The Cherry Trees at NW 19th & Lovejoy, January 2022

One of my longer-running traditions here involves an annual, or sorta-annual, mid-January visit to a trio of early-blooming cherry trees in NW Portland, at the corner of NW 19th Avenue & Lovejoy St. I've been doing this since the late 2000s, and I spent several of the early installments trying to figure out what sort of magic was at work here, such that springtime seemed to arrive at this one streetcorner months before anywhere else in the city, and did so like clockwork year after year. As I mentioned in the 2018 edition, the most likely explanation seems to be that they're ordinary examples of a winter-blooming variety of cherry tree. In other words, although they seem to survive perfectly well here, their DNA is still coded for a warmer climate zone, somewhere where there might be a few pollinators out buzzing around this time of year. Then in 2019 I stumbled across another, larger group of cherry trees that appears to bloom even earlier than the Lovejoy ones, just a few blocks away on NW Overton near 24th. So the traditional spot wasn't even particularly unique, on top of everything else. Then I skipped the last couple of years due to pandemics and family medical stuff, and nearly forgot this time around. Forgetting would have been understandable, given that 2018 was several geological eons ago, or at least it feels that way. But I remembered, just barely, and made a quick visit, and here are the photos to prove it. It still wasn't quite like the Before Times; the usual streetcar ride and extended brewpub detour were in the cards this time, thanks to the currently-rampaging Omicron variant, so instead I just drove to the trees, parked without feeding the meter, took a few quick photos, and got out, mission accomplished. Still, I was happy to see the old trees again, doing their usual thing in the midst of yet another long, cold, dark winter. Which in the end is the entire point of doing this, not just to keep a long series going on a weird little website almost nobody reads.

Now, you might've noticed that these photos were taken a week ago, and wondered how it could possibly have taken me a week to write a couple of paragraphs about some flowers. This time around I thought I had this post almost done and ready to go, and then it occurred to me that I had never done the thing I often do for intersection paintings and that sort of thing, which is to plug the intersection name or street address into the local library's newspaper database, to see whether anything interesting or newsworthy ever happened around here. That sometimes comes up with a few interesting results, and this time was no exception, so it stretched out the effort on this post by a bit. So here's what I've got:

The earliest result for "19th and Lovejoy" that came back was from September 1910, when a tent in a vacant lot here would serve as a polling place in that year's primary election. That was immediately followed by real estate ads for a couple of years, touting the lot's prime location and large 100' by 100' dimensions. This was in turn followed by construction of the Royal Arms Apartments building (the adjacent brick building that sometimes appears cherry photos I take here, though none this year) in 1914. An ad for the building in August of that year describes it:

A building of class and refinement, five-story fireproof brick, covering 100x100 ft, on corner, among the homes of wealth and culture, with their beautiful gardens, trees, and shrubbery, and a grand panoramic view of the city and hills to delight the eye. All apartments have hardwood floors, telephones, latest lighting fixtures and all up-to-date conveniences. Otis automatic elevator with safety appliance; rooms large, with plenty light, ventilation, and closet space; prices moderate; reference required. For reservations apply on premises. Take either 16th st or “S” car north to Lovejoy St.

That December, a local timber baron bought the whole building as a $165,000 Christmas gift for his wife. It had been built for around $100k, per an article the previous month, so the original investors made out pretty well. He died just two years later, and the news story mentions the extravagant gift at length. The building went on to appear regularly in high society news items for a while. Important teas were hosted there regularly, and wedding announcements for young smart-set couples often noted they would be honeymooning overseas and then taking up residence at the Royal Arms upon their return, that sort of thing.

While this was going on, much of the world was embroiled in World War I. The United States intially stayed out of it, and was still largely unready after being dragged in in 1917. By July of that year, the US was slowly remembering out how to do some of the basics, like how to draft people into your army when you know you'll run out of willing volunteers before long. The first batch of draft notices since the Civil War went out with great fanfare, with the Oregonian devoting a couple of pages to printing the names and addresses of everyone local whose numbers had been drawn. I suppose to make it harder to weasel out of trench duty. A young man who lived at 19th & Lovejoy happened to be in the group whose number was drawn 21st, partway down the first column of the first page. Which sounds like bad news, but the paper noted that the men listed wouldn't be called up immediately as there were just enough volunteers to meet the immediate need. By December of that year they had still hadn't been called up; it seems the process to apply for a draft exemption had been bungled somehow and everyone who had applied would have to reapply, and they couldn't actually take in any of the potential draftees until that bit of paperwork had been resolved. The Oregonian took this opportunity to again print the names of everyone who had been listed back in July. I haven't searched WWI service records to see of any of these people were ever actually called up, but it looks like the kid from right here went on and lived to 1959, so one way or another he had made it out of the year 1918 and its various hazards. Which included a deadly flu pandemic, let's not forget. My own maternal grandfather had a similar experience around the same time, though in his case they decided his name was just too long and too German, and his services would not be required along the Western Front after all. So they ordered him to go work at Bethlehem Steel instead, and apparently forgot all about him at that point. Before long he decided steel mill work didn't suit him and quit, although they had never actually told him whether he was allowed to quit or not, and I haven't been able to find a definitive answer on that point either. Nobody ever came around looking for him, though.

Anyway, the Royal Arms high society stuff sort of tapered off with the Depression, and the building was sold in 1940 for 'just' $75,000. The news item was accompanied by a photo of the building, which shows different (and much taller) trees standing where the cherries are now, matching the trees along the front of the building along Lovejoy.

After WWII the building was largely in the news for catching on fire every now and then. Once in 1956, two times in 1960, and then a five-alarm fire in July 1978, in which the buildng's fire alarm system failed to work. Twenty-two injuries were reported, including fifteen firefighters. A photo elsewhere in the paper shows the outside of the building, partly blackened by smoke, and you can kind of make out what looks to be a couple of the present-day cherry trees, smaller and looking a bit worse for wear. Though whether that was due to the fire or the firefighters I don't know. An August news item called the fire a case of arson, while a September story said it was caused by a careless smoker. (The rest of that story concerns another NW Portland building with the same owner also catching on fire.) The building eventually reopened in 1980 after being restored with PDC money, and I don't see any further news reports about the place bursting into flame, which is always good to see.

And in historical entertainment news, in March 1961 actress Jane Russell came to Portland for a week or two, staying at the Royal Arms while making public appearances and doing charity work by day, and performing nightly at the city's Bali Hai Club by night. Russell was also invited to serve as grand marshal of the city's St. Patrick's Day parade a few days later. In a small blurb a few days before she arrived, the paper's nightclub entertainment column (a thing that once existed) described the upcoming residence: "March 8: Jane Russell will grace the Bali Hai stage — singing we imagine, or does it make any difference?". After she arrived in town, the Oregonian took a British journalist's reporting on her arrival and -- finding it a bit too snide to print unedited -- had one of their columnists insert parenthetical comments into it. A couple of days later the nightlife column affirmed that Russell's show was obviously the biggest live entertainment thing in the city but neglected to describe it in any detail, just saying "Need we say more?". The paper's TV and radio columnist managed a bit better, scoring a brief interview at the old Trader Vic's at the Benson as Russell stopped by for a late breakfast (as in 5pm, seeing as her nightly shows ran to around 2am.) The interview was cut short, though, as the writer had to hurry off to an Oregon Historical Society roundable about the Civil War. And was roundly mocked for doing so by the other roundtable participants.

As for the other three corners at the intersection, apparently one used to have a service station, from at least 1935 thru sometime in the 50s or maybe later. I know this because of endless help-wanted classified ads, and a 1935 ad announcing they had been chosen as Texaco's exclusive regional distributor for diesel and fuel oil. Which sounds important, I guess, though they don't explain how big their region was. Other than that, there's nothing of interest to share about the old gas station, but figured I should mention it, as you generally do want to know where old gas stations used to be, in case of forgotten underground tanks and so forth.

Oh, and one of the corners, and I'm not sure which one, was briefly home to Portland's very first modern fast food restaurant. In 1954, a burger place called "Scotty's Self-Service Drive In" opened here, bringing California's 19-cent hamburger craze to the Northwest. (The "self-service" in the name is never explained. I think free refills only appeared in the 1980s so it probably wasn't that.) So here's a large ad from November 1955 celebrating the would-be chain's second location at 12th & Sandy, highlighting their new 39-cent fish and chips (not available at the Lovejoy location), along with a plug for Scotty's Famous Forty-Fiver, which was a hamburger, fries, and a milkshake for 45 cents, now available with or without onions. A 1956 ad offered a fried half-chicken with fries for 89 cents, or for a quarter you could get something called a "Curly Dog", whatever it was (Tagline: "It's new! It's different! It's delicious!"). That ad doesn't mention the original Lovejoy location anymore, so it may have been gone already by then. The Sandy location lasted until at least 1973, per a tiny news item about a robbery, but was apparently gone by 1985 as it was mentioned as a defunct competitor in an article about the last Yaw's closing. A 1985 article about the fading remnants of 1950s hot rod car culture and the closing of another burger place -- the Speck, at SE 50th & Foster -- actually mentions Scotty's as the beginning of the end. As in, the replacement of classic 50s drive-ins by the modern fast food industry. To those of us a generation or two removed from those days this seems like a minor distinction, as they all served more or less the same menu, though maybe at different price points. It sounds like it was more of a cultural shift than a culinary one, with the newcomers being less welcoming toward bored teens lounging around in their parking lots all evening, revving their engines and generally being juvenile and delinquent. And you couldn't just go somewhere else that wasn't a drive-in and still have the same teen culture, I guess. That would be like 80s teen culture without suburban shopping malls. It's just unthinkable.

Anyway, that was our semi-brief foray into the history books. I was kind of hoping the trees were original to the building, but at least I have a rough possible range, sometime between 1940 and 1978. Which, depending on who you believe, makes them either very old or very young trees. An SFGate article says they generally live around 16-20 years, and the Iowa State Extension Service gives a lifespan of just 10-15 years in that state's harsher climate. A Town & Country article on the famous cherry trees in DC gives an average range of 30-40 years, but notes that a few dozen present-day trees are survivors from the original batch of trees in 1912, and mentions that some black cherry trees have lived to at least 250 years old. Which brings us to Japan, where one famous example is thought to be around 2000 years old, and the others on an official list of the Five Great Cherry Trees of Japan are only relative youngsters at around 1000-1500 years old. So, assuming these are the same trees as in the 1978 photo, can conclude that either these trees are already ancient survivors long past their usual die-by date, or they're still practically infants that could, in theory, potentially live beyond the year 4000 AD. I mean, that's unlikely to happen but just imagine it for a moment. And however that eventually turns out, the trees did already survive a five-alarm fire, which is not something you can say of many trees of any variety. So there's that.

Old Boneyard Road

Our next Columbia Gorge adventure takes us back to the former mill town of Bridal Veil, or what's left of it. This time around we aren't visiting the falls, or the bridge above the falls, or the Angels Rest Trail, or Dalton Point, or any of the other usual sights; this time we're wandering down an old gravel Forest Service road at the edge of town, a place the agency calls "Old Boneyard Road". Who am I kidding, I saw the name and had to check it out. Knowing, as I do, how this always turns out in the movies -- "Blair witch, you say? Let's make a documentary!" -- I still had to check it out. So I did, and was underwhelmed, and I also couldn't find any interesting stuff to share about the place, so once again I'm resorting to the usual mix of guesswork, wild tangents, and unbelievable stories I just made up, and hopefully readers can tell which is which. I figured the name might work as a little clickbait, at least; I even held off finishing this post until late October, on the theory it might drive more clicks now than it would if posted in April, say. To be honest I mostly stopped caring about metrics years ago and will probably forget to ever check whether this theory of mine panned out. But never mind all that; we're here now, and I'll see if I can make the place seem at least a little spooky while I'm at it.

The usual embedded Google map up top isn't very helpful this time around, and on Street View it looks like the first couple of photos in my photoset but even less artsy, so here's a US Forest Service road map to give a better idea of where the road is at and where it goes. (That link goes to an interactive version of the USFS map, since I can't seem to embed the real thing here.)

Finding the road in real life takes a keen eye. The spot where it branches off the historic highway is marked only by an easy-to-miss Forest Service road sign noting this is road number 3000-297, and an unusually wide bit of shoulder on the other side of the highway. Surprisingly the road's not actually gated off, so in theory you could drive down it and maybe get past the muddy parts that way, but I wouldn't recommend it; your best bet is to just park in that shoulder area and walk the rest of the way, and turn around if it's too muddy since you aren't really missing anything. Past the sign, the road heads downhill into a narrow, triangular bit of land wedged between the old highway and the Union Pacific railroad, fording Dalton Creek on the way. As it nears the railroad, the road splits: A bit heading east peters out into a small meadow almost immediately, with impassable brush east of there. (A 1927 Metsker map showed the road continuing east from there and rejoining the old highway, but it was gone as of the 1944 edition of the same map.) The main road does a hairpin bend and heads west, but soon turns into impassable mud where it recrosses Dalton Creek. Maps show the road continuing west for a bit after that before dead-ending near the property line with the ODOT's rock quarry next door. Overall it gives the impression it was once an access road for something that used to be here, but gives no hints about what that was, unless maybe the name is a hint.

I first saw the name in a pair of Forest Service road studies, the 2003 original and its 2015 update. They're large (since they cover all USFS roads within the National Scenic Area) and quite dry to read, so let me summarize briefly. The 2003 report said the road was "needed by state government", while posing a "high" risk to aquatic life. The 2015 update said the need for the road was now "low" (and was merely a "low" risk to aquatic life), and proposed downgrading it from maintenance level 2 (suitable for high clearance vehicles) down to level 1 (gated off, with minimal maintenance), commenting "Consider decommissioning. This road has two stream crossings and flooding is occurring on the lower section of the road." So, reading between the lines here, whatever the state was doing here back in 2003 was causing the water quality trouble, and things got better after they stopped, but now the road's redundant. Maybe it used to be a backup quarry entrance, and dump trucks used to roll through the mud here, I dunno. Meanwhile a map titled 'Road Risk/Benefit Assessment', also from September 2015, labeled the road in green as 'Likely Needed for Future Use', so I gather the report's proposal was not a unanimous opinion. In any case the agency defaulted to not changing anything back then, and it still hasn't.

None of which explains the spooky name, which is annoying since the spooky name is the one and only reason we're here. And maybe it's not even a spooky name at all. I'm reasonably sure -- like 75% positive, ok, 51% -- that it's not actually about skeletons, at least not of the Halloween persuasion. Or at least the official old Bridal Veil town cemetery is elsewhere, due west of here over near the Bridal Veil freeway exit. The convent near Coopey Falls has its own cemetery on the convent grounds, so it's not that either; interestingly it -- according to the county surveyor's office -- is legally a "subdivision" named "Transitus". As in "sic transit gloria mundi", I suppose, which in a way follows the long tradition of naming subdivisions after things they replaced. It's said -- and never ask me how I heard about this -- that many Transitus residents return from the Other Side on the last night of each waning crescent moon for the monthly HOA meeting, which -- I'm told -- is conducted entirely in Latin and can get surprisingly heated at times, especially if they think the new groundskeeper has been edging their plots all wrong, or showing favoritism in who gets the most graveside flowers. Some propose a resolution to haunt the new guy until he quits, others remind the residents they've now done this to the last three groundskeepers, and word is starting to get out in the regional groundskeeping community that this is a bad gig, and it's lowering their property values somehow, and the phantasmagorical bickering continues for hours. But after the meeting finally wraps up, the ghostly nuns relax and play bridge til daybreak and then dematerialize back to... wherever they spend the rest of their time. Nobody really knows for sure where they go or how they get there, and it remains a deep mystery of nature (or supernature), along the lines of Atlantic eel migration. But I digress.

Anyway, my guess is that this was some sort of machine boneyard at one point, packed with mechanical bits located somewhere along the "useless junk" <==> "critical spare parts" continuum, like a larger version of my dad's garage. But what kind of machines? There's essentially nothing left now that might give us any clues about that, but I think parts for the old sawmill would be the obvious (albeit evidence-free) guess. So I can't prove it, but searching the interwebs for various logging keywords plus the word "boneyard" led me off on an interesting tangent, so I'll explain that instead for a bit. So if you don't like interesting tangents, just scroll down until you see a paragraph starting with the word "Anyway", and resume reading at that point. Which means there's only one paragraph starting with "Anyway" in the remainder of this post, believe it or not. (And yes, I added an "anyway" to this paragraph later, for ironic effect or whatever. Don't count it while scrolling down, otherwise you're liable to be here for a long while.)

This tangent takes us to a different sawmill down in the mid-Willamette Valley. The Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. operates a very traditional-minded mill near the tiny town of Bellfountain, a few miles west of the small town of Monroe. The mill ran entirely on steam power as recently as 2013, and still uses a lot of early and mid-20th century machinery, on the theory of not fixing it if it ain't broke. They even have an intact old wigwam burner, though it's strictly decorative now since Oregon banned them decades ago. Articles I've seen about the mill include a recent piece in Popular Mechanics, and an older one at OPB, plus others in trade publications like Timber West Magazine, Sawmill Magazine, and This Is Carpentry. One of the articles mentions that finding spare parts can be a big problem, so they watch auctions around the region for gear they might need someday, and sometimes end up bidding against museums. When they win an auction, the parts go to the mill's boneyard until they're needed, which is the reason I bumped into articles about the place.

At one point a few decades ago the mill helped create a unique picnic table for the nearby Bellfountain County Park, 85 feet long and cut from a single piece of wood. Some (including the county parks website) suggest it's the world's longest picnic table, or at least the longest in the "cut from a single piece of wood" category. A state historical record merely claims it "has been referred to as" the longest in that category within the US. (By contrast, the old Bridal Veil mill was best known for manufacturing the little wood boxes that Kraft Cheese used to come in.) Benton County also claims Bellfountain Park is the county's oldest park, founded way back in 1851. Although the county's only run it since 1965, and before that it was a privately-run religious campground used for revival meetings, which is not really a park in the ordinary sense.

Bellfountain's other claim to fame (besides the mill, and the park and its various amenities) is having won the overall state high school basketball championship back in 1937. If you're familiar with the movie Hoosiers or the 1954 true story it was based on, that's essentially what happened here, once upon a time. Like most states, Oregon puts schools in multiple 'divisions', organized more or less by school size and program budget, with a separate championship for each division. There were five divisions when I was in high school, and a sixth was added sometime since then, but back in 1937 there were just two. Class A for big schools, and class B for small schools. But, uniquely, if you won the class B championship in a sport, you had the right to challenge the class A champion for their trophy. Which is how a tiny K-12 school with 27 students once came to play -- and defeat -- Portland's Lincoln High School.

While we're briefly on the subject of high school sports -- briefly, I promise -- in 2020 the town of Monroe had a small cameo role in the state's endless culure wars over high school team names. It seems that they're one of several schools around the state that go by "the Dragons", including the much larger high school in the city of Dallas, OR, and in many cases the name dates back to the early 20th Century. The problematic part here is that there's a longstanding story/legend/rumor that "Dragons" is a sly reference to dragons of the "Grand Dragon" variety, and to Oregon's long history as a Ku Klux Klan hotbed, which peaked back in the 1920s (though I'm cynical enough about this state to consider adding a "so far" here). That suspicion is not helped by both Dallas and Monroe having long reputations as sundown towns. A local website in Dallas insists the stories about the name are untrue, at least in their particular case, and "Dragons" was chosen for a.) alliteration, and b.) because nobody's scared of playing a team that calls itself the "Prune Pickers", the school's previous mascot. Which, maybe. Though I'll just point out that Bellfountain proudly played as the Bells the whole time, and let the name of the town do all the intimidating.

(deep breath)

Anyway, back at Bridal Veil, the place we're actually visiting right now could've been a railroad boneyard instead, since it's right along a major (and very old) Union Pacific rail line, right where the line goes to double track through the old townsite. And I think it's also close to where the mill's old logging railroad once connected to the main line. So this place could've been for old trains and train parts, albeit on a fairly small scale. A quick search came up with examples in remote corners of Maine, New Jersey, Bolivia, and even Ukraine's Chernobyl exclusion zone, all of which are much larger than whatever could have fit here. For the same reason, I think we can rule out "aircraft boneyard" as a possibility since that requires even more space, ideally a large chunk of empty desert like the famous ones in California and Arizona.

Or maybe this area used to be parts storage for ODOT's remarkably well-disguised Coopey Quarry next door. This is the source of at least some of the gravel used to constanly patch up I-84 and the old highway, and an endless need for gravel kind of implies an endless need for spare parts, especially given the agency's legendary reckless enthusiasm for dynamite. In fact the state's 2014 LIDAR map of the area (the source of the graphic above) shows some near-vertical slopes next to the highway that to me don't look entirely natural, but do look a lot like the quarry next door. So maybe some quarrying happened here at one point too. But (as with most of this post) I have zero documentation to prove that; it's just me looking at a map and guessing wildly.

PortlandMaps says the bulk of the area was last sold in 1989, so the feds haven't actually owned the place all that long. I don't know if the deals were connected at all, but 1989 was the same year that the Trust for Public Land bought the ramshackle sawmill and what was left of its company town, and after a long nature vs. historic preservation battle all remaining structures were demolished and erased. Except for the local post office, which continues to do a brisk business in novelty wedding announcement postmarks. Before the 1989 sale, much of the town (and possibly the boneyard site here) had been owned since 1964 by an eccentric ">local NASCAR driver, who (I gather) just sort of liked the idea of owning his own town. But that's a whole separate blog post I'll get around to sooner or later.

I was really hoping there would be something left over from the place's working days, I dunno, rusty old boxcar wheels or steam engine bits or something, giant sawmill blades, sized for trees it isn't legal to cut anymore, etc, but no luck. Or at least I had no luck; maybe if you're a metal detecting expert (and have the appropriate special permit), or you just have better powers of observation than I do, you might be in for a treat. I mean, I think I would have noticed if there'd been, I dunno, an intact vintage locomotive there, hidden under a big blue tarp but fully fueled and ready to joyride, and with the model number visible so you can find the right "How To Drive This Thing" video on Youtube. I didn't see anything like that, so don't get your hopes up too much. In fact the only remaining maybe-artifacts I noticed were a couple of large concrete boxes that I couldn't identify. Maybe they were the only objects that were too heavy to remove, I dunno. I took a few photos (see photoset above) in case they ring a bell for anyone.

Or maybe I've gotten it all wrong. Suppose these concrete mystery boxes are the reason for the "Old Boneyard" name, and it's all about creepy skeletons after all. Suppose a couple of late 19th century vampires were making their way west by train to Portland, nomming on unaware locals as they went, having heard the stories of other vampires living the high life in Portland's North End (present-day Old Town). A place where people constantly vanished, never to be seen or heard from again, generally without anyone noticing or caring. And on the off chance a missing person was actually missed and questions were raised, it could always be explained away as yet another Shanghai-ing, which the public just sort of accepted as a fact of life. But what if a few people here knew the awful truth of the matter; what if the vamps were ambushed when they hopped off the train for a quick midnight snack, just before they could escape into the city and the unmapped tunnels beneath it. Perhaps the townsfolk here got a hot tip about the unwanted visitors via the newfangled telegraph; it might have even been from from a rival vampire in Portland who didn't want the competition, or had a centuries-old score to settle. Bridal Veil lacked many of the traditional anti-vamp tools (garlic, rice, Catholic priests, etc. -- the nearby convent has only been here since the 1980s), but there were plenty of wooden stakes to be had, or at least cheese boxes that could be quickly broken up into stakes. But these were vampires of the type that are merely immobilized when staked, not the exploding Buffy variety, so a little quick thinking led to entombing them in concrete -- made with 0% Transylvanian soil -- while still staked, and that's where they've stayed ever since, the name being a clue to locals to leave those boxes the hell alone. But then the mill and its town went away, and the residents dispersed to all points of the compass, and certain key details about this place were lost to current generations, and sooner or later someone's going to jackhammer the things open in the interest of making the area more natural. Whoever does this will be in for a big (but brief) surprise, and yet another ancient horror will be unleashed on the world. In fact, this will most likely occur within the next few years, because that's just how the 2020s have been going so far.

"Retail Birthplace of U-Haul" marker

For our next adventure, we're tracking down one of Portland's more unusual historical markers. In front of the U-Haul dealership at SE 88th & Foster is a sign proclaiming the spot as the "Retail Birthplace of U-Haul". The 'Retail' qualifier is there because the company itself was founded in Ridgefield, WA (a small town north of Vancouver) in 1945. But this location was the first actual dealership, apparently. The company's history page goes on in more detail, if you're curious; there's even an official book, if you're that curious. In any case, corporate headquarters moved to Phoenix many years ago in search of a more favorable regulatory environment.

In the unlikely event you've been following this humble blog since the mid-2000s, you might remember I mentioned this marker once before, in a post from September 2006. Which in turn points to a Roadside America page that describes the marker, and I have no idea where I found that page anymore. Probably on the late, lamented ORBlogs aggregator, or in someone's RSS feed, because 2006. I never actually promised I was going to go find this marker, but it did spend close to 9 years at the bottom of various todo lists before I got around to it, which might be a record (so far). But then again, I've never once claimed to be in the breaking news business.

Minute Man Monument, Concord MA

When I was in Boston back in 2012, I spent most of the week at a conference hotel out in the 'burbs. The hotel turned out to be a few miles down the road from Concord, MA, the site of a famous Schoolhouse Rock video, and the related historical events of 1775. One day after a long day of death by PowerPoint, I drove over and visited the historic Old North Bridge, which turns out to not be very old at all. In addition to the bridge itself, both ends of the bridge feature modestly-sized memorial columns, which were added in the 1800s. (If the Revolution had begun in what's now DC, or anywhere in the South, there would be a giant bombastic ultra-patriotic memorial here, and you'd have to go through a TSA checkpoint to visit it. But this being New England they've managed to keep it modest and low key and reasonably authentic, right down to the simple wood replica bridge.)

The column on the south side of the bridge dates to 1875, the centennial of the battle here, and it's topped by a statue of a local minute man. This statue is by famed sculptor Daniel Chester French, who was renowned for his historical and allegorical works. It seems this was the work that first established his reputation. He later went on to create the Lincoln statue at the Lincoln Memorial, among other things. I haven't covered any other work by French here, but he did create a famous memorial to Martin Millmore, who was the sculptor behind the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Boston Common. Curiously, French also created a small sculpture of Mrs. O'Leary's cow, the poor creature blamed for starting the great Chicago Fire.

There's a similar monument a few miles east at the Battle Green in Lexington, and apparently the two statues are often confused. A 1998 Concord Magazine article helpfully explains the differences: The Concord Minute Man is wearing a hat, and holds a plow in one hand and a musket in the other. They didn't actually plow and shoot at the same time in real life; this is just an 1875 way of pointing out the Minute Men were farmers. The 19th Century art world loved that sort of thing. Anyway, the Lexington statue is not wearing a hat, and not engaging in agriculture, and the base once featured a trough for horses, and technically the guys fighting in Lexington were the local militia and not Minute Men at all, strictly speaking. So now you know.

Columbian Cemetery

Since it's late October now, here's a slideshow from NE Portland's Columbian Cemetery, which sits next to I-5, inside the curve of the northbound Columbia Blvd. offramp. It's bordered by noisy roads to the west and south, and industrial warehouses to the north and east, and it's maybe not the most idyllic and restful final resting place out there. As with the Powell Grove Cemetery out at NE 122nd, the cemetery was here first, and then roads and general development encroached from all sides. I haven't come across anything like the Powell Grove legal battle here; maybe the state and county learned their lesson from the earlier conflict and routed I-5 around one side, instead of trying to dig up anyone's ancestors.

It turns out the fancy fence and gate out front are quite new, added sometime after 2006 in conjunction with the widening of the I-5 Columbia Slough Bridge. An environmental assessment for the project described the fence upgrade:

The existing chain-link fencing along the front of the cemetery contains two brick pillars (at the entrance) and a modern metal pipe gate identifying the name and date of the cemetery. This fencing will be replaced with an iron-style fence designed to replicate the appearance of the historic fence. Fragments of the historic fence are available to use as a template. However, for security reasons, the new fence may be taller than the historic fence, which was approximately 3 feet high. A driveway gate that is in keeping with the historic fence design and incorporates the name and date of the cemetery will be installed at the entrance.

I actually dropped by to find an old city boundary marker that a helpful Gentle Reader had sent me a tip about. Unlike Lone Fir, or Greenwood Hills, or the Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery, I gather that in general this spot is not the final resting place of prominent early pioneers or the rich and famous of any era. A chatty volunteer told me about a couple of interesting residents, including a former slave who had moved to Portland after the Civil War (who I was unable to locate), and a gentleman who held Portland Police badge #1 (and who, for some reason, was buried juuuust outside city limits).

I imagine he would have had additional stories to share, but the cemetery's equipment shed had been robbed a few days earlier, and he and another volunteer were busy figuring out the extent of the damage and how to secure the remaining equipment. I am not a superstitious person by any means, but the act of robbing a cemetery just calls out for some sort of nasty cosmic retribution. At minimum, it seems like the perpetrators ought to be cursed to wander the earth as tormented spirits, unable to enjoy a moment's peace until everything they stole is replaced. Even if that means chasing old tractor parts across the globe to a metal recycler in China or somewhere. That would be a good start, at least.

Embarcadero Freeway

October 17th, 2014 marked the 25th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake, which killed 63 people and caused heavy damage across the Bay Area. One of the damaged structures was the old Embarcadero Freeway, an ugly double-deck elevated structure that ran across the San Francisco waterfront. The freeway was closed immediately after the quake, but sat around abandoned for a few years while the city tried to figure out what to do next. Eventually they demolished it, which was a hugely controversial step at the time. These photos were taken around 1991 before demolition began in earnest.

Old City Boundary Marker

Here's an odd little object. Along the east edge of NE Portland's Columbian Cemetery, next to a tree and buried in underbrush, is a small stone that isn't a headstone. Its northern and southern faces are inscribed "CITY BOUNDARY", with a scratch mark along the east and west faces that (presumably) indicates the exact line of what was once Portland's northern city limit. I don't have even a rough date for it; I'd guess early 20th century, maybe 1910-1920 going by the typeface, and the fact that it's concrete and sort of shaped like Columbia River Highway mile markers, not the older milestones along Stark St. I don't think there is anything particularly special about this spot, so I assume there are (or were) other boundary stones like this. But I have no idea where any of them might be. The city has a handy Annexations by Decade map, which tells us that this became the city limit between 1891-1900, and stopped being the city limit some time in 1971-1980 when the city annexed up to the Columbia River. So the map's interesting, but it doesn't really give us a narrow date window. It might be a guide to where other city boundary markers are (or were), though. Vintage Portland has a 1915 annexation map with a note that the exact boundary ran "150' N. of and parallel to NL of Columbia Slough Boulevard", and further that it had been annexed in 1891 by the erstwhile City of Albina, the same year Albina and East Portland merged with the City of Portland.

When I visited, I knew precisely two things about this marker: A blog comment from Gentle Reader Aimee Wade alerting me to its existence (thanks!), and someone else's Panoramio photo showing what it looks like. That photo was crucial, and I never would have found the marker otherwise. I sort of wandered around the cemetery for a while, looking for a spot that matched the photo. The surrounding brush was taller than in the photo, partially obscuring the marker, which complicated the search a bit, but I eventually found it. For anyone who's interested in this sort of thing, it's right on the eastern edge of the cemetery. The blank wall of a giant warehouse is just inches away; I think they built it right up to the property line. I found the marker by going to the SE corner of the cemetery, near the entrance, and following the wall north, looking around the base of each tree until I found it. I'd say the marker's about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way back along the wall, on the south side of a small tree. (Alternately you could just measure out 150' from the north edge of Columbia Blvd. and look there, although I assume the street's been widened since 1915.) The marker was shorter than I'd expected, and I had to rummage around in the bushes to get these photos. As I was doing this, an elderly volunteer wandered over and we chatted a bit. He didn't seem know anything more about the marker than I did. He had some other trivia to share about sorta-famous, uh, residents of the place, but I'll save that for another post.

Courthouse Square, Edgefield SC

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Here are some old photos from the Courthouse Square in Edgefield, South Carolina. These photos are from the late 90s and show the town as a sleepy little rural county seat. It was a short day trip from Augusta, and the town was undeniably cute, but there just wasn't a lot to do once you were there. Google Street View indicates it's become a lot more twee since then. When your town square looks like a movie set, this sort of thing is bound to happen sooner or later, especially when you're a reasonable day trip distance from Atlanta. Moreover, given the rate of urban growth in Atlanta, Edgefield will probably be absorbed as a distant eastern suburb within a decade or so. I'm only half joking when I say that.

Anyway, yes, that obelisk in the center of the square is a Confederate war memorial. And yes, that's a statue of local son Senator J. Strom Thurmond next to it. Apparently -- and I was unaware of this until now -- there's a tiny etching of a cockroach, er, "Palmetto bug" hidden under Thurmond's right coattail. There is probably no polite way of looking for it, however.

Thurmond and his staff excelled at bringing home the pork to South Carolina, and Edgefield County in particular. The locals showed their gratitude by naming things after him, and since he was in office an uncommonly long time, they started to pile up after a while: Parks, roads, dams, schools, everything. You can't throw a rock without hitting something named for him, but then an outraged local will shoot you, so doing this is not advised. Thurmond even has half a lake named after him. There's a large reservoir on the Savannah upriver of Augusta that Georgia knows as Clarks Hill Lake. That's the name it was built under, but South Carolina later renamed their portion of it to be Lake Thurmond, and the dam as J. Strom Thurmond Dam. Georgia, not sharing South Carolina's enthusiasm for the man, declined to follow suit. You can always tell which side of the river someone's from by what name they call the lake.

Pics: St. Augustine, FL

Here's another slideshow from St. Augustine, Florida. You've already seen Castillo de San Marcos and the Flagler College campus; this slideshow is everything else, or at least everything else I have photos of. The historic City Hall, various old churches, and a few city streets in the touristy Old Town area. Sadly I had to drive back to Cocoa Beach that afternoon and couldn't explore the city's frozen daiquiri bars or go on a cheesy "ghost hunting tour" or anything. So I'm pretty sure I didn't get the full St. Augustine experience, for good or ill. I suppose I could go back again, although at this point I've finally seen the old fort, and Vegas is a lot closer if I just want a giant daiquiri.

Flagler College, St. Augustine, Florida

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When I was in Florida back in 2011 for a Mars rover launch, I made a side trip up to the town of St. Augustine to visit Castillo de San Marcos, a centuries-old Spanish fort I'd tried and failed to visit on two previous occasions. Since I was there anyway, I wandered around the historic (if heavily touristed) downtown for a bit, taking photos of anything that looked old. One of the highlights of the area is Flagler College a small private liberal arts college built around the former Ponce de Leon Hotel. The ornate hotel building is nowhere near as old as the Spanish fort; it was built in 1888 by railroad oligarch Henry Flagler, in a sort of Spanish-Moorish fantasia style. I didn't go inside to look around, but apparently the interior is a bit over the top as well. The building's actually a concrete structure, with electricity designed in from the beginning. Which is a bit more forward-thinking than you'd expect for the year 1888. As you might imagine it's on the National Register of Historic Places, a fake-historic building that's become historic in its own right with the slow passage of time.

Pics: Beaufort, SC

Here are a few old scanned photos from Beaufort, SC. These few photos don't really give a full picture of the place; taking photos was expensive back in the 90s, and remember 36 shots per roll? Oh, the good old days, or not. The city, or town really, is like a tiny copy of Charleston, SC. You'll be able to see this better once I get around to scanning my Charleston photos. Or you could just Google Charleston; that will work too. Or Bing, I guess. Anyway, we lived in Augusta at the time, about a 2 hour drive inland, and Beaufort was a bit shorter drive than going to Charleston. There's much more to do in Charleston, of course, but Beaufort and nearby beaches were worth an occasional day trip.

The unusual thing about the place is that the surrounding salt marshes often stretch right up to the edge of town. There could be a row of gaudy 19th century mansions, and then what looks like howling wilderness right at the end of the street. I've always liked salt marshes (and you can probably tell that since most of the photos here are salt marshes), so I thought having them next door was a very cool aspect of the town. It may also be a reason Beaufort stayed small though; up until the late 1940s, malaria was still endemic to this part of the South. Living next to a mosquito-filled swamp maybe wasn't always the best plan back then. By the time the threat of disease abated (thanks to a massive federal public health and aerial spraying campaign) the town was old and historic, ready to be rediscovered & preserved for posterity. I hate to say it, but it's possible we have DDT to thank for this quaint little place.

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Totem Pole, SW Terwilliger

SW Portland's Terwilliger Boulevard was designed as a winding road of scenic views, and there deliberately aren't a lot of structures right along the street, to avoid obstructing these views. One of the few exceptions is the Chart House restaurant, just north of the Beaverton-Hillsdale intersection. Next to the restaurant is a rather large totem pole; the idiosyncratic RACC guidelines say it qualifies as public art, and their database has this to say about it:

“Totem Pole” was carved by Chief Lelooska of Ariel Washington from red cedar harvested from the base of Mt. Adams. This totem pole is one of the most massive in existence measuring fifty feet high and four feet wide. The carved figures depict a beaver surmounted by a grizzly bear next to a raven topped by four watchmen. The totem was carved during Oregon's Centennial in 1959, to celebrate the state's role in Operation Deep Freeze, which established a scientific station at the geographic South Pole.

Born Cherokee, Lelooska (1933-1996) was adopted into the Kwakwaka'wakw, and was known for his mastery of storytelling and carving. As a scholar and educator, Lelooska was an authority on the Indians of North America with a particular emphasis on the tribes of the Northwest coastal region. He was known for his versatility in wood sculpting, creating artwork that ranged in size from hand-held rattles and feast bowls to large-scale totem poles. This piece serves as an excellent example of Lelooska’s work and is a prized part of Portland’s public art collection.

So that's the RACC account; it didn't answer all of my questions, so I dug into the Oregonian database to see what contemporary accounts had to say about it. The first thing to note is that there have been restaurants at this site (known as "Elk Point") for a very long time, stretching back to the early days of Terwilliger Boulevard. Before it became today's Chart House, for many decades it was Palaske's Hillvilla restaurant. It seems Palaske was an Indian art collector, so the idea of adding a totem pole next to his restaurant must have seemed like second nature.

Incidentally, Kenton's Paul Bunyan statue was created for the same centennial exposition, an event that's otherwise been all but forgotten. Based on the surviving art from 1959, we seem to have had sort of derpy and juvenile notions of how to commemorate the state's 100th birthday. (Lost Oregon, Vintage Portland, & Oregon Encyclopedia have interesting posts about the exposition). A totem pole is a weird way to mark the anniversary, at any rate, since it's not as if the Oregon Trail and then statehood were exactly beneficial to local tribes.

The one thing I can't confirm is the story about Antarctic exploration. It may very well be true, but I haven't found anything in the newspaper database to corroborate it.

So here's a brief timeline of the totem pole's creation and later history:

• The log arrived March 25th 1959. The pole's design was described as a scaled up copy of one from British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, more commonly known as Haida Gwaii these days.
• A construction photo dated April 7th 1959
• A May 14th, 1959 front page photo of the pole under construction, wit the caption "Heap Big Totem Pole". In case you were wondering just how racist the Oregonian was back then. I checked briefly and didn't see any letters to the editor calling them out about this headline, which makes me think the paper's white readers of 1959 were ok with this too.
• Story to go with the previous photo, "Totem pole paint dries" . The article notes this pole had a concrete base, and steel bracing on the back. I didn't think to look at the back, so I don't know if that's still there or not..
• Raising ceremony June 4th. 27 tons. quoted: "It's an artistic triumph", reports Eddie Palaske. "It's almost half as tall as Meier & Frank's. This will be here long after the Centennial exposition is torn down, perhaps right up to the time the atom bombs strike."
• June 9th brought a story about Lelooska's indian encampment on the South Park Blocks, part of the Rose Festival Center. I can imagine an Indian encampment there, but try as I might, I can't picture carnival rides on the Park Blocks. I just can't see it.
• August 25th brought a mention of the inconvenient fact that tribes this far south didn't really do totem poles . It's couched in the usual mocking racial terms, being 1959 and all, but the underlying claim is factually accurate.
• A tall photo of the pole, dated October 6th . The caption mentions a pond at the base, which isn't there now.
• January 30th, 1961: A pair of visitors from Finland marveled at the totem pole. The wife mentioned that Finland has no totems because it has no indians. Husband: "No, but we have Swedes".
• The previous article got an indignant letter to the editor. Bigotry against Indians was still perfectly socially acceptable then, but prejudice against Swedes was on the wane on this side of the Atlantic. I suppose that may count as a form of progress, sort of.
• A photo of it being repainted for rose festival , June 2nd 1961. The article mentions it has (or had) a gas burner on top to light on special occasions. I don't know whether that still works, and if so, what constitutes a special occasion these days.
• A 1966 profile of Lelooska & a wider discussion about NW indian art
• Also a 1983 profile of Lelooska (Don Smith).
• Palaske's Hillvilla became the Chart House in 1985, and the totem pole underwent restoration at that point.
• A followup article about the changeover gave a brief history of the place

Waterfront Flagpole

Visitors to Portland's Waterfront Park are bound to notice the giant flagpole sooner or later, north of the Morrison Bridge and near the Battleship Oregon memorial. It seems like a strange thing to have in the middle of the hip, ironic, occasionally-war-protesting Portland of 2014, but there's an interesting historical story behind it. It seems that for a large part of 20th century, Portland prided itself on having the world's largest US flag, or at least the largest one that could be flown from a flagpole. In retrospect this seems sort of like the way tiny Midwestern towns are thrilled to have the world's largest ball of twine, except far more patriotic, somehow. But back in the day this was a great source of civic pride.

The story starts with a ship. From 1925 to 1942, Portland's waterfront was home to the old battleship USS Oregon, which played a key role in the Spanish-American War, and then was loaned (not given) to the city as a museum. When World War II broke out, the Navy decided the the old ship was more valuable as wartime scrap metal than as a historical monument, and it was towed away for dismantling. So as a super-patriotic (and non-metal-using) wartime replacement, the city decided to put up a giant 100' wooden flagpole, with a giant flag to go with it. It was first proposed in 1941, but wasn't completed until 1944 because people were kind of busy with WWII at the time.

The flagpole didn't always fly the giant flag, and the flag sometimes made guest appearances elsewhere. It showed up at the 1950 Shrine game (the all-star game for local high school football players) where it was referred to as the largest American flag in existence. I haven't seen any mention of that original flag's dimensions, but a larger one was acquired in 1956, with dimensions 15' by 10'.

Then in 1960, Hawaii became the 50th state, and a new 50 star flag was needed. Naturally this was a chance to go for an even larger flag, this time 36.5' by 24.5'. Which is a huge flag by any standard, and it was already too big to fly safely during stormy winter months, but there was already talk of creating an even larger one.

So in 1969 they got a truly gigantic flag, 62' by 42'. Which presented a problem, because the new flag was too large for the current flagpole, and it was obvious that it would become entangled with the Battleship Oregon mast or nearby oak trees if the wind ever happened to blow in the wrong direction. The article mentions it superseded a 45' by 30' flag from 1960, which I assume is the larger replacement mentioned in the earlier article. The article mentions the previous flag had rivals for the "World's Largest" title, but only mentions the Meier & Frank flag. That flag is bigger (60' by 48', pre-shrinkage) but it's never flown from a flagpole; they used to hang it over 6th Avenue during the Rose Festival, and in recent years it's occasionally been hung on the SW Morrison side of the Meier & Frank store (now Macy's) during major national events, most recently in the weeks after 9/11.

The new flag rarely flew, for safety reasons, and to make matters worse a 1972 letter to the editor pointed out that the flag's dimensions were all wrong. This may seem nitpicky and unimportant to anyone who was never a Boy Scout, but let me assure you the dimensions are very, very important. If the flag isn't shaped right, you can't fold it correctly in the official manner. Which is a problem because you also can't just set it down in a big pile somewhere; that would be disrespectful and you'd probably have to burn it then. So if it's the wrong dimensions, you're stuck carrying it around with you forever, pretty much. And as desirable as that is from a patriotism standpoint, it isn't always the most convenient thing when going about one's everyday life. So yeah, misshapen flags are the worst, basically.

In any case, 1980 rolled around, and City Hall (lobbied by the Rose Festival and veterans' groups) wanted a way to fly the giant flag safely. The American Legion had wanted to fly the big flag the previous year, but the usual safety concerns had cropped up again, and since this was the cusp of the Reagan era, the city couldn't simply tell them it wasn't practical, end of story; a way had to be found to accommodate the flag. Still, chopping down nearby oak trees wasn't an option, because it was 1980 and not 1944, so they decided to go for a taller flagpole instead, 135' this time instead of 100'. This caused delays, because finding a single 135' tree suitable for a flagpole takes a while, and the flagpole wasn't ready in time for that year's Veterans Day. The kinks were sorted out eventually and the flag flew on the following 4th of July.

If you look closely at the plaque on the flagpole, you'll see a mention of Gene Autry, the famous singing movie cowboy. It turns out there's a very prosaic reason for this: The flagpole was funded in part by donations from Golden West Broadcasting, the then-owner of KGW-AM and a couple of other local radio stations, and Autry was the company's chairman. So he was involved in the project to some degree, just not in a singing movie cowboy capacity.

The glory of the new flag and flagpole combo was short-lived, however, as a new contender disputed the city's "World's Largest" claim. In 1981, a larger 82' by 43.7' flag was raised at the offices of a Long Beach, CA bumper sticker magnate, of all places. Portland was still able to claim the largest flag on a wooden flagpole, which I guess is a sort of consolation prize, but the title of overall world's largest was gone for good. There was talk at the time of creating an even larger flag for Portland, but that doesn't seem to have gotten any traction. Portland quietly bowed out of the escalating vexillological arms race at that point, perhaps realizing giant flags had become the province of whackaloons and there's no competing with those people, and since then we haven't looked back. Cultural shifts here since 1980 make it unlikely that we're going to invest in a new record-setting flag or flagpole anytime soon. Portland has far more upscale and cosmopolitan things to burn money on these days, and we've consigned the entire monster flag phenomenon to the civic memory hole.

The arms race continued on without us, though. The bumper sticker king went on to invent "Superflag", which is much too big to actually fly from a flagpole, or to hang anywhere. Instead they just unfurl it at football stadiums, NASCAR races, etc., anywhere this sort of display would be welcome. There are actually several Superflags, available for rental in 3 sizes, up to 505' x 255'. If it's impossible to unfurl in a vertical position, there's a reasonable argument that it doesn't even count as a flag at that point. It's a very large something, but not a flag.

As for other large contenders, there's a 90' x 60' one that's been hung vertically on occasion on the George Washington Bridge in NY-NJ on occasion. As for flagpole-based flags, the largest seems to be a 114' x 65' one in Gastonia, NC, which weighs only 180 lbs, which is amazingly light if that's an accurate number. That flag seems to have a steel flagpole, though. So it's possible we still have a claim to the on-a-wooden-flagpole consolation prize, if anybody out there cares to pursue it for some reason.

Pics: Savannah, GA

I recently dug out and scanned a batch of old travel photos, so here's a slideshow from historic Savannah, GA, taken sometime in the late 1990s. It was a brief visit and I haven't been back since then. (The visit wasn't motivated by Midnight-in-the-Garden mania, I hasten to add; I've never even read the book.) Much of the city is a protected historic district, and Google Street View confirms it hasn't changed a lot in the last 15 years or so.

And yes, there is a photo of the Talmadge Memorial Bridge in the slideshow. I only had dialup internet back then and blogs didn't even exist yet, but it's almost like I knew, somehow.

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