Kelly Butte, 1906-1910

I thought I'd try something different here on this humble blog. Longtime readers might have noticed that I often reference the Multnomah County Library's Oregonian newspaper archives. Usually I do this to flesh out the historical background on something obscure I found around town and took photos of. This time I thought I'd start with the database, pick out a place and a time period to search on, and just see what the paper had to say.

I settled on Kelly Butte as the subject for this, since it's an mysterious and little-known place and I've already milked it for quite a few page views over the years. For the time period, I went with a five year span starting in 1906, since -- at least according to the database's imperfect OCR system -- this is around the time people started calling it "Kelly Butte" rather than "Kelly's Butte" -- which sounds like the sort of place where desperadoes cut you off at the pass or something.

The city's nuclear bunker was still half a century in the future, but Kelly Butte wasn't just a pastoral wilderness in the early 20th century. In 1906 the county opened a new jail and rock quarry at Kelly Butte, and most of the news items over our five year period are of problems with running the jail, and of miscreants being sent there.

When a convict was sent to Kelly Butte, it was a sentence to hard labor, breaking rocks in the hot sun, just like the cliche. Except for the hot sun part, this being Portland and all. The part that always confused me about the whole breaking rocks thing was what the purpose of it all was, other than just to be mean to prisoners. It turns out that, at least in the Portland case, we needed all that gravel for road construction. In 1906 Multnomah County was just beginning to pave local roads, and the county needed a massive supply of gravel for all that paving work. Prison labor was cheap, and prisoners couldn't up and quit when they realized how miserable and dangerous the work was. The quarry operated for quite some time, so if you live anywhere in SE Portland the roads you drive or ride on were first paved with prison labor gravel from Kelly Butte.

As this was before the advent of modern heavy machinery, the gravel operation needed a substantial labor force. And as you'll see, the county obliged by sentencing people to months of hard labor for laughably trivial offenses. If the authorities merely felt you were the wrong sort of person, they'd find a way to ship you off to "the rockpile", as Kelly Butte was then nicknamed.

Multnomah County was organized on the County Court system at the time -- a system still used by rural counties around Oregon -- in which the county commission is chaired by a County Judge, who doubles as, well, a judge. So the same person could (and did) order the construction of a new jail and then sentence people to break rocks there. And as this was before the advent of modern conflict-of-interest laws, the same judge could also serve as a prominent member of the local Good Roads Association, lobbying for more and better paved roads. It seems to have been quite a cozy arrangement. I haven't yet searched the archives to see just how long it went on or what eventually became of it.

I haven't come across any examples of the Oregonian or the general public objecting to this arrangement. Although this is probably a good time to remind everyone that a local newspaper is not an objective source of historical facts or even a mirror of contemporary public opinion. This is true now, and was even more true in 1906; the Oregonian of that day reads like a combination of the Portland Mercury, a British tabloid, and The Onion. The paper reveled in lurid crime stories, and gleefully sneered at everyone involved. Which makes the articles fun, often hilarious to read, but perhaps not always reliable as historical documents.

That said, I do get a sense there was something more to this rockpile business beyond the paving racket. Portland was still a lusty seaport of the Old West in those days, full of unattached young men seeking their fortune by means fair or foul. They seem to have made the authorities rather anxious. More than once an offender was given a choice: Go to the rockpile for 90 days and do some good honest manual labor (which presumably was a first step toward settling down and becoming a respectable citizen), or leave town on the next ship or train and never return. It would be interesting to learn which option was more popular.

NOTE: If you want to follow the links here you're going to need a Multnomah County library card, or some other way of accessing the America's Historical Newspapers database. I've excerpted some of the news articles here so everyone can at least get a taste of what the 1906 Oregonian was like. The newspaper database is quite fascinating, and I highly recommend checking it out if you can, although browsing through it can easily suck up hours or days of your time if you let it.

Also note that this post currently peters out in mid-1910. I'd stopped there when I was initially writing it, and then the post lingered around in the Drafts folder awaiting further action. So I decided I'd go ahead and publish it now, and either leave the rest of 1910 as an exercise for the reader, or do the rest at some future date and update the post at that point, and hopefully remember to remove this little notice so as not to confuse people.

1906

• Road to the Rock Quarry, March 6th, 1906
  

  
  The county is to open a road to the rock quarry, recently secured at Kelly Butte, between the Section Line and Powell Valley roads, preparatory to undertaking some extensive road construction. There are 12 acres in the tract, and the rock is considered the best for road work found anywhere near Portland. It is proposed to complete the road to the quarry and take out rock for the crusher. The gravel that has been used for so many years on the county roads of Multnomah was excellent for the time when travel had not become so heavy as at present, nor where the loads on the farmers' wagons so heavy as at present. The gravel roads are now quickly cut to pieces by the tremendous travel to Portland, and hence the county will give the roads a coating of crushed rock, which will stand the heaviest possible wear. Judge Webster has announced that the roads of Multnomah County are to be made the best in the state and models of construction, which may now be done, as the county is out of debt. The quarry at Kelly Butte is central and accessible from all portions of the county.
  

  
  
• July 6, 1906:
  

  
  

  PLAN BRANCH JAIL
  ---
  It Will Adjoin the Kelly Butte Quarry
  ---
  SAVING IN TIME PROPOSED
  ---
  Prisoners Will Work Ten Hours a
  Day and Will Not Have to Go
  From and Come to Multnomah Jail
  

  
  The new structure will be 67 feet long, 22 feet wide, and the walls 12 feet high. The floor will be of cement and the roof constructed of sheet iron. The walls will be strong enough to withstand any attempted outbreak by the prisoners. There will be 48 bunks, and accommodations for eight guards, although that number will not be employed.
  
  ...
  
  The structure will cost about $3000 and similar buildings may be erected close to other rock quarries.
  
  The prisoners are to be worked ten hours a day getting the rock from the butte and crushing it. A traction engine will haul the rock to the crusher. Kelly Butte contains 12 acres of solid rock 80 feet high.
  

  County Judge Webster, commissioners Barnes & Lightner
  
  
• September 16th, 1906 obit for Plympton Kelly, described as "a pioneer of 1848", and son of prominent pioneer "Father" Clinton Kelly.
  

  
  There were five sons in the Kelly family, and all helped in clearing the home farm that comprised Waverly, Kenilworth, and Richmond, in the southeastern portion of Portland. In 1850 Plympton filed on 350 acres of Government land on the Section Line road, erected a log cabin, and then went to work to clear away the heavy growth of timber. It is known as the Kelly Butte farm. By dint of hard work, he developed one of the finest farms in Multnomah County.
  

  
  
• STOP MAKING EYES, November 6, 1906. Wherein the city threatens to arrest all men found idling about town and leering at women, and send them up for an arduous course at "Rock College", a.k.a. the Kelly Butte quarry. The Oregonian reports all of this with great glee. It reads like something out of The Onion, really.
  
  
• A followup piece from the next day, wherein a Captain Slover of the city police said "Combined with the threat of the rockpile at Kelly Butte, the order had the effect of clearing out the many professional idlers in the North End. It is wonderful what magic there is in the rockpile."
  
  
• The first prisoners arrived at Kelly Butte the same day, all convicted for vagrancy and sentenced to break rocks for terms between 20 and 90 days.
  

  
  Chief of Police Gritzmacher is elated over the fact that in the future city prisoners found guilty of vagrancy and other misdemeanors must serve time at rock-breaking instead of being held in jail, fed three square meals a day and kept warm with fires paid for by the city.
  
  It is the prediction of Chief Gritzmacher that there will be much less crime this Winter because of the establishment of the rockpile.
  

  
  The article makes sure to point out that one prisoner, a certain Hugh Simmons, was also known as the "Jamaica Coon". No doubt they realized their readers cared deeply about such details.
  
  
• Dr. Ganzer Fractures Rock Clad in His Sunday Best, October 27, 1906, wherein a certain "Doctor" Ganzer feels that breaking rocks at the quarry is beneath him, and soon gets his comeuppance.
  
  
• A brief item from November 25, 1906:
  

  
  Portland has a lot of Caruso "mashers", especially cigar store and street corner "johnnies", who, while not "pinching" their victims, otherwise make themselves a nuisance. Regimen at Kelly's Butte would do them good.
  

  
  Yeah, blame it all on that Enrico Caruso and his operatic stylings, corrupting the youth of America. I'm guessing this is a derogatory reference to Italian immigrants, but early 20th Century slang can be impenetrable at times.
  

1907

• Oak-Street Social Happenings, January 25, 1907, wherein a prominent idler (whose crime isn't entirely clear) is permitted to catch the next windjammer to South Africa instead of breaking rocks for six months.
  
  
• A brief strike by the prisoners, March 1907, in which they demanded 8 hour workdays. So the county stopped feeding them until they relented.
  
  
• A suicide attempt (dated June 7, 1907), by an "Opium Fiend" incarcerated on Kelly Butte and unable to obtain opium. This was considered quite hilarious in 1907.
  
  
• August 19, 1907: A local Methodist minister was arranging to drop by on Sundays and preach at the inmates, and send volunteers around every few days bearing flowers and religious tracts.
  
  
• September 16, 1907: The first newspaper report of an escape from Kelly Butte. Jack Earle, a former private detective, was convicted for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, namely two minor girls found in his company in a North End saloon. He then jumped bail and fled to LA before being recaptured. It was suspected that he had accomplices in his escape, his wife among them, and he was also considered a master of disguise due to his private detective work. The Oregonian speculated that he may have fled south, and might not be recaptured this time.
  
  Toward the bottom of the article, it's mentioned in passing that this was not the first escape from the butte, but other escapees had been recaptured eventually. Note that the prison was only about a year old at this point, and the county had initially bragged its walls would thwart any escape attempts. Hmm. Go figure.
  
  
• There are several instances where a ne'er-do-well was given a choice: Leave town posthaste, or go break some rocks for us. For example, the October 19, 1907 paper had the tale of a notorious Chicago pickpocket named Jimmy Bryant, nabbed while doing his thing at the Multnomah County Fair in Gresham. (The fair was held much later in the year in those days, it seems). He'd been convicted before, along with a pair of associates, for, uh, working the crowd during a visit by President Roosevelt in 1903. Also had a 1901 arrest in New Orleans for pickpocketing during a carnival, along with another band of associates. The article's worth it just for the colorful nicknames.
  
  
• In the same month, on October 31, the paper reported a lurid domestic case among the toiling classes. After reporting the juicy details and recounting various incidents involving the unhappy couple, the Oregonian states "Roach was found guilty and sentenced to treat his wife better on penalty of being sent to the Kelly Butte training school for athletic young husbands".
  

1908

• February 20, 1908, saw a report of an ongoing ugly feud between the County Court and the Sheriff over who was responsible for running the "rockpile", and whose budget paid for feeding inmates. Not entirely unlike the Mean Girls vs. Bernie Giusto feuding of a few years ago.
  
  
• The 27th of the same month saw another feud, this time between a County Commissioner and the Mayor of Portland, the latter claiming that Kelly Butte was churning out an inferior product. The article refers to the "Base Line, Powell, and Section Line roads", where "Base Line" is today's Stark, and "Section Line" is Division.
  
  
• Two days later came an amusing exchange between Mayor Lane and City Auditor Barbur regarding the firing of a street sweeper:
  

  
  "Brooks was employed in the Streetcleaning Departent", explained Auditor Barbur
  
  "What is he doing now?" asked C.A. Cogswell, a member of the Board.
  
  "Breaking rock at Kelly Butte", replied the Auditor. He was found guilty of a misdemeanor, and the Municipal Judge sent him to the rockpile."
  
  "Then he is in the street work yet", remarked the Mayor. "And crushed rock is scarce, too."
  

  
  
• On May 16, 1908, MAX THE MASHER IS SENTENCED TO KELLY BUTTE ROCKPILE, subtitled "Washington-Street Lady-Killer Will Exercise His Fascinating Arts on Big Boulders at County Stockade for Next 60 Days". Let me again point out this is the real Oregonian, not The Onion. Apparently Max, a.k.a. Marcus, who "owns a bootblack stand somewhere", liked to hang out daily at the corner of 12th & Washington (now home to the fancy Indigo condo tower), roguishly tipping his hat to ladies not of his acquaintance. Yes, that was his entire crime, as far as we are informed. Tacky behavior, sure, but 60 days breaking rocks? Sheesh.
  
  
• June 5, 1908: 40,000 PEOPLE SEE AUTO RACES. On this day Kelly Butte was part of the course for the Northwest's very first automobile race. Two races, in fact, both consisting of multiple circuits of a 14 mile course around Portland's outer eastside. Seven cars started the 50 mile edition, but only two finished, with the others coming to grief at Kelly Butte, Gresham, or the Gravel Pit. The winning time was a blistering 1 hour, 13 minutes. The paper proudly notes that despite all the breakdowns and crashes, not a man was hurt during the races. So there's that.
  
  
• August 4, 1908, in City News In Brief a prisoner broke his ankle while fleeing falling boulders from a dynamite blast. Yikes! In other news, a local inventor announced his amazing new musical instrument, the "Pneumatone". I found a picture ad for one in the October 1912 issue of Popular Science, page 112. I could be wrong about this, since he was awarded a patent and all, but it sure looks like a fancy sort of kazoo.
  
  Also, we're informed about the hugely successful fruit trees belonging to J.H. Revenue, on his farm east of Sandy. If that surname sounds familiar, you may remember a recent post here about the Revenue Bridge over the Sandy River, which is a whole other historical tale.
  
  
• On September 18, 1908, Kelly Butte was visited by a grand jury, which was trying to puzzle out the ongoing feud between the Sheriff and the County Commissioners.
  
  
• And on October 3, 1908, the grand jury asked a judge to rule on what the current law meant, which he did. In passing, the story mentioned that the guy who broke his ankle back in August was now suing the city for damages.
  
  
• November 18, 1908 saw another inmate strike, this time demanding that one of their number be released from the "dungeon". Which I think is 1908-speak for "solitary confinement".
  
  
• The next day, the grand jury reported back, stating they were pleased with the current state of affairs. They further recommended that the county repeat the experiment on Wiberg Butte, now known as Rocky Butte. The county later did this, and that jail operated until the mid 1980s.
  
  
• On the same day, the sheriff personally helped recapture a Kelly Butte escapee.
  
  
• And on the 20th, the prisoners strike ended. As with the previous strike, they eventually knuckled under due to lack of food.
  

1909

• And then, on January 2, 1909: EX-GUARD CHARGES MURDER AT BUTTE, subtitled "Johnson Alleges Most Brutal Conditions". Johnson, a former guard turned whistleblower, went public with claims about mismanagement and officially sanctioned brutality at the Kelly Butte jail. In one case, a prisoner was brutally beaten by others as jail officials chose not to intervene, and the prisoner died of internal injuries a few days later. This beating, it seems, was directly related to the recent inmates' strike.
  
  Oh, and the jail administrator then decided on his own to release the guy responsible for the murder, for reasons as yet unknown.
  
  
• On the 4th, a brief editorial concurring with the criticism.
  
  
• And on the 5th, Johnson met with the grand jury, which was continuing to investigate the Kelly Butte situation.
  
  
• On January 31st came the grand jury's final report. It seems they visited the butte again on the 13th, were treated to a nice hot meal and a demonstration of the jail's bloodhounds, and concluded everything was great. In fact, the place really needed expanding.
  
  Elsewhere, they also recommended replacing the current Poorfarm with a location outside city limits. This later happened, the Poorfarm was moved to Troutdale, and eventually became the McMenamins Edgefield complex. FWIW.
  
  
• On the same day, however, it was announced the sheriff would take over running the jail, with personnel changes:
  

  
  In the first place, the County Court and Commissioners, and particularly Judge Webster, was desirous of retaining Superintendent A.S. Briggs. The Sheriff would not hear of this, for no man ever in the employ of the County has been so generally and persistently charged with incapacity in public office. So Briggs must go.
  

  
  
• On February 6th, the lawsuit by the prisoner injured in the boulder incident had his case nonsuited (i.e. thrown out) on a technicality.
  
  
• March 6th, someone was sent to break rocks for stealing copper wire from a rail line near Estacada. Which is a surprisingly contemporary-sounding crime. Or today's examples are a surprisingly retro crime. I'm not entirely sure.
  
  
• March 11th, another prisoner strike, this time for better food. They held out for a few days before capitulating on the 16th.
  
  
• April 1: Rumors circulate that A.S. Briggs is in line to run a new rockpile, this time in the Linnton area. April fools? We'll see...
  
  
• April 17: Yet another escape. This time the guy escaped by scaling sheer rocks as they were preparing to start blasting. He made it as far as Gresham before being recaptured, and the article speculates he had help.
  
  
• April 32: Why yes, Mr. Bill Squires did have help during his escape attempt, a pair of area farmers who assisted him:
  

  
  With a full knowledge that the man was an escaping criminal, these farmers provided him with a hat and coat, instructed him to walk in a furrow so they could plow it under and thus throw the pursuing dogs off the scent, and also offered him a gun, which would be handy in case it became necessary to do the Tracy act and kill the Deputy Sheriffs who were in pursuit. The accomodating gentlemen who were so willing to aid in starting a possible line of tragedies were arrested, but the grand jury failed to return a true bill against them. This will be very pleasing news to the rest of the convicts, who might have been deterred from a jailbreak by the belief that they would get no such warm welcome from the citizens in the vicinity of the rockpile.
  

  
  
• May 9: Grand plans were announced for Mt. Tabor, with a new park, new reservoirs, and new homes & streets, served by a new streetcar line. The article mentions the possibility of extending the streetcar to Kelly Butte to serve the county rockpile, for the transport of prisoners and crushed rock. The transportation issue had been discussed repeatedly since the jail's inception, but had never been addressed.
  
  
• May 26: Fred Fisher, a former cook at Kelly Butte, was arrested and charged with having a pair of stolen revolvers. He worked at the butte during the Briggs administration, and was dismissed shortly after the change in control.
  
  
• June 9: As rumored, former superintendent A.S. Briggs was picked to run the new quarry up in Linnton. The article states that, despite being a county facility, the quarry will be worked by city prisoners. Presumably so the quarry won't fall under the purview of the county sheriff. The county seemed to be going to absurd lengths just to spite the sheriff and benefit one favored minor civil servant. One gets the strong impression that there's more to the story than the paper is telling us. Perhaps Briggs kept the daguerrotypes, as they say.
  
  
• July 7: The county planned to let prisoners earn a small amount of money during their stay, to prevent them from being completely destitute after being released (and presumably then reoffending).
  
  
• July 20's City News In Brief brings us this bit of period color:
  

  
  PARDONED; WILL MARRY WOMAN
  David La Mora, sentenced to Kelly Butte for a year by Circuit Judge Bonaugh upon conviction of a statutory offense, has been pardoned by Governor Benson, and was released from the County Jail yesterday afternoon. The pardon was conditional upon his marriage to Frances Meyers, an employee at the Yale Laundry. La Mora was at first given to understand that he would be held in jail until after the marriage, but when he said he had no money with which to purchase a license, or to pay the preacher or judge as the case might be, he was released with consent of District Attorney Cameron.
  

  
  
• August 12: News of a government lottery giving away lands on the Flathead Indian Reservation. Although the article just says "Flathead Reservation" and fails to even mention the existence of any Indians. One of the lucky winners just so happened to be serving time on Kelly Butte during the auction, but as a Spanish-American War vet he was entitled to send a proxy.
  
  
• And then, on August 19, the county announced it would abandon the Kelly Butte works and rely exclusively on stone from Mr. Briggs's operation in Linnton. The county insisted that very little paving work remained to be done within hauling distance of Kelly Butte, except for a few miles here and there, so there was no longer any need for the operation. How... convenient...
  
  
• On the same day, this small item:
  

  
  INSULTS GIRL; WILL BREAK ROCK. --
  Della Livingood, a 17-yearl-old street singer, was complainant in Municipal Court yesterday morning against Gus Berg, arrested Tuesday night by Deputy Sheriff Beatty, for telling the girl her singing was "rotten". "I am a plain-spoken man", Berg told Judge Bennett. "I will give you 10 days at Kelly Butte," said Judge Bennett. "That may give you time to deliberate before speaking to young ladies on the street."
  

  
  
• The next day brought news that the jail may not close after all, assuming a delayed rail line is finally completed.
  
  
• September 2: The new Linnton quarry officially opened for business, and a number of city prisoners were moved there from Kelly Butte. It's amazing how fast things can happen when you don't have basic environmental, safety, or zoning laws in place.
  
  
• September 16: Bill Squires tried to escape again, but this time didn't make it off the prison grounds. Not a very impressive escape attempt this time; it was the old "run for the fence when the guard turns his head" trick. Whereupon the guards tried the old "shoot at their feet a couple of times and watch them give up" trick.
  
  
• September 22: Kelly Butte received an official visit by Mrs. J. Ellen Foster, Government Inspector of Prisons. The article mentions that she looked favorably on the Kelly Butte operation, but much of the piece is devoted to marveling at the novelty of an important female federal official. It does mention in passing that Mrs. Foster had special praise for the work of Lola Baldwin, the country's first female police officer.
  
  
• September 23: The ongoing feud between the County Court and the Sheriff continued, with a new report from the county claiming that feeding prisoners was twice as expensive after the sheriff took over the jail. The sheriff pulled no punches in his reply, arguing that the numbers for the time before he took over were inaccurate and far too low:
  

  
  "For instance, it was formerly a very common occurrence for men sentenced to long terms on the rockpile to vanish suddenly, after eating a few meals, and never to be heard of again. As most of these escapes were carefully concealed from the public, these elopements would leave, in sme cases, a surplus of several hundred meals to be used in reducing the 'per capita' cost for the others.
  
  "Opium smoking and whisky drinking were also quite freely practiced among the prisoners, and as 50 cents worth of opium would take the place of $5 worth of food, there was a mathematical saving effected from that cause. To make the meal account fit the sentence account may have simplified the bookkeeping, but it was a method by which it was fully as difficult to determine accurately the cost per meal as it would be to tell how much the county is paying Judge Webster for his vacations and private law practice and how much for looking after the work of the county. I have never been able to secure any accurate data on the amount of rock crushed, either this year or last, but am not surprised at the showing made by the County Court.
  
  "With the vast sums of money which the Court has been spending on the roads in ever-increasing amounts, it was a very simple mathematical problem to figure the cost of meals down to a mere fraction. Yet no practical man who ever engaged in the business of feeding people as a business venture ever believed they could be fed, except mathematically or theoretically, at the prices claimed by the County Court, without a loss. Inasmuch as the work of figuring down the price of meals and figuring up the output of rock under the old regime will enable some of the hard-working Commissioners to get in 'per diem' that otherwise might escape them, I am willing that the Court should follow the same practice with the crushed rock that it has followed with the meals"
  

  
  
• November 24: The city proposed building a "detention hospital" on or near Kelly Butte, on land donated by the county. A "detention hospital" being an involuntary quarantine facility for people with contagious diseases. The location was hailed as an ideal one, although it turns out this was Plan B. Plan A would have been a westside location along Canyon Road, but a city councilman owned land nearby and didn't want a detention hospital in his neighborhood.
  
  
• November 27: Proving that the only thing new about NIMBY is the acronym, the proposed detention hospital ran into local opposition, from people who quite emphatically did not want this in their backyards. Although one local landowner suggested that putting it on top of Kelly Butte instead of right on the Section Line road might not damage property values quite so much. Notably, this time the Oregonian refers to the institution not as a "detention hospital" but as a "pesthouse", which seems like a much more pejorative term.
  
  
• December 3: Another grand jury review of the county's operations gave Kelly Butte far from stellar marks, primarily due to overcrowded jail space. Colorful phrasing abounds: "Kelly Butte Disgraceful", "Kelly Butte quarters cramped and very unsanitary; disgrace to civilization", "Kelly Butte Disgusting", "In the name of common decency we ask that this be remedied at once." The report goes on to criticize broken kitchen ranges, a lack of modern electric lighting, and the use of unsanitary wooden bunks instead of modern iron ones.
  
  I get the impression that grand juries were once used for a sort of general inspection & external audit of the county's operations. It's not clear whether that was actually a valuable function or not, but it's an interesting idea in the abstract.
  
  

1910

• January 11: More metal thieving, with two culprits being sent to the rockpile. Of the other pair: "When asked why they stole the wire, they said they were 'broke' and needed the money."
  
  
• January 29: CARD-PLAYER IS CONVICTED. Apparently the simple act of playing a friendly game of draw poker was a crime in 1910 Portland, despite being a traditional pastime of the Old West. The case at hand illustrates the one upside of this prohibition: If you happened to lose $400 during a five day poker marathon, you could always call the cops and rat out the guys who took your money. And off they go to break rocks. Of course you got a similar sentence, since you weren't exactly innocent either. And then they were pardoned, and you got your sentence suspended, and everyone switched over to civil court to continue fighting over that $400.
  
  It's interesting to note, apropos of nothing, that later the authorities sorted out the poker problem by simply legalizing it. And curiously, the world didn't end. Just sayin'.
  
  
• February 20: More on the proposed pesthouse, which they now describe simply as a "smallpox hospital". When you put it that way, I frankly wouldn't want it in my backyard either.
  
  
• February 26: A very 1910 story: Man cons two other men out of the princely sum of $14. Man is sentenced to six months. Man is in no condition to break rocks. Man's son writes half-literate tearjerking letter to judge, explaining that his mother is distraught, and he (the child) is unable to earn enough to support the family in his father's absence. Judge sends them a check from his own pocket, court recommends a pardon.
  
  
• March 17: A piece about the good roads movement mentions that County Judge Webster belongs to the Good Roads Association. Lobbying for paved roads while supplying the raw materials for paved roads seems just a little conflict-of-interest-ish, doesn't it?
  
  
• April 24: Another story with a kid in it, but less of a family togetherness angle. Seems his dad had a beef with the neighbors, and decided to resolve it by dynamiting their cabin. Son inadvertently rats out his dad when, under questioning, said he saw his dad stockpiling dynamite. When asked how he knew it was dynamite, he said he knew the smell from riding on wagons to Kelly Butte.
  
  
• May 22: Another example of a crime that actually isn't new:
  

  
  An individual of the male gender, incarcerated at Kelly Butte by the county on conviction by the city of attempting assault upon a little girl, seeks freedom on the ground that the city cannot send one of its prisoners beyond city limits for punishment. But for an offense like this the city should have authority to send the culprit to one of a variety of places, one of which is so far away that no traveler has ever returned from it.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Kelly Butte, July '09

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A few more photos from Kelly Butte, a place I've already covered in detail here, here, and here. I went back to take another look at the place, because a.) a couple of commenters had mentioned that the city was doing some serious earth moving around the entrance to the old nuclear bunker, and b.) I had a better camera this time.

Sure enough, now there's a huge pile of dirt bulldozed in front of the bunker entrance. I know my earlier Kelly Butte posts have gotten repeated visits from city hall IP addresses, so I've occasionally wondered whether I helped cause all this bulldozing. There's a certain feeling of power in that, although all things considered I'd really rather use my amazing blogo-powers for good. When I argued the city ought to take more of an interest in the place, burying the bunker under a big ugly pile of dirt wasn't what I had in mind.

A couple of weeks after I visited, there was a large fire on the butte, supposedly started by transients. It wasn't clear from the news whether this area was affected or not. I suppose I'd have to go back yet again to find out.

Btw, I was poking around on Flickr and noticed a few other people had Kelly Butte photosets up, so check out these photos from mumblion, jordan_n22, and sukonachi. The last set has a few cool photos from before the bulldozers showed up, and one of the old radio tower that used to be here.

Kelly Butte, Infrared

misc. photomisc

Mt. Hood from Washington Park, your basic classic tourist photo.




Another sign of fall: It's winged ant season. I didn't squash this guy -- it's the one fleeting moment of glory available for male ants, so I figured I'd let him have his day, for all the good it's going to do him.





A couple of sunset photos from a few days ago.




Spooky, mysterious Kelly Butte lurking in the fog, near SE 82nd & Powell.




At the streetcar stop @ 21st & Lovejoy. Or was it 19th & Lovejoy?





Yet another sign of fall: Attractive but inedible fruit.








A few assorted photos from my mini-roadtrip back in June. These are from Hart Mountain again. The first two from the road there, and the third from the ranger station up top.




And finally, a seagull in Old Town.

More Kelly Butte photos

Since my previous Kelly Butte post has attracted a bit of interest lately, I thought I'd post a few more pics of the place I had lying around in iPhoto. The top photo is an another pic of the place from Mt. Tabor, similar to the lead photo on the original post. Kelly Butte is the hill on the right.

In the distance, out towards Gresham, you can see one more hill and a small part of a second. Gresham is full of volcanic hills, collectively known as the Gresham Buttes, which are pretty obscure unless you live in Gresham, which I don't. I'm guessing the one directly "below" Mt. Hood in this photo is Grant Butte [map], which is due east of Kelly Butte, between Division & Powell out past 182nd. I can't find a lot of info about the place, other than one colorful urban legend:

I also got one from here where I live, in Portland OR.
On the border of the cities of Portland and Gresham there is a hill called Grant Butte (Mount Baldy by the locals due to a fire some years ago). This hill has a colored history. I will recite the history as far as I have been able to verify by news clippings and public record.
Around the turn of the 20th century (1900), the area was completely forested (later turned to farms then from the 50s onward into houses and neighborhoods) and the area was extensively logged, both for building and fire materials and to clear ground for farms and ranches.
Back around the mid 40s, there was a sufficient number of houses to warrant a water tower on the hill. The structure was made of red brick and stood about two stories high. The remains of the old tower and pumphouse are still visible today on the SE side of the hill. This tower is signifigant because a couple of years after it was built, two boys were playing near it and one boy saw a brick fall and hit the other boy in the head. In a panic he ran home to his mother and described the scene, including a copious amount of blood and some brains, something an eight year old boy of that time would not have known about. She called the cops and ambulance and rushed up to the tower only to find the dead boy asleep at the base of the tower, uninjured. The first boy was sent to psychaiatrists (sp?) and they determined he was telling the truth. This story appeared in the Oregonian.
The next bit I have been able to find is the installation of the North water tower in the 70s. This tower was larger than the old one and entended a couple of stories underground, though a good bit was above ground as well. When a landslide rendered this tower useless, a massive water tank was built on the south face of the hill in the late 80s. I cannot even guess the size of this cavernous beast. This water tower is still in use today.
Now for the good stuff, the legends.
During the logging years, it was common practice to just strip the logs on the site and toss the branches into a furnace designed to keep the loggers warm at night. Legend has it there was one of these on the top of Grant Butte (there IS a very old smokestack up there, caked in rust). Now, this particular legend says that a stack of logs broke loose and rolled over a few loggers, killing some and maiming others. Now instead of transporting the bodies and wounded all the way back to Portland (at the time five+ miles away through forest), they just tossed them all, dead or alive, into the furnace. Apparently this is where the rest of the legends got their 'fuel'.
Although I have no specific incidents, other than a couple of my own personal experiences, I have heard of some strange things on the hill. Stuff like satanic rituals inside the north water tower during the mid 80s (when it was emptied) and into the 90s (before it was sealed). I have seen the evidence of these rituals myself, though they looked haphazard and like those who were drawing the symbols were either in a hurry or had no clue as to what they were doing. A lot more of it still just looks like graffiti.
Other than my own experiences, that is about it. Most of my experiences were rather mundane, strange noises or mild feelings of dread. The only two note worthy incidences that I have experienced are a sighting of a pair of disembodied red eyes charging me and a low fog like mist over an area of the forest in mid afternoon on a sunny summer day. Both I cannot really describe in any more detail, other than to say I honestly found the mist to be more frightening than the eyes.

Okayyyy.... Anyway, back to our photos:




From the locked gate to the park, this is a shot of the road going down the hill. You have to drive, or bike, or walk, or unicycle up this to get to the park. It looks pretty bad, but really most of the regular streets in the surrounding neighborhoods look a lot like this. For the near-$60M price tag of a certain aerial tram, I have to wonder how many neighborhood streets could've been paved (some for the first time ever) in outer SE Portland. But of course that would involve spending taxpayer money on the non-rich, which simply isn't done anymore.



This is the aforementioned locked gate at the park's "grand" entrance. No sign for the place or anything, just a locked gate.



A bit of the guardrail on the road past the gate, close to the top.



Lichens on a tree branch, somewhere in the forested part of the park.



Yet another spooky-looking tree in the forest. Maybe "spooky" isn't quite the right word. I saw this tree and started looking around for Ewoks... Ok, maybe "spooky" is the right word.



The weatherbeaten sign for the old drive-in theater that used to be on the south side of Kelly Butte. The theater itself has been gone for many years, and I think the current owners of the property operate carnival rides or something. Which I guess is convenient; they can just send someone up to look for homeless camps on the butte any time they need to hire some new carnies.



Another shot of Mt. Hood from the meadow atop Kelly Butte. No, the mountain isn't actually tilted quite like that. I was just holding the camera kind of crooked, which is sadly typical. Although I fully expect this shot to be used in someone's outlandish Mt. Hood conspiracy theory, because this photo's on the interwebs, and this is what always happens eventually.



A detail of the nuclear bunker entrance. I like the "Impeach Bush" bit over where the front door used to be. Nice.

Spooky, Mysterious Kelly Butte

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Here are a few photos of SE Portland's Kelly Butte [map], a city park in outer SE portland between Division & Powell, just east of I-205. Very few people know about this place, and it appears the city likes it that way. I visited on a warm sunny afternoon, in the middle of summer, on a weekend, right in the heart of a 2-million-strong city, and saw exactly two other people, plus one dog. They were as surprised as I was to run across other living souls in the park.

The city parks department refers to the area, very briefly, as "Kelly Butte Natural Area". Which I guess is supposed to indicate that there aren't any public facilities here. Not anymore, anyway.

Kelly Butte is visible from downtown Portland and all over the east side, and and is bordered on three sides by some of the busiest roads in the metro area, but it's not really obvious how to get a closer look at it. First you have to find your way to the park entrance. (I used to say "[a] Blackberry with Google Maps is a real help here", which gives you some idea of how old this post is.). Having been here before in the park's better days is an even bigger help than just going by phone maps. What you want to do is turn off Division St. onto SE 103rd Ave., going south. There aren't any signs pointing to the park, and it's not, umm, an overly affluent area; this may deter many prospective visitors before they ever find the place. Just block out the ominous banjo music you think you're hearing, stay on 103rd, and it'll soon turn into a narrow, rutted road winding up the hill. You'll come to a battered, rusting gate with a heavily vandalized sign listing the park hours. The usual, distinctive wood Portland Parks sign is absent here, and nothing here even gives the name of the park.

So if you leave your car here (locked, of course) and walk past the gate, the road continues to the top of the hill. There you'll find a couple of weedy, abandoned parking lots, cordoned off with lengths of chain link fence. The fences stand ajar, unmarked, neither inviting nor forbidding visitors. There's a stop sign here, for some reason, again heavily vandalized. Next to one of the parking lots is a small meadow area with a nice view of Mt. Hood (top photo photo #2), with unmarked trails leading off into the forest in all directions. On the surface, the whole area looks like the city simply forgot it had a park out here, or they lost the keys to the front gate one day, or something, and nobody's been here for years, maybe decades.

If you look closer, you can see that a (very) minimal level of maintenance is going on. The grass in the meadow has been mowed recently, and if you wander down to the lower parking lot, there's a pile of dirt with fresh bulldozer tracks in front of... what on earth could this be?

>

Congratulations, you've just stumbled across the park's big forgotten secret. It's not much to look at these days, but this was once the main entrance to the city's Kelly Butte Civil Defense Center. Built in 1956, the city describes it as having been "designed to survive a 'near miss' by up to a 20 megaton bomb and to be self-sustaining for up to 90 days." Here's a 1960 photo of the city's nuclear doomsday bunker, from the Oregon Historical Society. A bit more history at Stumptown Confidential and Urban Adventure League. This page mentions the Kelly Butte bunker as well, while discussing the area's "civil defense" preparedness efforts. Seems they made all these elaborate emergency plans, and then the 1962 Columbus Day Storm hit. That storm, a remnant of a massive Pacific typhoon, was one of the worst natural disasters to hit the Northwest in modern times, and it revealed the Civil Defense Center was not quite the impregnable fortress it had been advertised as.

The bunker figures quite prominently in the 50's CBS docudrama "The Day Called 'X'", which portrays the city evacuating due to an imminent Soviet nuclear attack. It's also a fun time capsule showing what parts of downtown looked like back then, including parts of Broadway near where Pioneer Courthouse Square is now, and the old Morrison Bridge.

Later on, this Cold War relic evolved into the city's emergency/911 dispatch center, until that moved into a new, above-ground building in the mid-1990s. So it's actually only been empty for about a decade or so. I understand the place was never popular with the people who worked here. I remember seeing news reports about workers' "sick building syndrome" complaints about the place, and the inside walls were (and presumably still are) covered in lurid and disturbing murals painted in the late '80s by the local artist Henk Pander.

Once the 911 center moved out, the city tried to find new users for the place, but nobody wanted it. A Oregonian piece back in December 13th, 1992 put it this way:

OLD BOMB SHELTER AVAILABLE AS 9-1-1 CREW MOVES OUT

For Sale or Lease: One concrete bunker.

With its current tenant about to move, one of Portland's most despised properties is about to become available -- the 9-1-1 center at Kelly Butte.

Originally designed as a Civil Defense bomb shelter, the 18,820-square-foot center offers many uniquely unattractive features. Largely underground, the dark and gloomy center has no view. Employees work under a weird mural of partially standing columns.
``It reminds me of what's left over after a major nuclear attack,'' said Marge Hagerman, a secretary who also thinks the mural is ``sort of tropical. I don't know what the intent was.''

Last spring, a ``sick building syndrome'' felled workers in droves with nausea, headaches, sore throats, rashes and a metallic taste in their mouths.

Despite ventilation changes and special cleaning, another wave of sickness hit months later, bringing ambulances to the center four times.

So far, the city is marketing the property internally. In a memo to bureau officials, Fred Venzke, facilities manager, suggests the center might make a good records warehouse, indoor shooting range, community activity center or computer center.

``Facilities Services would be happy to show you the site and discuss its many possibilities,'' he said, noting the center has a 110-ton air conditioning capacity, emergency power and showers.

If the city can't find any takers internally, the center could end up for sale to the general public.

And the price?

``We haven't even addressed that,'' said Diana Holuka, city property manager.

At one point in the early 2000s it was possible to sneak into the bunker and do a little urban exploration, and there was even a public page of photos hosted on Myspace(!?) for a while, but that's been down for over a decade now & I haven't found a good mirror or replacement for those photos. IIRC it looked wet and gloomy and there seemed to be records and office equipment there that didn't move when the city moved out of the bunker, and were slowly decaying in the elements.

While scanning the interwebs for interesting stuff to share about the place, I came across a document titled Portland: The World of Darkness, which is a guide to the city for some sort of fantasy/horror RPG. It says, of the Kelly Butte bunker and the era that spawned it:

In this time of Cold-War paranoia, vampires were able to increase their holdings within the territory, constructing backalley deals with the local politicians and constructing secret “bomb-shelters” that became havens that would potentially last a thousand years; delightfully, most of these constructions were kept secret. When the paranoia revolving around nuclear weapons settled into a more fatalistic attitude, the shelters (and the vampires who inhabited them) were forgotten by the public.

So someone's finally outdone the "Shanghai tunnels" guys in trying to give our fair city some exciting urban mythology. It doesn't seem all that farfetched when you look at the thing up close, either. The place would be a perfect vampire lair, and you're surrounded on all sides by an area the city's basically written off. You could do whatever you liked and it almost certainly wouldn't make the paper. It's like an all-you-can-eat buffet for the undead. But maybe I've just watched too much Buffy or something. Still, vampires or no, you will want to visit during daylight hours only. It's probably really creepy here at night, plus the park technically "closes" at dusk. I think. There was spraypaint all over that part of the sign.

When I was little, my dad's company installed systems inside the bunker for the city's emergency communications bureau. I'm not sure now whether I ever actually went inside or not, but I remember the outside area pretty vividly. Back around the time the 911 center moved, around 1994-95, I was living in SE Portland and thought I'd visit the park as an adult to see what it was like. It's changed far more since 1994 than between then and the 70's, and it hasn't changed in a good way. In '94 the upper parking lot was open to park visitors, there were picnic tables here, and other park amenities, I think there were basketball hoops, or maybe a horseshoe pit. Nothing fancy, and the place wasn't exactly overrun with visitors, but it felt like a regular city park, and didn't have the derelict, back-of-beyond feel it has now. I don't know what happened here. Maybe this is the place where the parks department absorbs its budget cuts, so they can keep the fountains on in the Pearl District. It's like they've put the whole place in suspended animation, waiting for the condo tower crowd to take an interest in the surrounding area. Here's an angry letter to the Portland Tribune by an eastside resident infuriated about the ongoing decline in local park facilities in SE Portland. The "Division-Powell Park" he mentions is another (older?) name you occasionally see for the park.

[Updated 12/29/06: The Mercury's Blogtown has a couple of posts about the butte today. Post #1 links to this humble blog (yeehaw!), while the second post has actual photos from inside the bunker. Kewl. For the record, I didn't take those inside-the-bunker pics, but whoever did, I doff my hat to you, good sir / ma'am. It's a real shame that Cheney wasn't home, though.

I've been meaning to go back to the butte for a while now. I half-seriously considered going up there a few days ago, on the winter solstice, to maybe set something on fire or whatever. I'm not a religious person, or even a spiritual person, but I thought it might be cool, and by cool I mean photogenic. Sadly, I'm far too law-abiding for my own good, plus it was nothing but meetings all day at the office, plus it was cold and dark, plus I don't really like fire very much, plus I decided it was a stupid idea, so I stayed at home and watched TV instead. But hey, it'll probably be a bit warmer on Walpurgisnacht, April 30 - May 1, so there's still time to organize a proper event. No Morris dancing, though, please. Thx. Mgmt.]

It's not hard to come up with fun ideas for what to do with the bunker. If I was to become a James Bond villain, or a superhero, it might make a good lair. It's not all that huge, so it'd be more of a starter lair, or a pied a lair, so to speak. Or if we're going to stop being geeks for a moment, one obvious possibility is a museum of the nuclear age. It could explain how the bunker worked, do a bit about Cold War paranoia, and present nice Portland-friendly platitudes about why The Atom Is Not Our Friend. Sure, you'd occasionally lose a school bus or two off the narrow windy road to the top, but the survivors would get a good education.

One other thing looked different when I visited in 2006, and it took me a while to figure out what it was. Until late 2005, there had been a rather tall communications tower right near the bunker, but the city had stopped using it and recently decided to remove it due to, you guessed it, vandalism trouble. The local reaction seemed to be along the lines of "Hmm, something looks different. Oh, the tower's gone? Huh. Ok. Whatever."

In truth the spooky Cold War stuff only occupies the eastern half of the park, while the western half is host to an obscure Portland Water Bureau facility holding a huge underground tank. This is part of how Portland was able to just take the Mt. Tabor reservoirs offline a few years ago and just keep them around to be decorative. I don't know whether this half of the butte is open to the public or not. There are similar tanks in operation on Powell Butte and visitors don't seem to be a problem over there, but I've also never heard of people going there and haven't seen any photos from there, and I don't see anything on the map that looks like an obvious main entrance, other than a little driveway that connects into the parking lot of the huge megachurch at I-205 and Powell, which is bound to deter a lot of potential visitors. Or at least it deters me. The water tank area obviously doesn't have trees on top of the tank, so that spot may have a nice view of sunsets toward downtown. Except that after the sunset you're on Kelly Butte at night, which could be a problem.

Years ago I came across a couple of brief mentions of the water facility here, here, and here, back when the tank was above ground and smaller. And the water bureau's website had a few photos of deer at the facility, which is kind of cool, I guess, unless you live next door to the place and have a garden. I haven't checked those links in years though and don't know if they're still valid.

[Updated 9/13/06: A new post on the Water Bureau's blog talks about the bureau recently repainting the Kelly Butte Tank. The post includes a photo of a few people standing in front of the freshly painted 10M gallon tank, which gives you an idea just how big it is. Seems the previous paint job on the thing was done with lead paint. On a drinking water tank. Nice. Granted, it was on the outside of the tank, but still...]

In years past, Kelly Butte also hosted a jail and an associated rock quarry, not to be confused with the similar and much-better-known facilities further north at Rocky Butte. The Rocky Butte jail didn't close until some time in the 80's, IIRC. This page from the county Sheriff's Office indicates the Kelly Butte jail was operating at least as late as 1924. Another page I saw (which I can't locate now) stated the quarry was on the west side of the butte, so a long time I thought the water facility might have taken its place, as that seemed eminently logical. I recently (2022) figured out that the old quarry was actually located I-205 runs now, which is also a logical thing to do with an old quarry, just one that hadn't occurred to me previously. And the jail was right there at the quarry, so that seems to rule out the existence of an intact abandoned jail or extensive gothic ruins hidden in the forest, as cool as that would be.

Directly to the south of the park proper, between it and SW Powell, there used to be an old drive-in theater. Like most of its brethren, the 104th Street Drive-In has been gone for a long, long time, but the cool old 50's era sign is still there, looking just a little more rusty and weatherbeaten every year. The theater's old screen, meanwhile, lives on down at the 99W drive-in down in Newberg. These days part of the area is a large RV dealership, and part is devoted to some sort of industrial use.

Oh, and did I mention the butte's an extinct volcano? It's true. It's just one part of the extensive, and amusingly named, Boring Lava Field (named after the nearby town of Boring), which is responsible for a large number of old lava domes and cinder cones across the wider metro area. The USGS has more here. More recently, the butte was also affected by the area's repeated ice age floods as recently as 13000 years ago.

This last photo was taken on one of the many unmarked, unmapped trails crisscrossing the forest. The forest is quite dense, and you could easily get lost if you don't keep track of which way you're going. A few spots look like someone has been camping there recently, fire pits and everything. I imagine this would be a good, and extremely secluded, place to have a homeless camp. The forest here is great and everything, but it doesn't take long before you start to feel like leaving. It's not that it feels unsafe, exactly, it just feels like you're intruding into someone's living room. So it's back down the path, trying not to get lost, and back through the broken fences and rusty gates, down the overgrown old road to where you parked, and you're off to your next adventure. Assuming your car's still there.

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Notes

• [Updated 9/26/06: This post had a lot of pics from Kelly Butte, but didn't actually have a photo of the butte itself. I thought I'd fix that, so I drove out to Mt. Tabor this morning before work and took the new (properly spooky & mysterious) top photo. Kelly Butte is the dark forested hill in the foreground.]
• [Updated 1/1/07: Another batch of photos of the place here.]
• [Updated 7/1/09: Yet more photos, this time in semi-glorious infrared.]
• [Updated 8/25/09: And even more photos, this time presented as a fancy Flash slideshow, no less.]
• [Updated 8/27/11: And a long history post (no photos) I did about the erstwhile Kelly Butte Jail, circa 1906-1910]