone marking the 13th mile east of the Multnomah County Courthouse was dedicated on Wednesday. The ceremony took place at the original site of Milepost 13, now adjacent to the jogging track at McIntire's Athletic Club, 23500 S.E. Stark St.

...

The 133-year-old 13th milepost that was rededicated Wednesday had been lost since it was inadvertently removed by workers during a construction project.

By chance, Gresham residents Rob and Bud Bunting found the hand-hewn stone obelisk in a pile of construction debris.

After the marker was rescued by Jim Chase, former president of the Gresham Historical Society, it was nearly lost again when garbage collectors tried to break it up with sledge hammers and haul it away.

When the Multnomah County road department showed no interest in claiming the milepost, Gresham Historical Society members took it upon themselves to move the 500-pound stone to a storeroom for safekeeping.

Ad the Wednesday ceremony, Gresham Historical Society President Connie Johnson and Multnomah County Commissioner Polly Casterline unveiled the obelisk by pulling off a sheet of plastic.
...

Don McIntire, owner of McIntire's Athletic Club, said he was delighted to have his business located near something of historical significance.

"I promise to do my best to safeguard it," he said. "The first thing we should do is give it a bath."

McIntire said Southeast Stark Street is scheduled to be repaved, after which he plans to build a mound for the milepost marker and accentuate it with a spotlight.

At this point, the idea of a milestone pub crawl kind of breaks down, since there aren't any businesses of any kind nearby except for the fitness club. It would require a flexible definition of "nearby". Or friends who live near the milestone and don't mind hosting roving packs of drunk geography nerds.



You might actually have better luck a mile west of here. Milestone P12 is on the MIA list, sadly, but the neighborhood around its former home (roughly the 21700 block of Stark) is known as Twelvemile Corner. I don't know that area very well either, and I didn't actually stop and look around since there wasn't a milestone to search for. But it's Gresham, so there's bound to be fast food nearby, and probably an old-school tavern or two -- windowless, featuring pool tables and video poker, and full of old-timers who gripe endlessly about the new smoke-free law. Also, Google Maps says that there's an Applebee's due south of here on Burnside. I've only been to an Applebee's once, and I don't want sound all urban and snobby and whatever, but it was just soul-crushing. But maybe you're into that sort of thing, I don't know.

A few blocks further west is the only Portland-area outpost of Abby's Pizza, an Oregon-based chain with stores all over the place except Portland. I'm not sure why that is. Sometimes I get the impression the rest of the state eats a lot more pizza than we do here, but I haven't found any stats to back that up.

In any case, "Twelvemile Corner" is one of the rare geographic names derived from the mile marker system. The only other one I know of is the obscure "11 Mile Avenue" near Milestone P11. There's nothing equivalent to Detroit's Mile Road System. The best known of those is 8 Mile Road, which as I understand it is considered the border between the rich and poor parts of town. Plus it's the state's survey baseline (like Stark St. is), and is also the title of an Eminem movie. As I said, we have no local equivalent.

Milestone P11

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Today's episode of Milestone Madness takes us even further east, to the 19800 block of SE Stark. Milestone P11 (the mid-19th Century marker indicating exactly 11 miles to downtown Portland) is, like most of the milestones, located on the south side of Stark. Just west of it is the Stark Market convenience store, and to the east is the Mobile Park Plaza, uh, manufactured home community. The milestone is probably part of the property boundary between the two, come to think of it.

If you're trying to locate the milestone by counting cross streets, be aware that despite the address, the nearest streets to the east and west are both numbered as 197th Avenue. Go figure.



I regret to say that I didn't take any sufficiently closeup photos of P11 to tell whether the yellow on this one is paint or lichen. It's been reported that various milestones show evidence of having been painted either white or yellow at one time. P5 was, and still sort of is, white. But all the yellow I've seen so far has been of natural origin. Maybe P11 is the exception? I guess I could go back and look again, but I think I'll leave this question for other intrepid adventurers, in the unlikely event anyone besides me really cares one way or the other.

One thing worth pointing out is that the historical marker next to P7 lists which milestones are extant and which are lost, and it lists this one as "lost". The Stark Street Mile Markers blog mentions that P11 was stolen some time in the late 90's and later recovered, so that might give us a general time frame for when the historical marker went in.



I also ought to have taken more photos of the trailer park next door, or at least the entrance to it. It's got quite the wannabe-grand entrance, flanked with lions and what were probably fountains at one time. It would be a good subject for a series of moody indie Holga photos, if you're into that. Although from the few people I saw in the few minutes I was there, it seems like many area residents are elderly, so if you're here too long taking photos someone's likely to call the police. And this far east is Gresham, not Portland, so I don't know what their policy is on tasing people who look vaguely suspicious. Also, someone connected with the place is a Republican donor, which I mention just so you know you are no longer in the commie pinko part of SE Portland this far east. But you probably knew that already, or guessed as much on the drive here.



If you'd rather not drive -- whether for ideological reasons, or because you're hitting all the milestones as a pub crawl -- the nearest TriMet stop is just east of here (stop id #5477, served by bus #20), at the corner of Stark and ... drum roll ... 11 Mile Avenue. Also, the Ruby Junction MAX station is at 197th & Burnside, a short walk due south of here.



Well, that more or less concludes this stop on the tour. I don't know this part of town that extensively, so if you're doing a milestone pub crawl there aren't any establishments around here that I can recommend from personal experience. But hey, when you're an intrepid urban explorer, sometimes you just have to go find your own damn beer. If you have an iPhone, there's probably an app for that.

Milestone P9

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Yes, o Gentle Reader(s), it's time for yet another milestone. This time we're visiting P9, at the 15800 block of SE Stark St, on the south side of the street. Similar to milestone P6, there isn't a cross street right at this point, and the stone is on a long block between 157th and 160th. The Stark Street Mile Markers blog gives the exact address as 15802, but it seems to be a bit west of there, more of a 15780, if we're going to be really anal about these things, which we are. It's next to a garage building on the west end of the U-shaped Victoria Gardens apartment complex. There's a Trimet stop a few steps west of the milestone, stop ID 5450, served by eastbound bus #20. So it's between the bus stop and the first curb cut for the apartments, which should narrow it down to a stretch of maybe 15 feet or so.



I should point out, however, that this isn't a very nice part of town. Where "nice" is what everyone says when they really mean "affluent". It's a little west of Rockwood proper, but the same basic demographics are at work here. I mean, nobody's going to drive by and randomly shoot you or anything while you're looking at the milestone, probably. I'm just mentioning this just so you know not to expect picture-postcard Portland around these parts.

The main danger, actually, is having your car towed if you park at the apartment complex while checking out the milestone. East Multnomah County is ground zero for predatory tow truck companies, and I understand the company listed on the sign here is especially notorious. Turn your back for just a moment and your car's gone, and it's all 100% legal. So heed the sign and just park on a side street or something instead.



You know how our elected officials like to prattle on about how ultra-Euro-fancy Portland supposedly is? Generally that's just marketing talk, intended to attract tourists and upscale condo buyers. But increasingly we resemble Paris in at least one respect, in that we're developing our own ring of les banlieues. Like Paris (and probably a lot of other European cities), poor people and minorities are increasingly squeezed out of the central city, by housing prices and government policy, and they typically end up in a belt of inner-ring suburbs, areas that tourists and local residents alike have no reason to visit. Except for the occasional milestone, I mean. When the mayor goes on yet another of his fact-finding trips across the Atlantic, there are parts of town he isn't interested in seeing, and his hosts aren't interested in showing him, and nobody brings it up, and everyone's happier that way. So it's out of sight, out of mind, problem solved.



I'm not exactly accusing the city of doing this deliberately. They may be cynical enough, but I'm not sure they're clever enough. It's that we go to a lot of trouble to have a nice central city like the Europeans do (or we imagine they do), and as a result we get the same (possibly unintended) side effects that they've got. I mean, Rockwood is no Clichy-sous-Bois, and we don't have packs of rioters going around torching cars or anything like that. I'm just saying there are certain interesting parallels, and the equivalent situation in Paris hasn't exactly turned out well, has it?

Milestone P6

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The latest installment of the ongoing milestone adventure takes us to the 9800 block of SE Stark, just east of I-205. There's no 98th Avenue at this point, so milestone P6 isn't on a street corner like many of them are. The few accounts out there simply describe it as "near the Elmer's Restaurant". Precise directions are important when tracking down anything this small and this grey, so let me expand on that. Just east of Elmer's is a small one story office building with a 60's-ish mansard roof. Between its parking lot and the parking lot for Elmer's, there's a small landscaped bit with a few trees and shrubs. Milestone P6 is tucked in there, a few feet off the sidewalk, lurking behind a big conifer tree. Believe me, this one was hard to find. I didn't see it when driving past (several times, on two separate occasions), and when I stopped to look for it, I walked past once before finding it. The Google map here is centered on it, if that helps at all.



The surrounding area isn't quite as cute as Montavilla, a mile west of here, but it's next to the freeway, and it's got everything. As noted, Elmer's is right next door, so there's a convenient source of bacon nearby. Which is crucial, obviously. Also I think they have a bar section with video lottery if you're into that. A couple of blocks south is Mall 205, with a Home Depot, a Target, a mostly-empty indoor mall part, and a McMenamins. The lighting in my condo uses a variety of dodgy little halogen bulbs that only Home Depot seems to carry, and this is the closest location to home, so I actually know this area reasonably well. Also, Kelly Butte is a few blocks further south past the mall, so I have this part of town to thank for a large percentage of visitors to this humble blog.

Being near the freeway there are the usual fast food outlets, which I won't bother to list. And just east of the milestone are a couple of, er, "gentlemens clubs", if that's more your speed. Also just east of here is Sayler's Old Country Kitchen, home of the 72 ounce, eat-it-in-an-hour-and-it's-free top sirloin steak. I used to know a guy who kept threatening to have a go at this monster, back when there was also a westside Sayler's location. We lost touch some years ago, so I don't know if he ever worked up the nerve. Perhaps the steak is to blame for us losing touch. It would've been a hero's death, to be sure.



A curious thing I've noticed: Despite all the "gentlemen's clubs" along Stark (and there are quite a few of them), it doesn't appear that any are named "Stark Naked", even though that would seem to be the obvious choice. Maybe that industry has a desperate shortage of clever people or something, I dunno. So, maybe, if this whole software thing doesn't work out, and I can't make a go of it in subsistence agriculture, or as a gentleman jewel thief or housesitter-to-the-stars, and I can't bring myself to take money for blogging or photography, then perhaps, just perhaps....

Milestone P4

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So I'd like to announce the achievement of another milestone. This time it's P4, at the corner of SE 61st & Stark. It's at the NE corner of the intersection, next to the Tabor Heights Methodist Church parking lot. I'm rather pleased about finally finding this one. I tried and failed to find it maybe 3 or 4 times before, albeit strictly from a moving vehicle each time. This time I noticed it right away -- seeing milestones gets easier after you've seen a few others -- and this time I stopped and took a few photos. The stone's not extremely prominent, and there are a bunch of juniper bushes around it, but someone was nice enough to trim out a cozy little niche for the milestone so passers-by can see it. Aww, how cute...



Across the street is Cooper's Coffee, which (according to one Yelp reviewer) also has a tasty beer selection. And wifi. So despite being 4 miles, or over 21 thousand feet from downtown, we still haven't exited the civilized world just yet.

Of course we're still on the west slope of Mt. Tabor at this point. All real Portlanders know for a 100% truthy fact that there's nothing on the far side of Mt. Tabor except meth labs and pit bulls as far as the eye can see, and you won't see another trace of the civilized world until roughly the Hudson River. And even then, there are a few parts of Manhattan we aren't too sure about.

Well, except for Montavilla. As I've already mentioned, Montavilla's quite cute. Which means of course that as soon as the real estate market comes back to life, we'll have to tear out large chunks of it to put up condo towers for the rich Californians, because that's just how it is, and resistance is futile.

Oh, and Ikea. Ikea's civilized too, although a bit less so of late. You have heard of Verdanagate, right? Right?



All snarkitude aside, I do have a few more links and items to pass along:

• I just discovered that someone has put together a custom Google map pointing out all the milestones. So check out the "Baseline Road Mileposts" map, and send props to whoever put it together.
  
• A couple of Gresham Outlook stories to pass along, profiling a local retiree who investigated the milestones well before we interweb folk ever heard of them: "Marking the miles of history" and "Retired administrator takes up local history".
  
• And the latest two milestone posts over at the ZehnKatzen Times (although unlike this humble blog, he does actually cover stuff besides old rocks with numbers on them.) "The Stark Street Milestones" references my P5 post, so it's only fair to return the linky luurrrve. And "More Portland Milestones" mentions those Flickr photos of the other P7 on Capitol Highway.
  
• At the end of my P7 post, I mentioned the existence of additional milestones along the Historic Columbia River Highway, suggesting them as a project for some ambitious soul out there. A commenter then asked if the numbers on those milestones might be a continuation of those on Stark. I was completely skeptical, but I just so happened to be out that way this afternoon, and just south of the Stark St. bridge (over the Sandy River) I noticed a mile marker with a "17" on it. Which meant it was at least plausible. And then, I just tracked down the nomination form for adding the Gorge Highway to the National Register of Historic Places. Right there, on page 5, is this tidbit:
  

  
  Historic Mile Posts (HMPs) on the Columbia River Highway
  Mileposts were established along the CRH at the time of construction. According to a “Mile
  Posting Data” log of the entire highway that the Oregon State Highway Department (OSHD)
  prepared in 1924, HMP 0.00 was established as the intersection of SW Washington Street and
  SW Broadway in downtown Portland. The route leading to the beginning of the CRH and
  nominated district, followed Portland’s arterial system for about six miles before picking up the Base Line Road (also known as Stark Street) or the Sandy Road (later known as Sandy
  Boulevard). Stark Street intersected the CRH on the Sandy River (Stark Street) Bridge, at HMP
  16.7. The Sandy Road crossed the Sandy River two miles downstream over the Sandy River
  Bridge at Troutdale before heading into the county’s road system. The roadway between the
  Sandy River Bridge at Troutdale and the Sandy River (Stark Street) Bridge was added as a
  second access route to the CRH, a few years after work originally began on the highway.[1]
  The Sandy River Bridge at Troutdale is 2.5 miles northwest of the Stark Street structure, so its HMP has been calculated as 14.2. For purposes of this nomination for the CRH, and the 1983
  NR nomination for the CRH Historic District, HMP 14.2 was determined as the western most
  point of the nominated property.
  
  [1]See the entire section of F. N. Drinkhall, “Field Notes: Mile Posting Data, Upper Col. River Hwy., Lower Col. River Hwy., and Old Oregon Trail,” Oregon State Highway Department, Salem, 1924, devoted to the “Upper Col. River Hwy.”
  

  
  It's not clear whether the document was written by the National Park Service or by ODOT, but either way it sounds fairly definitive. Although I'm still not sold on the fabled P0 point being located at SW Washington & Broadway. That would put it a few blocks north of the actual Willamette Baseline. Although I've never actually seen any reference saying P0 was on the baseline; I just keep assuming that was the case, because all the others line up so nicely, and it would be a shame to break up the pattern.
  

Milestone P7

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The latest installment of the milestone series takes us to the corner of SE 117th & Stark, home to Stark St. milestone P7. This one isn't hard to find; it's in a reasonably prominent location at the SE corner of Ventura Park, which is on the north (westbound) side of Stark. There's even a historical marker next to the milestone explaining what it is and what it's for.



I don't know this part of town that well, except that nearby 122nd Avenue is lined with car dealers. So for a bit more local flavor than what I've got here, check out this ZehnKatzen post with a few photos of the surrounding area as well as of P7 itself. I did take a few photos of the park, but I think I'm going to hold off on those for right now, since sorting through photos of roses usually takes freakin' forever.

Updated 9/10/11: Thanks to the library's Oregonian db, I have a bit more info to share about milestone P7, how it was rescued, and how it ended up in Ventura Park. In an article lamely titled "Milepost 'tells' story about Portland history" (quotes theirs), the December 12th, 1978 Oregonian explained:

Craig Decker was reacquainted with an old friend last week, expressing satisfaction that his pal was set in concrete and could wander no more.

"It's good to see it back in the neighborhood," Decker, 30, said.

Decker grew up with milepost 7, which, during his childhood, was in place on the south side of Southeast Stark Street neer 117th Avenue, its hand-carved basalt rising to a pyramid and the obscure horizontal markings that read "P 7" etched into its face.

"It was over there, near the old neighborhood grocery store," Decker said last week as Multnomah County crews were placing the marker in concrete at the corner of Stark Street and 117th Avenue in Ventura Park. Right between those two trees. It took me a long time to figure out what the P and 7 meant."

...

Milepost 7 was found only recently by students of John Woodward, an anthropology professor at Mount Hood Community College.

The 500-pound marker was being ravaged by bulldozers, so the students rescued it and offered it to the county.

Milepost 13 is housed in the Gresham Historical Society and milepost 14 is on the campus of Mount Hood Community College.

Various things I've learned so far, and other things I still don't know, plus some guesses:

• As mentioned on the Stark Street Mile Markers mini-blog, there's another milestone P7 in SW Portland, seemingly marking the course of Taylors Ferry Rd. / Capitol Highway / Highway 99W. I haven't tracked that one down yet, but I did run across someone's photos of it here, along with photos of a newer-looking marker that just says "5". I'm not sure what its significance is.
  
• The sign at this P7 indicates that distances are measured from the old Multnomah County Courthouse, on the west side of the river -- so that spot would be P0, although it's not clear if there was ever a marker to that effect. The current county courthouse was completed in 1914, and it's several blocks south of the baseline. More or less. The downtown street grid isn't aligned with the baseline, so it isn't always obvious how things line up.
  
• Which brings us to a mystery: Where exactly was this P0 point? This page at the Oregon Historical Society asserts that the old courthouse was at the same location as the current one. If true, that would rule out the courthouse, even though that would be a logical place for a P0 mark. So then I thought the reference to the old courthouse might refer to the Pioneer Courthouse instead. It does seem to lie on the baseline, but it's a couple of blocks west of my best estimate, and it's also a federal courthouse, not a local one. Pioneer Courthouse Square is closer to the right spot, but it didn't exist until the 1980s, and prior to that it was a hotel and then a parking lot, so I think we can rule it out as a candidate. So as far as I can determine, the P0 point should be located inside the parking garage between 10th & Park, near the Galleria MAX stop. But I'm not a pro surveyor, and I could easily be mistaken. And I haven't been able to determine if anything important was on this site before it was a parking garage.
  
• As long as we're doing best estimates (which included the help of this Google Maps distance calculator, it looks like this putative P0 point is 4 miles due east of the Willamette Stone. My actual number was something like 3.92 miles, but that's so close to 4 that I'm inclined to fault my estimating powers. If the actual value isn't 4, it would be fair to assume that was at least the intended value. So any milestone you see is that many miles to downtown, and 4 more to the Willamette Stone.


• Although once you're past P4, the road deviates from the baseline briefly. At that point, the baseline runs over the north end of Mt. Tabor, and traffic gets routed around the steepest part on SW Thorburn St. instead of straight over it. There's a disconnected stretch of Stark St. through part of the bypassed area, and the milestones seem to be measuring distance along that direction, not along the street you'll actually be on. So it's a decent bit greater than a mile between milestones P4 and P5.


• Oh, one more fun estimate to pass along. The missing P3 stone is supposed to have been at or around 42nd & Stark, in a quiet mostly-residential area. I'm enough of a math dork to immediately wonder where the mythical Pπ milestone should be, being ~3.14159 miles from downtown Portland. In a delightful coincidence, Pπ seems to be very close to 45th & Stark, and thus near Belmont Station. And if it's not an exact match, you can always change the value of π to make it fit better, like the Indiana Legislature allegedly once did. So there aren't any actual milestones nearby, but you could always drop by their cafe and hoist a pint in memory of the lost P3, and in honor of the Pπ I just made up. Some would call that ridiculous, others might call it stupid. But they're assuming there's such a thing as a bad reason to hoist a pint, and I'm going to have to disagree with that basic premise. Mmmmm... beeeer....


• Ok, one more guesstimate while we're at it. Being the math dork I just mentioned I am, I also had to wonder about mythical milestone Pi, which is not the same thing as Pπ. Pi is genuinely imaginary, rather than merely made up. It would be a mile due north of P0, and I think that means somewhere around 9th & Naito, near the police mounted patrol horse barn. And P-i (that's -i miles from P0) should be just south of 405, in the Duniway Park area.


• The historical marker at P7 says Stark was once called Base Line Road. The only road by that name in the present day is Baseline Rd. in Washington County. The name's an accurate description in parts of Hillsboro & Cornelius where Baseline follows the actual baseline. Elsewhere, the name is just a name.


• So far we've been talking strictly in terms of miles. The mayor and others keep insisting we're a thoroughly European city, with the idea that saying it all the time will make it true. So it's curious that they've never gotten around to trying to have the city go all metric and stop using miles, pounds, gallons, etc. Switching would likely fail miserably and just annoy people in the process, but the Powers That Be always prefer to do a bit of conceptual art and send a symbolic message rather than ever taking any real action. So this might be a good place to tell the world how much we adore the metric system without the expense and inconvenience of actually trying to use it for real. We could just put up a set of shiny new Euro-licious kilometer stones along Stark to go along with the existing milestones. The P_Km24 marker would be just a touch west of where P15 ought to be.


• While we're at it, the same area would also host the 13 nautical mile mark, if we were counting those. The nautical mile markers could look like little buoys, or maybe lighthouses. Since this is Portland, if you're going to be whimsical you probably ought to give your stuff a dour, educational side, so that people can tell you're a Serious Artist. So the buoys would be to let people know it would be 13 miles by boat to the sunken ruins of downtown, if somehow the whole world flooded due to global warming, a la Waterworld.


• But wait, there's more. From the Willamette Stone to P15 is 19 miles, or 30.57 km. Or, roughly, one picoparsec (about 30.85 km). Add in the distance from P15 to the Sandy River, and it's a very close fit indeed. In other words, take the distance along Stark from downtown to the Sandy River, and simply go 1.29 trillion times that far (i.e 1.29 parsecs), and you're at Proxima Centauri, the nearest star (other than the sun). There, that was easy, wasn't it? And simply go 800 quadrillion picoparsecs (or 800 kiloparsecs), and voila, you're at the Andromeda Galaxy.


• Oh, and once you hit the Sandy River, you're on the Columbia Gorge Highway, which has its own system of milestones stretching from Troutdale all the way to the Dalles. Which would be a substantial project, if I (or somebody else) decided to take it on. It sounds kind of tedious, but it would be a good excuse to spend a lot of time wandering around the Gorge. So I'm not going to completely and permanently rule it out. Not today, though, and probably not tomorrow either.

Milestone P5

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Today's fun adventure leads us behind a dumpster a few blocks off 82nd on SE Stark St. Hey, wait, come back, dammit -- don't you care about history!? Seriously, the little obelisk you see here with the "P5" on it is another of the Stark Street Milestones. I covered Milestone P2 wayyy back in November 2006, and I've finally gotten around to tracking down a few others. Well, in truth someone else did all the heavy lifting with the research and tracking down and such (which I'm slightly envious about, truth be told), and I'm just showing up afterwards to take a few photos and make pointless snarky remarks, as is my way.

I stopped here right after failing to find P4, and shortly before failing to find P6. I did manage to find P7 at least, but that's a matter for another post.



So unlike P2, which is embedded in a wall next to a historic cemetery, P5 stands next to an auto upholstery shop at the corner of 78th & Stark, with a variety of junk arrayed around it. Some people might get up in arms about this and argue that historical monuments should be treated more reverentially. I actually think it's fine this way though; the stone's survived the Oregon climate and who knows what kind of abuse for 150 years, and it's not going to be harmed by an old tire or a piece of cardboard lying next to it. And most importantly, it makes for more interesting photos this way.



I should point out that the photos kind of give the wrong idea, as the surrounding Montavilla neighborhood is rather cute actually. Just across 78th, behind where I stood when I took these photos, is the Flying Pie pizzeria and adjacent Art Deco-ish Academy Theater, featuring the classic Portland combo of pizza, beer, and movies. Mmmm.... beeeeer....

Milestone P2

This small stone object is very, very old, at least by Portland standards. It's an old 1850's-era milestone on SE Stark St., a bit east of 20th Avenue. (Roughly 2300 SE Stark, to be exact.) It's embedded in the north wall of Lone Fir Cemetery, which itself is very, very old, by Portland standards. The "P2" was to indicate it was just two more miles through the howling wilderness to Portland, with its handful of wooden shacks and muddy stump-filled streets.

I saw a brief bit about this milestone quite recently on an episode of Oregon Field Guide, but when I ran across it I was actually on a visit to Lone Fir, which I'll talk more about in a subsequent post. I was just walking along Stark St. and there it was, and I thought, "Oh, that looks familiar." I just can't get enough of weird, geeky, esoteric stuff like this, so I had to take a few pictures, and I had to write a little about it. If this bores you to tears, my apologies. I don't always blog about obscure old rocks, in case you were curious. I'll probably do another cheesy monster movie post next week, and maybe you'll like that post better than this one.

I also thought this was kind of fun because in present-day English the word "milestone" is a generic noun that's applied to all sorts of things. In Monday's Oregonian (11/6/06), the act of sentencing Saddam Hussein to the gallows is described as a "milestone". It's quite rare anymore to see the word used to describe a stone object that marks distance on a road. So this photo shows what an actual, physical, real-life milestone looks like. In case you were curious, or whatever.

This article at American Surveyor magazine discusses this milestone and its siblings at some length. Seems this is one of an original 15 stones, of which nine survive. Milestone P5 is pictured in the article. This is in a surveying magazine because Stark was originally known as the eastside portion of Baseline Road (the name it still goes by out in the western 'burbs), and Baseline is so named because it follows the original surveying baseline that extended out from what is now Willamette Stone State Heritage Site, an obscure and tiny state park hidden way up in the west hills. I haven't been there in years, and I don't remember it being overly enthralling. I don't know what conditions were like at the time the survey was done, but I imagine it wasn't completely overgrown like it is today. Don't go expecting a view.

Legend had it (sort of) that it was good luck to kiss the Willamette Stone. So it's too bad it's not there anymore. The sites linked to just indicate the thing was vandalized; I seem to recall that the original rock was actually broken off its base and stolen. This was in the distant pre-eBay era, so it's probably just gathering dust in some avid collector's attic, or gathering moss in their garden.

This page at the city government website says the P4 milestone still exists too. Apparently it's easy enought to find that official guided walking tours of the area sometimes start there. One puzzling bit is that while the P2 stone is near SE 20th, this page asserts the P4 stone is at SE 61st Avenue. City blocks downtown are 200 feet on a side, but I don't know what they measure outside of there. If it's 200 feet everywhere, neither milestone would be in the right place, and the P2 stone appears to have been in its current location for an exceedingly long time.

Updated: I went looking for P4 a while back, but no luck. And I'm not the only person out here on the interwebs who's looked: The estimable Mr. Klein of ZehnKatzen Times fame reports having no luck finding P4, P5, or P6, but he did track down Milestone P7, with photos and everything. It's at the corner of 117th & Stark, and you can actually see it plainly in Google street view:

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The sign next to the milestone apparently says that P2, P4 thru P7, P9, P13, and P14 still exist. Or they did, supposedly, at the time the sign went in, whenever that was. Also, here's a Gresham Outlook story with photos of various milestones.

Updated again: Ok, just go and check out the Stark Street Mile Markers blog. History, photos, exact locations of all the extant ones. Very cool, although I'm almost kind of sad that someone else has gone and done this already. And here I was fixin' to start a new project...