Chinquapin West

Next up we're paying a visit to Metro's obscure Chinquapin West Natural Area, on a weirdly remote stretch of the Sandy River a few miles south of Troutdale. Until a few years ago this was a Nature Conservancy property, and before that it belonged to one of several old-money philanthropists who donated land to prevent it being developed (while still hanging on to their cabins along the river, in some cases). If you know where to find the unmarked trailhead (located along Gordon Creek Rd., as shown on the map above), you can follow a surprisingly well-maintained trail down into the river canyon, and eventually to the trail's one and only trail junction. Which, once again, is unmarked. Turning right eventually takes you to a sunny happy burbling stretch of river -- or at least it was sunny when I was there, your mileage will vary -- where you can don your vintage L.L. Bean gear and do a bit of gentlemanly fly fishing, which I gather was the main reason the original donors felt this stretch of the river was worth preserving.

That area is attractive enough to make the area worth a visit, even if you aren't into catching or eating fish. But the real secret treasure of this place is down the side trail that was off to the left back at the trail junction. After a short distance, a sheer cliff comes into view, covered in moss and ferns, with a small creek tumbling along below it. The trail heads toward the upstream end of this creek, and you soon find yourself in a narrow sheer-sided canyon, with the stream undercutting the cliff in a rather extreme way. At the head of this mini-canyon is a waterfall, and one like you've probably never encountered. The creek falls into a sort of cylindrical hole, slightly open on one side where it faces the canyon, so you can only see the lowest one-third or so of the waterfall. If you've been to the so-called "Pool of the Winds" at Rodney Falls on the Washington side of the Gorge, it's kind of like that but even more so. The cherry on top of all this is that if you're here at just the right time, on a late summer afternoon, the sun shines directly into the mini-canyon and the alcove holding the waterfall, catching the spray from the falls and causing fleeting mini-rainbows. I dunno, this may not be your cup of tea, and as always your mileage may vary, but I thought it was fairly magical.

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A small plaque dating to the Nature Conservancy days proclaims this area to be "Duckering Glen", honoring a late donor who had loved this spot in particular. I don't know whether Metro still considers that name to be in effect, and as far as I know both the creek and the falls have remained nameless since the first Euro-American settlers showed up. And this is the point where I tell you that this spot is -- as the crow flies, at least -- less than twenty miles from downtown Portland. It astonishes me to no end that this place hasn't been loved to death by crowds and ruined, like what happened to Oneonta Gorge before the Eagle Creek fire.

One thing that might be limiting the crowds here is that Multnomah County strictly prohibits parking on the shoulder along much of Gordon Creek Rd., and you sort of have to read between the lines and suss out where you can park just going by the absence of No Parking signs. If you do this and guess wrong, Officer Friendly is only going to ticket you for it, but I'm pretty sure I've seen a tow truck from a notorious predatory towing company scoping out one of the other Sandy River trailheads on at least one occasion, so maybe don't push your luck here.

Chehalem Ridge Nature Park

Here are some photos from a wander around Metro's shiny new Chehalem Ridge Nature Park, in the Chehalem Mountains, the hilly area between the Tualatin and Yamhill Valleys. I probably ought to say up front that although it's generally nice and seems to have a well-designed trail system, outside of a few key viewpoints most of the park does not have those gazillion-dollar views that the name tends to conjure up. And I say that up front because my photos of the place might lead you to believe otherwise, because I liked the scenic viewpoint parts and took lots of photos there.

I gather Metro had wanted to add a regional park somewhere in the Chehalem Mountains area for a very long time, and eventually they came across this former tree farm, and bought it and slowly rehabbed it into a place people might enjoy visiting. It may not have been the absolutely most desirable land in the area, but it had enough acreage, and seemed to have good bones, and it came on the market right when Metro had a pile of cash to spend, so here we are.

The most desirable land was probably not affordable anyway, even for regional governments flush with greenspace bond money. Like areas with views (like along Mountain Top Rd. and Bald Peak Rd, where south-facing McMansions perch above the Yamhill Valley) or quality vineyard land maybe 3+ levels of nested AVAs deep. (For example, the nearby Ribbon Ridge AVA which is inside the larger Chehalem Mountains one, which in turn is one part of the overall Willamette Valley AVA, and in general anything with a designation more specific than "Willamette Valley" is going to cost more, sometimes a lot more.) Note that all of this happened despite local vigilance bordering on paranoia about development proposals -- see, for example, this forum thread from 2010 about a proposed McMansion / hobby farm subdivision somewhere in the Yamhill Valley that was seen as yet another harbinger of Napa-style development doom.

There's an old joke-that-isn't-a-joke among winemakers that the best way to make a small fortune in the wine business is to start with a large fortune. In that spirit, the surest way to afford the very best Chehalem Mountain land is to travel back in time to the 1970s and get a job at Intel in Hillsboro. Claw your way up the corporate ladder from there, and do everything you possibly can to avoid working on anything that isn't an x86 processor. When Intel stock hits $40 in August 2000, cash out your massive pile of stock and stock options, and spend your newfound dot-com gazillions on land before it gets insanely expensive, and somehow outwit all the other time travelers who also read this very blog post and are trying to do the same thing, as well as the others working at cross purposes, like me going back to the same exact spot circa 1800 to hand out vaccines and warn everybody about Lewis and Clark.

Anyway, the Chehalem Ridge Master Plan explains what Metro had in mind when designing the park. One thing I liked here is that the plan added trails to most of the park, which seems like a no-brainer but is not what they did at other recent nature parks, like Newell Creek or Canemah Bluff, where the areas open to visitors are sort of crammed into one corner of the property, making those parks feel weirdly cramped and a bit underwhelming. I am not sure why they do this, since the acquired land is typically not pristine old growth forest full of fragile ecosystems that need to be left untouched. Maybe it's that they can only spend greenspace money on land, and other capital expenditures (and operating costs) come out of the general fund, where they will forever be prioritized a few steps below cute zoo animals.

One grumble I do have about this park, in common with the other places I mentioned, is a feeling that things are a bit... over-curated? I'm still trying to put my finger on it, it's not quite helicopter parenting, exactly, but you'll come across things like trails that are signed as one-way for safety, and lots of railings to be extra sure you stay on the trail. Other trails have themes and plenty of signage, like someone was worried visitors won't get anything out of the experience without it being spoon-fed to them. There's one spot here where a trail is a few steps away from a gravel service road, but they aren't connected, and they even added railings between them, I guess to prevent people from switching themed experiences halfway through. I dunno. I am probably making it sound really bad, but I am not actually mad about what they're doing, exactly; I sort of assume this was all imagineered into being by young idealistic twenty-something staffers, people who landed their dream jobs and are ecstatic about designing new parks and really, really want you to love these places just like they do, and they may go a little overboard about it sometimes.

And if you do find yourself humming It's A Small World involuntarily while visiting a Metro Nature Park, let me suggest visiting one of their Natural Areas instead. These are the other kind of Metro greenspace, and are in many ways the complete opposite of what I just described. You won't find a guidebook or even a simple list of these places anywhere on the Metro website, or -- remarkably -- anywhere else on the internet, although I might create one at some point. For now, your best bet is probably to fire up MetroMap, their GIS system, enable the "Parks and Natural Areas" layer (which is off by default), and then look around for unfamiliar green-shaded areas that don't show up on Google Maps. If you visit one, don't expect any handholding. At all. If you're lucky, there will be a cute little Natural Area sign about the size of a picture postcard welcoming you, or at least confirming you're at the right place. Note that this sign, if there is one, won't always be right at the entrance, however, which can make things a bit interesting when you first arrive. You see, Metro also has this fun policy of leaving any existing signs in place, so if (for example) the previous owner was some sort of crazy-eyed militia nut, you will just have to trust GIS and ignore the previous owner's fake security cameras and hand-painted "Trespassers Will Be Violated" signs and keep going til you see the "Ok, ok, fiiine, you win, welcome to the Natural Area" sign, posted just around the first corner so it can't be seen from the road. Which is pretty hilarious, actually. Though (and I shouldn't have to say this, but I will) it really helps to be absolutely positively sure you're in the right place and haven't mistakenly blundered onto the private property next door, which is still owned by a different crazy-eyed militia nut. Anyway, assuming you pass that initial test, the rest of the Natural Area is pretty much whatever was there before Metro bought it, minus any buildings that could otherwise harbor squatters. Some of the Natural Areas are flat-out amazing, others not so much, your mileage may vary and it's not their problem, there's no implied warranty of merchantability for any particular purpose, etcetera, etcetera. I'm a big Natural Area fan, in case you hadn't noticed. But we'll get around to exploring these places in other posts.

If you look at a Chehalem Ridge trail map, or the doc explaining the trail names, you might notice a very odd detail that they don't explain clearly. The name doc explains that the trail names are a diverse mix: Some are in English, a couple are Spanish, and several are in the local Kalapuya dialect. Which seems like a reasonable and unsurprising thing to do. And then you get to the Mampaɬ Trail and encounter an entirely new letter of the alphabet that you've never seen before. The doc says it's pronounced "muhm-pahl", sort of the way you would with a regular non-curlicued 'L', but doesn't explain the letter any further. (We're also told it's the Tualatin Kalapuya word for 'lakeview', in honor of a nearby former lake that was converted to farmland in the early 20th century). It actually worked really well to just search Google for that single character, which leads directly to the Wikipedia article on "voiceless dental and alveolar lateral fricatives". Evidently this squiggly character is a "voiceless alveolar lateral fricative", and represents a sound that simply doesn't exist in English. And you're seeing it because the present-day convention (at least with Pacific Northwest indigenous languages) is to use International Phonetic Alphabet characters whenever the regular Latin alphabet isn't up to the job, which turns out to be rather often. Another recent example is NE Portland's Kʰunamokwst Park, which is pronounced something like "KAHN-ah-mockst" and is a Chinook wawa word meaning "together".

Of course these pronunciations are meant as "close-enough" approximations for English speakers. If you're wondering how to really pronounce the 'ɬ' -- which would be an essential skill when travelling back to 1800 to warn people, for example -- it turns out that the same sound is also the correct way to pronounce the double-L sound in Welsh, and so there are a few instructional videos on YouTube explaining (in English) how to make this sound. Which I've attempted a few times, and am doing quite poorly at so far. Meanwhile over on Wikipedia we're also told that it's the "Lh" sound in Sindarin (e.g. the River Lhûn), and "Hl" in Quenya, both Elvish languages from LOTR and the Silmarillion.

East Marine Drive Trail

Today's adventure takes us to the east end of the Marine Drive Trail, which runs along the south shore of the Columbia River much of the way between Gresham and industrial NE Portland, with gaps for a few marinas and houseboat communities. Other parts of the trail have appeared here before: Once for the west end of the trail, east of NE 33rd at Broughton Beach, and again for a disconnected segment further west near the Oregon Slough Railroad Bridge.

This area merits a separate post because a.) It's a nice scenic spot, well east of the other two locations, and b.) The stretch from NE 158th east to near 185th is owned by Metro instead of the Port of Portland. I don't think there's a sign or any sort of notice when you hit the boundary between the two areas, and they look basically the same, with the river on one side and Marine Drive on the other. It's possible I'm the only person who cares about this stuff, and even I only sort of care, but hey.

This stretch of shoreline was once part of the underfunded, mismanaged Multnomah County park system, until that system was divided up among Metro and the cities of Portland and Gresham back in 1994. (I located a list of those properties, or most of them, a while ago; it's posted on the Mason Hill Park post ). Back in circa-1994 the county listed it as the "Philippi Property". Which isn't a great name , but Metro's GIS system used it up until recently. That system now refers to it as "Columbia River Shoreline B", which isn't much of a name either, particularly since I looked all over the place & didn't see a Shoreline A. So I'm just going with "East Marine Drive Trail" because that's at least a reasonable description of the place

Mt. Talbert expedition

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Today's adventure takes us out to suburban Clackamas County, to Metro's Mount Talbert Nature Park. Which is more or less right across I-205 from the Clackamas Town Center mall. Mt. Talbert is yet another of the Portland area's Boring Lava Field mini-volcanoes. It's not as well known as some of the others because it's way out in the 'burbs, and the park's only been open to the public since 2007.

The park has over 4 miles of well-maintained and clearly signed hiking trails, which compare favorably with anything in the Portland city park system. The scenery's nice too, as the park is in better ecological condition than many of the more popular spots around the region, which are often choked with invasive ivy and blackberries to the exclusion of native plants. The big thing you don't get here is a striking view; the park is heavily forested, and you just get a few scattered glimpses of suburbia looking west. The eastern slope of Mt. Talbert is all subdivisions, so they get a nice view of Mt. Hood on sunny days, but you don't. Still, if you're simply interested in a nice walk in the forest, you could do a lot worse. Just don't bring your dog. Metro's entire nature park system has a strict no-dogs policy.

One of the great things about blogging under a pseudonym is that I can admit I was supposed to be at the office when I took these photos. As far as they know I was at home with a cold, taking it easy & checking email periodically. Which is 100% accurate if, by "a cold" you mean "stressed out", and by "taking it easy" you mean "going for a walk in the woods, taking some photos, like I used to do all the time". And by "checking email" you mean "checking Blackberry, marking new email as read w/o reading it."

More about the park from around the interwebs:

• OregonHikers.org
• A Clackamas River Outlook
• Beyond the Built

Loll Wildwood expedition

Today's fabulous expedition takes to the rolling hills of outer SW Portland, to a spot the city calls West Portland Park Natural Area, and Metro (and the local neighborhood association) calls "Loll Wildwood". Seems that Metro owns the land as part of its Greenspace program, but the city of Portland operates the park (to the degree that any "operating" occurs here), and both agencies have their own ideas on what to call the place. You'd think that this would be easy -- the surrounding neighborhood has long been known as "West Portland Park", and you'd think the park would've taken its name from that, or vice versa.  But when local agencies have turf battles -- or even worse, try to share nicely -- even the simplest decision becomes 12-dimensional chess, apparently.

If you look closely at the map, you'll note a city water tank on the upper left side of the park. This no doubt belongs to the city water bureau, which has its own system of what it calls "HydroParks", thus horning in on the parks bureau's turf a little. Whenever they get around to doing the HydroPark thing here, I fully expect the area to acquire a third unrelated name, and we'll be playing 12^3 dimensional chess instead.

My main interest was in a historical marker next to the park, which gives rise to the "Loll Wildwood" name. I assumed the park itself would be yet another chunk of generic forest, and I've covered a few of those already, plus I was unable to find a way into the place to see for myself. The idea behind Metro Greenspaces is to just buy land and sit on it for the long term, until funds to develop & maintain the place become available. They haven't gotten to this spot yet. I did peek at a few spots around the perimeter of the park, er, wildwood, looking for anything vaguely trailhead-like, but I didn't see anything that looked promising. Like I said, I had the place figured as generic forest, and all photos inside generic Northwestern forests look alike, so why take more? I mean, I'd be delighted if I'm wrong and there's something unique I need to go back and check out, and if there is please let me know. As it is, I took a few photos of the, uh, wildwood, from outside looking in, but strictly for the sake of completeness. Don't bother complaining to me that they aren't Fine Art, or that they aren't especially good photos. I'm well aware of that already, thanks.

FWIW, the city's vegetation summary page for the park is here. I tend to cover vegetation unit surveys because often they're the only detailed info the city provides about a given place, and they give a very broad idea of what to expect if you manage to find a way to wander in, which I didn't.

But I digress, and I'd just started on about the historical marker. On the shoulder of SW 35th Avenue, near Arnold St., is this memorial to Ernest C. Loll, a Multnomah County Sheriff's Deputy who was killed in the line of duty at this very spot, back in 1935. The unusual detail is that he was on fish and wildlife duty, and was apparently murdered by bird poachers. The account doesn't explain what sort of birds the poachers were after; I'm not an avid birdwatcher, by any means, and possibly it's just my ignorance showing, but I'm unaware of any local birds worth killing someone over. But then, the market for ornamental feathers is not what it once was.

Every year on Peace Officers Memorial Day (on or around May 15th), the county sheriff's department holds a memorial ceremony here.  I ran across a small gallery of photos of last year's event. There's more history about the marker & the name of the park at (recently elected city commissioner) Amanda Fritz's blog. And there's a mention of Deputy Loll on this page at Ancestry.com.

Mason Hill Park expedition

Today's adventure takes us a little further afield than usual, to tiny Mason Hill Park in the remote, hilly northwest corner of Multnomah County (a region the county refers to as the "West Hills Rural Area"). The park caught my eye while I was looking at a map the other day -- with the word "Hill" in the name, I figured there might be a nice view, possibly, and even if it didn't, it's in a corner of the greater Portland area I'm not overly familiar with, so I figured I'd go check it out and see what gives.

A sign in the park notes that this was once the site of the local one-room schoolhouse. Nothing remains of the school, but there's a picnic structure that sort of evokes it. A 1986 Oregonian article about a school reunion mentions that the school closed in 1944, and then sat derelict until 1962 when the Columbus Day Storm (aka Typhoon Freda) finished it off. After that, the park you see here was born.

So it's a peaceful little spot for a picnic, with a nice view of the Tualatin Valley to the south. I've actually come across a couple of references to the park as a convenient rest stop while biking around the area. That could be fun -- it's quite a scenic area, if you can handle all the hills.

A note on driving, or I suppose riding, to the park: I looked at the map and decided the quickest way would be to head out Sunset, get off at the Jackson School Rd. exit, and head north, and then get to the park via a couple of smaller roads. As it turns out, these smaller roads are, uh, unimproved. That's transportation speak for "gravel". Munson Rd., in particular, is narrow, rutted, steep and twisty in parts, and washboardy in a couple of spots. Or it is until you it the Multnomah County line. Then it's nice and paved. This isn't the first time I've seen a road paved right up to the county line, but it always cracks me up when I see it. So if (like me) you don't have a truck or giant SUV, or you do have a truck/SUV but you're afraid of messing up the paint or something, you may want to take a different route. Skyline to Johnson Road is a good route, paved the whole way and everything, and the northern stretch of Skyline is beautiful, except for the huge tacky McMansions everywhere. Yes, sadly, the McMansion plague extends out this far. And further still, I'm sure. It seems all rural and bucolic, but land is expensive here, as it turns out.

I should also note that the Thomas Guide has the park's location slightly wrong. It's on the other side of Johnson Rd. from what the map shows. Other maps may do this too. So don't go blundering onto someone's farm thinking it's the park. If it looks like a farm, it is.

I had to do a bit of digging to figure out who owns Mason Hill Park. The sign says Multnomah County, but the county turned its park system over to Metro back in 1994. I finally checked PortlandMaps, which is sort of the final arbiter of these things, and its page for the park confirms that it belongs to Metro. Metro's website doesn't mention it; their parks section only mentions a few of the "crown jewels" like Blue Lake, the Smith & Bybee Wetlands, etc., and even then not in great detail.

I did come across a more extensive list, actually a list of the former county parks that Metro owns now. Seems that as part of the deal, the county still kicks in a little money to help maintain them. From the document:

...the following Metro natural areas and regional facilities that were transferred from Multnomah County in 1994:

• Mason Hill Park
• Sauvie Island Boat Ramp
• Multnomah Channel Park
• Bybee-Howell House and Park
• Bell View Point
• James Gleason Memorial Boat Ramp
• Broughton Beach
• Beggars Tick Marsh
• Glendoveer Golf Course and Fitness Trail
• Blue Lake Park
• Gary and Flagg Islands
• Oxbow Park
• Indian John Island
• Larch Mountain Corridor
• Chinook Landing Marine Park
• Sandy River Access Points
• Smith & Bybee Lakes Addition
• Phillipi Property (the east end of the Marine Drive Trail)
• The Expo Center

Some of those I've heard of, others not. Bell Vue Point is a little spot out on the easternmost point side of Sauvie Island, across the river from Kelly Point. and I think Multnomah Channel Park would have to be somewhere around Sauvie Island too. This "Phillipi Property" I have no idea about. Google comes up with a few references to a "Philippi Property" way out in Eastern Oregon, and a "Philippi Park" on the Columbia, also way out in Eastern Oregon. So I'm guessing neither of those are the right one.

Updated: I've found the elusive "Phillipi Property". Metro's GIS system shows it as a narrow strip of land between Marine Drive and the Columbia, starting a little east of the intersection with NE 138th Ave., and continuing to a bit west of NE 185th Ave., at the point where the east end of the Columbia Slough connects (joins? branches off from?) the river. The place has a bike path, so it's visitable. I've driven by, but I haven't stopped yet, since I couldn't find anywhere to park safely. Clearly this will require a bit more researching.

In short, I've got a brand new list of obscure places to try to track down, if possible. Yay!

Updated 12/24/22 (and previously updated 9/5/12, 8/24/14, 4/29/18.) This post has sort of evolved into a list of lists, covering places previously owned by Multnomah County, and/or currently owned by Metro.

Westside parks, formerly belonging to the county and now owned by the City of Portland unless otherwise noted.

• Dickenson (the city now spells it "Dickinson")
• Lesser
• Maricara
• Orchid Street. Despite the name, this park consisted of three vacant lots at SW 51st & Marigold, a block north of Orchid St. This park was only around 0.3 acres, and was declared surplus and sold off for development in 1994.
• Oregonian Printing Press Park is still technically owned by the county, since it's a tiny stray bit of Morrison Bridge right-of-way. This park has been closed and fenced off for several years now, unfortunately.
• West Portland (aka Loll Wildwood)
• Woods Memorial

Eastside parks, formerly belonging to the county and now owned by the City of Portland unless otherwise noted. As far as I know all of these are of the basic neighborhood playground & ballfields type. As of December 2022 I haven't visited any of them.

• Brentwood
• East Lynchwood (look for the city to rename this one like they did with Lynchview Park below)
• Gilbert Heights
• Gilbert Primary
• Holladay
• Lincoln
• Lynchview (renamed to Verdell Burdine Rutherford Park in 2020 because of the word "Lynch" in the name)
• North Powellhurst
• Parklane
• Raymond
• Vance
(transferred to City of Gresham)

Metro Parks. These are a mix of old Multnomah County parks (listed in italics), and new ones bought with Metro bond measure money. For a number of years Metro's website devoted almost no space to their former county parks but they seem to have fixed that oversight now. Links go to blog posts here, or to Flickr photosets if I have photos for a post I haven't finished yet.

• Blue Lake
• Broughton Beach
• Canemah Bluff
• Chehalem Ridge
• Chinook Landing
• Cooper Mountain
• Farmington Paddle Launch
• Gleeson Memorial boat ramp
• Glendoveer Golf Course + nature trail
• Graham Oaks Nature Park
• Howell Territorial (aka the Bybee-Howell House)
• Killin Wetlands
• Mason Hill
• Mt. Talbert Nature Park
• Newell Creek
• Orenco Woods
• Oxbow
• Sauvie Island boat launch
• Scouters Mountain
• Smith & Bybee Lakes

Metro Cemeteries. It used to be that county governments would take over responsibility for old pioneer cemeteries and others that, er, outlived whatever organization was responsible for them. Metro has since taken this over from Multnomah County, at least. I'm less sure about the other two Metro-area counties. I'm not actively seeking these out to visit, but I do have posts about three of them.

• Grand Army of the Republic
• Lone Fir
• Powell Grove

Metro Venues. Also not really parks, but an assortment of other things that have ended up on Metro's plate over time.

• Oregon Convention Center
• Oregon Zoo
• The Expo Center
• Portland'5 (yes, that's an apostrophe-five at the end), the unpronounceable name for the collection of downtown performing arts venues.

Metro Natural Areas. This is an interesting category. Metro has bond measure money is strictly for buying land, based on long-term needs, with the idea that land isn't getting any cheaper or more plentiful around here. So by design there's a second category of Metro-owned places that aren't developed as parks, some of which may get promoted to Nature Park status someday, and others may never get upgraded, period. I've read somewhere that they legally can't fence these areas off and close them to all public access, but they really aren't set up for mass visitation, have minimal facilities at best, and appear absolutely nowhere on the Metro website outside of Metromap, their GIS system. Quite often a label in Metromap will be the only mention of a given place anywhere on the entire internet. It's an impressive bit of anti-SEO, honestly. I would feel kind of bad about messing up their system, but I've been doing this for (checks math) 17 years now and (as far as I know) have never inflicted a visitor tsunami on anyone, or anything, or anywhere, and it would be a bit surprising if that suddenly became a thing now. As above, the ones in italics are pre-existing ones that were transferred from the county; everything else is a subsequent Metro purchase.

• Baker Creek Canyon (out in the hills west of Sherwood)
• Balch Creek (located in the West Hills next to, & administered by, the Portland Audubon Sanctuary)
• Beggars Tick Marsh
• Bell View Point (on Sauvie Island across from Kelly Point Park. Accessible by boat, and illegally by private road with large "No Trespassing" signs.)
• Buck & Gordon Creeks
• Burlington Creek Forest (in the West Hills, NW of Forest Park)
• Chinquapin Bluffs
• Chinquapin West
• Ennis Creek Forest (in the West Hills, NW of Forest Park)
• Fern Hill Forest
• Flagg Island (a small island in the Columbia, offshore of the Sandy Delta & accessible only by boat)
• Gary Island (another small island in the Columbia, offshore of the Sandy Delta & accessible only by boat)
• Indian John Island (a small island in the Sandy River, south/upstream from Oxbow Park)
• Kingfisher (on the east bank of the Sandy, between Oxbow and Indian John Island)
• Larch Mountain Corridor
• McCarthy Creek (in the West Hills, NW of Forest Park)
• Multnomah Channel (wetlands across Multnomah Channel from Sauvie Island)
• North Abbey Creek (in the West Hills, WNW of Forest Park)
• Penstemon Prairie
• Phillipi Property
• Sandy River Access Points
• South Beaver Creek
• Springwater on the Willamette
• Upper Mitchell Creek