Pioneer Mother

In this installment of the public art tour, we're looking at VanWa's Pioneer Mother, an Avard Fairbanks sculpture on the north side of Esther Short Park. Unusually, Pioneer Mother has an extensive Wikipedia page, which is great since I can just point readers there instead of doing a bunch of research myself. Fairbanks's work has appeared here a couple of other times, for monuments in Portland Firefighters Park and Milo McIver State Park, and I know of a couple of other public examples of his work around Portland that haven't made it into posts, such as the doors on the old US Bank building on SW Broadway.

McIver State Park foray

I usually start these out by saying "today's adventure takes us to...", but I probably shouldn't this time. I've gotten the distinct impression that basically everyone in town except me goes to McIver State Park all the time, and has done so for years. Ok, I might be exaggerating a little, and just everyone on the eastside has been going there for years. Here's a map -- the park is the V-shaped green bit just west of Estacada:

So apologies in advance if I'm going on about your home away from home here. I grew up in Aloha, and we didn't head out to Estacada all that often. Basically never, in fact. I vaguely knew there was this large green blob on the map next to the Clackamas River, but I'd never been there and didn't know anything about the place.

Ok, that's not strictly true, I did know the park had hosted the Vortex I hippie festival, I mean, "Biodegradable Festival of Life", back in 1970. Which I know because this city's thick with nostalgic boomer types who can't seem to STFU about the 60's, just like the way their parents go on and on about World War II every chance they get. I swear, if I'm 50 years old and you ever hear me waxing nostalgic about the early 90's, insisting they were the Golden Age of music and culture or whatever, you can just go ahead and slap me silly.

Of course there's a flip side to all of that. The only thing more tedious than people waxing nostalgic about the 60's are those prim bow-tie-wearing cultural-conservative twits on FoxNews whining about how the 60's ruined everything and must be "undone" somehow, at all costs. So don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not one of those people. It's just that poking fun at hippies is fun, easy, and mostly harmless. They probably won't even notice, much less care.

I think knowing about that festival colored my expectations of the park. I really didn't expect it to be scenic at all, I just figured it'd be a large open space where a few hundred thousand stupid hippies could squat in the mud and trip out to an endless procession of cheesy jam bands. I wouldn't have guessed there'd be high cliffs overlooking the Clackamas River. That doesn't seem very hippie-friendly if you ask me. Possibly that was the whole point. As the oldtimers love to remind us, the festival was organized by the state's Republican governor to lure the city's disaffected war-protesting youngsters away and keep 'em "sedated" while the American Legion convention was in town. If a few hippies decided gravity was a bummer, man, and tried to fly away off the cliffs, hey, even better. Oddly the festival seems to have gone off without any reported fatal incidents. Although it's entirely possible some random hippie just wandered off and disappeared and hasn't been missed by anyone for nearly 40 years. It wouldn't surprise me.

I've never been into the whole psychedelic thing, but I did take a couple of cool/weird infrared photos at the park. I think they're probably groovy enough for our present purposes.

A couple of links about Vortex I from out on the interwebs, before we move on:

• "Vortex I or why there was no Vortex II", from someone who was there.
  
• And a brief reminiscence by someone who lived nearby. Her reaction is mostly "ugh".
• The PSU Vanguard's book review of ""The Far Out Story of Vortex 1", a recent book about the festival.
• A recent post on the book's author's MySpace page noting that there's also a Vortex I documentary, and it's showing at the Clinton St. Theater this very evening (9/20/07). I don't believe in fate, but that's a rather amusing coincidence. Although I don't actually plan on attending.

So enough about hippies, dammit. At one overlook above the river there's a plaque honoring Milo McIver, once chairman of the state highway commission, the predecessor of today's ODOT. The plaque was executed by Avard Fairbanks, the same sculptor who did the Campbell Memorial plaque at Portland Firefighters' Park.

As fate would have it (if I believed in fate, that is), I was just down at Powell's Technical a couple of hours ago, and right there in the store's free bin was a book with Mr. McIver's name on it. I figured it was appropriate so I grabbed it, even though 90% of it consists of boring trigonometric tables. If that strikes your fancy, or you simply need to build yourself a standard highway spiral, ODOT has the current 2003 version of the book (or at least part of the book) here [PDF].

Heading up the state highway commission obviously commanded a great deal more honor and respect than it does now. Besides McIver, you might also recognize the name Glenn L. Jackson, as the I-205 bridge in east Portland is named in his honor.

So about the park itself. There's an upper area with the cliffs, a large picnic area, and such, and there's a lower part down by the river. There are actually two ways down to the river but I only checked out one of them; if you haven't noticed yet, this is not really a comprehensive post about the park's amenities. I didn't play any disc golf, or camp, or fish, or look for bats, or go horseback riding, or float down the Clackamas River on an inner tube, carrying a six-pack. Although I saw a few people doing that and it looked like fun. Fashionable Portlanders sneer at the practice, figuring that it's something trailer-trash people out in Clackamas do, so therefore it's bad and couldn't possibly be any fun. I hadn't really given it a lot of thought before, but it was a hot day, and the river was very cold, and I can see the attraction. Haven't actually tried it, I'm not real keen on the whole "getting plastered and falling in the river and drowning" thing, although I understand that's an optional part of the experience.

So basically I just wandered around with a camera for a couple of hours looking for photogenic stuff. I think I've mentioned before that the state parks department has started an annual photo contest, with the winning photos appearing in the next year's Oregon State Parks calendar. So I spent the day looking for material, here and at Bonnie Lure, the other state park near Estacada, with a side trip over to Fearless Brewing (which I mentioned before here). I later discovered my poor little camera doesn't have enough megapixels to qualify, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have used any of these pics even if they'd been eligible. But at least I'm getting a blog post out of the adventure, which I guess is something. And besides, there's always next year.

PS, here's a heron I saw down by the river. Besides loading up on additional megapixels, I think I'll need to look for a telephoto lens with a little more oomph to it. I know I've sung the praises of "digital zoom" before, but it's really no substitute for having a proper long, if rather Freudian-looking, lens at one's disposal.

Portland Firefighters' Park

Here are some photos of tiny Portland Firefighters' Park, in downtown Portland at SW 19th & Burnside, right next to PGE Park and the shiny new Civic condo tower. It's kind of a weird little spot, but before we get to that, a (sorta) quick history lesson. If you'd rather go directly to the weirdness, click here.

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History

The main feature of the park is a fountain honoring David Campbell, an early 20th century fire chief who died in the line of duty. Next to the fountain are smaller plaques honoring all of the city's fallen firefighters.

There's surprisingly little about the park on the web. In particular, the city parks department barely mentions the place. It doesn't appear on their list of parks, and only gets a mention in passing on their 1921-1940 history page:

Funded by donations from the public at large through promotion by the Portland Telegram newspaper to honor Fire Chief David Campbell who lost his life in the line of duty, the Campbell Memorial Fountain was placed in the triangle at West 19 and Burnside. (It has since been dedicated as a memorial to all Portland firefighters killed in the line of duty.) The bronze plaque features a portrait of Campbell and was created by American artist Avard Fairbanks.

That's all they've got about the place. The fire bureau's history page has a bit more:

With a fleet of motorized fire apparatus and a force of proud firefighters, Portland Fire Department was at the top of its game on June 26th, 1911 when the second alarm came from E. Salmon and Water Street. A pump at the Union Oil distributing plant had thrown a spark, igniting gas accumulated in its motor pit. Chief Campbell was one of the first to respond. By 0830, every fire company in the City was at the scene.
As fumes expanded inside one of the half-empty, bulging oil tanks, it groaned, then finally exploded. Flames lashed out in a giant column, and smoke unfolded slowly against the Portland gray sky.
Campbell borrowed a turn out coat from one of his men, then he and two other officers entered the building to begin an interior attack. An ominous rumble from deep inside the basement warned that accumulated gases in the basement had reached their flashpoint. With the second tank explosion, a ball of fire hurled firefighters to the ground and lifted the roof off of the Union Oil Company. The officers with Chief Campbell retreated from the building, but Campbell never made it out. A fire lieutenant saw him silhouetted against the flames, holding his arms up to brace against the falling roof. At 1045, they found Chief Campbell, huddled dead in a front line firefighter’s turnout coat. You could still read “F.D” on one of the buttons.

To this day, Portland Firefighters honor bravery and sacrifice in the line of duty with the Campbell Memorial Ceremony, which takes place the third week in June every year.

The only other resource I've come across on the net is a pair of pages at Waymarking.com, one about the park, and another about Campbell's Fountain, both with good, recent photos. From the description of the place on both pages:

Campbell's Fountain (1927) is a memorial for David Campbell, Fire Chief 1893-1911, and other Portland courageous firefighters who died in the line of duty. The memorial is constructed of Caen stone, a light colored limestone imported from France. The memorial was designed by Paul Cret of Philadelphia with Earnest F. Tucker of Portland. The bronze relief was sculpted by University of Oregon Artist Avard Fairbanks. The fountain is turned on once each June.
The park surrounding the memorial was created in 1963 and 1964 by the Portland Chamber of Commerce with the assistance from a number of civic-minded businesses, the local labor unions, and the Oregon Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Since one of the architects was from Philadelphia, an organization called Philadelphia Architects and Buildings has a page about the fountain, and an image gallery with vintage photos, blueprints, and the works. If you want to see larger versions of the photos, you'll have to join PAB, which I haven't gotten around to just yet. It's $40/year, which would be tempting if I lived in Philadelphia, which I don't. The PAB pages call the fountain "Campbell Memorial Fountain". I'm not sure what the official name is, and I wouldn't care overly much except that knowing the right name might make Googling a little easier.

The Multnomah County Library comes to the rescue, a little, with their full-text search of the Oregonian dating back to 1988. A search brings up newspaper stories about the Fire Bureau's annual David Campbell Memorial Service in 1989, 1990, 1991, and 1992, 2002, and 2005. Also, stories from 1999 and 2000 about the old 1873 fire bell that's now on display in the park. It's over two tons of bronze and silver. I won't tell the meth tweakers about it if you won't.

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Weirdness

So the last section explains why the fountain's here, but it doesn't explain why the fountain is the way it is. You can walk or drive right by and pay no attention to the place, but the closer you look, the weirder the place gets. I don't really see how the quasi-Egyptian fountain with the goat head relates to firefighting, and the lion heads and horned pagan gods don't offer a lot of clues either. The details look quite similar to those at Ankeny Park, also on Burnside, about 10 blocks due East. So probably both had the same designer, or this was just the trendy look back then, at the tail end of the Beaux-Arts era. I mean, if we're looking for mundane explanations.

I like to think this blog plays a small role in demythologizing all the made-up weird crap people in this city like to believe about the place, but sometimes it can be tempting to switch sides for a while and start making myths instead of debunking them. This is one of those times. Here are a few uncanny "facts" about the place, and I'll let you draw your own conclusions:

• As I mentioned, this park and Ankeny Park have certain similarities: For starters, both are situated just south of Burnside, along the line where the city's magnetic-north and true-north street grids collide.
• Both parks center around altar-like fountains featuring horned gods and other pagan symbols. Both fountains face north. I'm not sure whether it's true north, magnetic north (circa either 1845 or 1927), or something. I'm not a surveyor by trade and I couldn't really say one way or the other -- but either pole will work just fine, since we're making myths here. Perhaps the fountains define lines that intersect at some obscure mystical point in the far northern wastes, and they don't really point at the pole at all. You can come up with a variety of convincing variations on this, if you like.
• Burnside marks the city's north-south dividing line, and IIRC it's an old survey line, so we can probably work in something about milestones, ley lines, and so forth.
• The goat-headed fountain is turned on just once a year at present, for a fire-related ceremony that occurs suspiciously close to the summer solstice. Coincidence? I was going to go off on a tangent somewhere in this post about how both fountains ought to be restored and run continuously during the summer months, but I'm starting to worry about the potential costs, and I don't mean the water bill. So what happens when the new condo owners in the new ritzy building next door start demanding a year-round fountain? That could upset the cosmic balance. I can't even begin to imagine all the possible consequences.
• There are at least 3 other public fountains on the same alignment, all just south of Burnside: Skidmore Fountain between Naito & 1st Avenue, the "Car Wash" fountain on 5th, and the smallish black Art Deco piece at the Burnside entrance to Washington Park, up around 24th Ave. The latter two could be said to be facing north, but otherwise the three don't really look the part, so including them may be somewhat of a stretch. Surely there's got to be some way to work them in, if you're creative enough.
• The rationales for the two parks, firefighting and restrooms, are so uncontroversial and middle-of-the-road that they've just got to be cover stories, and the fact that nobody's blown that cover for close to 100 years now just proves there's a conspiracy of silence going on. Those firefighters are up to something, mark my words. But what could it be?
• If we're making up myths, we may as well make the firefighters the good guys. Just maybe, the fire bureau is all that stands between our world and an unholy, all-consuming conflagration of mystical flame, emanating from some weird demonic plane of existence. There are strange rituals to be performed, and dark secrets to be kept, but in the end it's all part of the job, protecting the public from fire in all its forms.

Ok, maybe I'm getting a little carried away. I've been reading too much Lovecraft lately, so that's probably where the blame lies. But feel free to repeat as gospel whatever subset of this you think your audience is likely to believe. Especially if they're tourists, and they're planning to come here and spend lots of money and then (here's the key part) go back where they came from. They tell their friends, who come here, spend lots of money, and go back where they came from, and so on, and so forth. Updated 8/31/10: We have linkage from the "Save Portland Firefighters Memorial" group on Facebook.