South Roadside Falls

So this post marks one of those extremely rare occasions where I actually wrap up a series of posts, without leaving any unfinished ones forgotten in Drafts or letting the project scope creep out of control so it can never finish at all. Or at least that will be true assuming I can get this one finished. This series covers a group of mostly-nameless seasonal waterfalls along the Sandy River stretch of the Historic Columbia River Highway. To recap, this was part of a mid-pandemic effort to find obscure and less-visited places to go, in order to get outside while avoiding all other human beings to the greatest possible degree. That worked out really well in a lot of places but not here, exactly, as people kept stopping to take photos of whatever I was taking photos of. Ok, technically it happened twice. So far we've had a look at:

• Keanes Creek Falls, the southernmost of the five
• City Limit Falls, the northernmost of the bunch
• North Roadside Falls, continuing south from there
• Middle Roadside Falls, apparently the tallest one, if you trust my math and map-point-picking skills

And this one finishes the set, unless you count a couple of others that are so seasonal that they only seem to run literally in the middle of big winter storms. Which to me just doesn't seem worth pursuing.

Heightwise, given the top (167.75' / 162.25') and bottom (61.45' / 61.22'), the math says it's around 100.8 - 106.5 feet high. Which, possibly.

You might notice that the highway shoulder is especially wide along this stretch of road. It turns out the stretch of riverbank through here is a small Metro-owned public park, and it's here to provide public river access, specifically public fishing access. There aren't any signs around that say this, but there's plenty of room to park, and usually a car or truck or two parked here, so I guess enough people find out about the place by word of mouth. This is actually not the only spot like this; depending on whose map you look at there are either three (lettered A thru C) or five (numbered 1-5) of them, all on the east bank of the Sandy, and located between the Stark St. & Troutdale bridges.

And if this doesn't sound like a very Metro thing to do, you're absolutely right; these sites were part of the old Multnomah County park system before Metro absorbed it in 1994, and you can check out a 2008 post of mine for more than you probably care to know about that whole thing. I couldn't find any info on when the county may have purchased these places, the closest data point I have is a

a March 1963 Oregonian article about the county's ambitious new parks plan, with a map showing roughly where the county's new parks would be. Their focus at the time was on adding neighborhood parks to serve then-unincorporated parts of the county, and the only ones, current or proposed, east of the Sandy would have been neighborhood playground-type ones in the Springdale and Corbett areas. The river access parcels aren't mentioned and don't appear on the map, so either the county hadn't bought them yet, or river access fell under a separate budget category or a whole different department and didn't count.

As I understand it, the rationale behind these fishing spots is that the Sandy might be the best river for salmon in the region, and the stretch between the two bridges is possibly the best part of the river, and it would be undemocratic to have it limited people who can afford to own a boat, or build a house on the river. For many years the state prohibited fishing from boats anywhere upstream of the Stark St. bridge for similar reasons, the idea being boaters had an unfair advantage over people fishing on the riverbank when both were allowed. So when the state pushed the no-boats boundary back four miles to Oxbow Park in December 1987, some people reacted like democracy itself was being eroded in favor of rich people always getting whatever they want. And who knows, maybe that really was an early symptom on the way to January 6th 2021. This happened in the middle of the Reagan-Bush era, when a lot of little things like this happened, so the timing's spot on, at least.

Anyway, here's the list, starting here and heading downstream:

• Unit C (1.21 acres, aka unit 4) is where we're at now. If I'm reading it right, a 2007 iFish forum post is saying this place is called "The Willows" out in the real world.
• Unit 5 is not actually river access, but two tiny pieces of land on the waterfall side of the road, 0.11 and 0.01 acres respectively, with the larger one possibly including the falls we came here to look at. For anyone who missed the wrong day in grade school weights and measures class, one one-hundredth of an acre is equal to about 344 square feet, equivalent to an 18.5' square.
• As for unit 2? Maps that have the sites numbered it show it as a long and extremely skinny bit of riverbank, roughly the whole stretch between City Limit Falls and North Roadside Falls, while maps that give the sites letters don't show this one at all, and PortlandMaps has it listed as private property, so I'm not sure what's going on here. I think the forum post from above is saying this area goes by "Duck Hole", unless maybe the highway speed limit signs have moved around since 2007. Google seems to think it's a popular place, or at least one that gets talked about a lot, so I dunno. I guess my point here is that if you want to know more about it (and what the legal situation is, etc.) your best bet is to go ask someone who actually knows what they're talking about, because I sure don't.
• Unit B (0.43 acres, aka unit 3) is further downstream, right around the (relatively) busy intersection of the Columbia River Highway & Woodard Road. Thing is, there's not really anywhere to park around this one, and there are several "No Parking" signs are posted on both streets just in case anyone even thinks about trying it. So this one may be more of a locals-only thing. Or maybe it isn't a thing at all; I am absolutely clueless about the fish situation here, and you're on your own for that.
• And finally there's Unit A (0.1 acres, aka unit 1), which may have been public access at one point but is now home to a boat launch for the Multnomah County Sheriff's River Patrol, accessed from a shared driveway to the south that's clearly posted No Trespassing. Given what the river patrol does, and the kind of river the Sandy is, the place is probably haunted too. I mean, if you believe in that sort of thing, and I'm not saying I do.

Maricara Natural Area

Next up we're visiting SW Portland's Maricara Natural Area, 17 acres of forest in a quiet neighborhood west of Marshall Park. The city's description of it is fairly brief:

In fall 2010, 1,500 feet of new natural-surface trails and 2,600 feet of improved trails were opened. Located in a residential neighborhood, the site includes a wetland, protected stream, important native plant species, and an older second-growth forest.

I thought the park was quite nice, although doesn't look entirely natural yet; I gather volunteers went through and removed every single ivy plant and blackberry vine and other nonnative plant, and replaced them with ferns and oregon grapes. The effect is as if it was professionally landscaped to look like a natural forest, though I imagine that will go away after a few years. I didn't see a single invasive plant (of those few I recognize on sight), and I was looking. I think the lesson here is to not be on the wrong side of a Portland neighborhood association enlisted in a righteous cause. Or at least, I could swear I read that this is what happened, but I'm unable to find a link to back that up. Possibly I dreamed it, and it's just that the park was never overrun by the usual invaders in the first place, as unlikely as that sounds. The neighborhood association holds regular community ivy pulls just over in Marshall Park, if that's a data point.

For city park posts, I usually rummage around in the library's Oregonian database to see if anything interesting ever happened here. The park does have a slightly convoluted origin story, though I'm kind of a nerd about these things and it's hard for me to judge how interesting it's going to be to anyone who isn't me. But it's what I've got, so here goes.

Our story starts back in the 1950s, as suburbia was expanding, and the country was in the midst of a massive baby boom. If you're running a public school system, especially during a baby boom, one of your many jobs is to try to understand how many new schools you're likely to need over the next decade or two, and where you're likely to need them, and buy land accordingly before it gets prohibitively expensive. That happened here in 1956, the plan being that half of the land would go to a school, and the other half would become a park. You see this model all over the city (like at SE Portland's Sewallcrest Park); I think the idea was that playgrounds and ball fields are paid for out of the city budget, rather than by the school district, and could be used by adult softball leagues and so forth when the school wasn't using them. PortlandMaps indicates the northeast quarter of the park had already been platted out as a new subdivision called "Caravel Heights" before the school district bought it. Incidentally, the tax roll IDs insist the homes just east of the park are part of "Edgecliff", and to the north is "Boese Addition", while the SW corner of the park and the land south of it is "Galeburn Place". To the west is just "Section 29 1S 1E".

Anyway, two things were different in the case of Maricara Park: First, they obviously never built a school here. Second, although the area was part of Portland public schools, it was outside city limits & would remain so until the 1980s, so the park half ended up as part of Multnomah County's chronically underfunded park system. As far as I can tell, the county's idea of a park system involved buying or stumbling into random chunks of land in unincorporated parts of the county, and then doing absolutely nothing with these places for decades on end.

Finally in the late 1980's, after years of complaints and bad publicity, the county decided to get out of the parks business. This was around the same time the city of Portland began annexing surrounding unincorporated areas, so parks within the new city limits largely transferred to the city during the 1982-87 timeframe. The remaining ones mostly went to Metro, with one going to the city of Gresham, and another tiny one being sold off & probably developed. The city didn't immediately have any spare cash for the new parks, and several (like Maricara) remained undeveloped into the 2000s. The other half of today's park belonged to the Portland school district until 1999, when they finally accepted they were never going to build a school here, and Metro bought it with a bit of greenspace money. Oddly enough the east half of the park is still technically owned by Metro, but the city administers the whole park.

As for the name of the park, that seems to come from SW Maricara St., which ends at the west side of the park. The street name, in turn, has a slightly weird origin. It got its current name in August 1930; it seems Portland's postmaster asked the county to change the names of a few streets that had segments inside and outside city limits, which was apparently beyond the Post Office's ability to cope with. As the old saying goes, neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stayed these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds, but Portland street names were a whole other story. So the name was duly changed from Laurel Avenue. Which is weird because the only present-day street I see named Laurel is in the West Hills off Vista Ave., near Jewett Park, nowhere near here. The 1930 article neglects to mention where the name "Maricara" came from originally. I suppose it may have just been someone's name.

In any case, the city's park planning process finally got moving in the mid-2000s, and resulted in an extensive 2008 Habitat Management & Trail Plan for the park that roughly describes how it is today, and features a few photos of what it looked like back then. It includes a brief history blurb, complete with city ordinance numbers:

Multnomah County originally purchased the eight-acre property for a park, and transferred it to the City of Portland in 1988 (Multnomah County Order #88-117). Metro purchased the adjacent nine acres in 1998 from Portland Public Schools who had owned the site since at least 1958 (Ordinance #173252, April 14, 1999). PP&R accepted management of the Metro parcel, which is zoned as open space, in accordance with the Tryon Creek IGA (Ordinance #171795).

Around this time, the park was befriended by the "Friends Of" group for nearby Marshall Park, which is an outgrowth of the local neighborhood association. They now go by "Friends of Marshall & Maricara Parks". They have a few photos of the park's footbridge being built, and a list of birds reported from the two parks.

More recently, there was a small controversy here around some unknown person(s) adding "fairy doors" to trees around the park. The city disapproved, as this was not part of the Plan. City workers removed any "fairy doors" they saw, but they kept reappearing, and the Tribune spun it as mean city bureaucrats beating up on local artists and dreamers. The story eventually dropped out of the news without the public learning whether either side "won" the conflict.

The OregonHikers Maricara Loop Hike page includes a photo of a fairy door, for what it's worth. Also here are a couple of posts about the park from Exploring Portland's Natural Areas and The Nature of Portland; the latter has a few interesting plant and bird identifications. Speaking as a former Boy Scout, I feel like I ought to be able to identify plants and animals like that, since it was drilled into you that this was an essential outdoor skill. In my defense, though, that was a very long time ago, and I am fairly sure that many of these species had not actually evolved yet.

Dickinson Park

Our next adventure takes us to SW Portland's Dickinson Park, 18 acres with forests and a large open grassy area, located on a rather steep hillside. I dropped by a few months ago when it was too muddy to get to the forested part, but a page at ExplorePDX has a few photos showing what it's like. The park's open area has nice views to the west and, somewhat incongrously, it's home to a shiny new "Evos Play System", a very fancy new play structure. Willamette Week's Summer 2014 guide dubbed the park "Portland's Backyard Jungle Gym", but pointed out the park still has no restrooms.

The city's owned it since 1993, when it acquired the property from Multnomah County, as part of the county's dismantling of its struggling park system. Apparently the county had never done much of anything with the land, and the city didn't immediately have any budget for the place, so they only began design work for it in 2001. A plan soon came together but initially there was no money in the city budget to implement it. 2006 rolled around, and the city had a temporary budget surplus thanks to the national real estate bubble, so they were finally able to break ground on the park at that point.

At first I couldn't find anything at all about the county's prior stewardship of the park, until I looked at the transfer agreements and realized the county called it "Dickenson" with an 'e', not "Dickinson" with an 'i'. Even then, I found next to nothing about the place dating to that era, but the few things I've come up with seem to indicate the county seriously neglected its park system when it had one. A 1982 letter to the editor complained that the county had effectively defunded the system around that time. By 1986, the county was already anxious to transfer it to the city, which had annexed the land (along with Lesser, Maricara, Orchid St., West Portland, and Woods Parks) in 1979. The city was reluctant to take them over until the county settled up for some disputed sewer construction charges at these parks (as well as at SE Portland's Brentwood Park). The article mentions that the aforementioned parks were all undeveloped and the county had no idea what to do with them. Lesser, Maricara, and Woods parks must have transferred before 1993; West Portland, aka Loll Wildwood never transferred, and eventually ended up as a Metro natural area. The remaining "Orchid St. Park" is unfamiliar. A June 1987 article about the proposed transfer mentions the city had pledged to maintain all but the Orchid St. site as parks, and a previous article about a city-county land dispute over Woods Park mentiosn the Orchid St. park was only 0.3 acres. So I suppose they must have sold it off at some point.

Other assorted Dickinson Park tidbits I ran across:

• The park occasionally hosts live music and movies on summer evenings.
• There's an active proposal to create a community garden here.
• The city's SW Trail #5 runs somewhere through the park, probably in the forested bit that I didn't get to.
• Blog post from a local goat owner, talking about taking goats for a walk in the park & letting them chow down on invasive plants. Which seems like a very sensible thing, and a Portlandia sketch all at the same time.

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

Oregonian Printing Press Park

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Here's a slideshow of downtown Portland's tiny Oregonian Printing Press Park, at SW 1st & Morrison, right next to the Morrison Bridge. Most of the block it sits on is taken up by a curved ramp from Naito up to the bridge, and the park is a little triangle of land between the ramp and the street corner. This place actually featured in this humble blog's very first park post, way back in May 2006. Then, as now, I was attracted to oddities, and this little spot appears to be the one and only remaining Multnomah County park. The county used to have an extensive park system, but the others were handed over to Metro in the early 1990s. My theory is that the county kept this one because it owns the Morrison Bridge, and this place is really just a minor bit of landscaping around one of the bridge ramps. The park itself hasn't changed much since then; they've trimmed the bushes back recently, and the county's sign for the park was vandalized and removed within the last couple of years, and hasn't yet been replaced.

I didn't really have a "formula" for blog posts back in 2006; the same post also covered the nameless city park at 14th & Hall and a few others, which is something I kind of have a rule against now. The old post also doesn't have a Flickr slideshow or an embedded map, because those things didn't exist back then. That was at least 50 internet years ago, assuming internet years are still a valid thing. Yet another thing that didn't exist back then was the library's Oregonian database. With that as a resource, I can now tell the story of the place. It's not a long story, but there's more to it than I originally thought.

The park commemorates the site of the Oregonian newspaper's very first printing press, way back in 1850. I'm not sure how long the paper was located here, but this corner seems to have been commercial property for the next century and change. The original Morrison Bridge opened in 1887, and (unlike the current one) it connected to Morrison St. proper, instead of Alder & Washington. So this would have been a major intersection at one time.

When the present-day bridge arrived in 1958, several city blocks (including this one) were demolished for bridge ramps, which left a great deal of vacant land around the west end of the bridge. A 1956 letter to the editor noted the new bridge would have a large plot of land between the eastbound and westbound lanes, and proposed moving Skidmore Fountain there, since nobody wanted to venture into Old Town just to see a historic fountain. This proposal went nowhere, and the land's been a parking lot ever since then. Proposals exist to build a new Multnomah County Courthouse there, one major plus being that the county owns the land already. The last time I checked they didn't have any money to move forward with the idea, though. Another idea that's been considered recently is the "Morrison Bridgehead" proposal, which would site some sort of commercial or residential development here instead. It was under consideration as recently as 2011, and at that time the county made it clear they wanted Printing Press Park to be preserved in any development proposal.

The triangular plot of land here was created along with the Morrison Bridge, but it seems to have spent its first decade unnamed and unmarked. Then in 1969, the Lang Syne Society decided the Oregonian's first printing press merited one of their historical markers. They were (or are) the group behind all the Oregon-shaped historical plaques around downtown Portland. I've occasionally thought about doing a post or posts about these markers. The Lang Syne guys (I assume they were generally guys) had some unusual ideas about what merited a historical marker, such that (for example) there's a huge boulder in Lownsdale Square with a plaque that chats about the first long-distance electricity transmission to Portland from Willamette Falls. Anyway, they decided the Oregonian's first printing press merited a plaque too. The county took the idea and ran with it, and decided the new park would also need a huge abstract sculpture that sort of evoked the idea of newspapers. The sculpture was titled Web of Newsprint (link goes to a photo of it over on PDX Tales, a Tumblr blog I also run), and it was officially dedicated April 1st 1970:

The sculpture, a 65-foot-long "web of newsprint" fashioned from steel-reinforced concrete, was designed jointly by W. Riley Matsler, superintendent of the Multnomah County Division of Parks and Memorials, and Eric Jensen a county planning aide.

Also depicted is a lineal shaft extending downward through the form, representing "the power of the mighty pen of the press" according to Matsler.

This sculpture, as monumental as it was, only lasted thirteen years. The park was rededicated in its current form on July 30th 1983, in a big ceremony featuring the mayor and various local dignitaries; the Oregonian's longtime publisher was included, naturally, and they even invited the local Catholic bishop for some reason. The article describes what had occurred here:

The refurbishing of the park, where once stood a two-ton swirling mass of concrete pierced by a steel rod that was intended to represent a scroll of newsprint pierced by a pen, was organized by a four-man committee headed by Joseph R. Bianco, special projects director for The Oregonian.

The project, which started April 6, stemmed from public complaints about the "unsightly" sculpture at the site, Bianco said. The pen-and-scroll sculpture was dedicated by the Lang Syne Society in 1969 and dismantled in May, he said.

And as a result of all this, we got the present-day mini-plaza of cobblestones and reproductions of old Oregonian front pages, from the early days to Mt. St. Helens. Everything you see here dates to 1983 except for the historical plaque itself, which indicates it's the 1969 original. A similar set of front page plates adorns the current Oregonian printing press building in the Goose Hollow area, between the stadium MAX stop and Lincoln High School. Which shows continuity and relevance across the centuries or something, I guess. This, and the fact that the process was driven by an Oregonian manager for "special projects", makes me wonder whether the old sculpture really was unpopular with the general public, or whether it merely wasn't marketing the newspaper to maximum advantage.

I don't recall ever seeing Web of Newsprint in person -- I would have been a kid back then -- but I rather like it, just going by the one newspaper photo I've seen of it. If they hadn't removed it back in 1983 (when this sort of modern art was deeply unfashionable), it would probably be a beloved local landmark by now. I can pretty much guarantee I would have done a blog post or two about it by now if it still existed. I wonder what ever became of it? Did they just bulldoze it? Or is it quietly gathering dust in a forgotten corner of a county warehouse somewhere, just waiting to be rediscovered?

Larch Mountain expedition

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Here's a slideshow of photos from Larch Mountain, a hopefully-extinct shield volcano just south of the Columbia River Gorge. There's a steep, winding road that leads almost to the top of the mountain, and from there a short trail leads to Sherrard Point, the dramatic exposed viewpoint at the very top, which is where these photos were taken. From there the view is unobstructed for nearly 360 degrees: To the north is the Columbia River, and behind it Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams, and distant Mt. Rainier. To the south, Mt. Hood looms, and beyond it sit Mt. Jefferson and another peak even further away that the signs at the viewpoint don't name. I'm guessing it's North Sister, but I don't actually know for sure. The only direction without an unobstructed view is to the west; it's a shame, as I expect the view back to Portland at night would be fairly amazing.

The road to the top branches off of the Columbia River Highway just before the Vista House, and winds its way up into the hills rather than down into the Gorge. The early part of the road is a rural residential area, which gives way to private timberland and Metro's narrow Larch Mountain Corridor along the road. Oregon state law mandates no logging within 100' or so of certain roads, or maybe it was 200', in order to sorta-protect the public from seing unsightly clear cuts. So apparently Multnomah County ended up buying the land the timber companies couldn't use, and Metro picked it up when it absorbed the old Multnomah County park system. In any case, the long narrow strip totals 185 acres according to this doc, and it in turn gives way to National Forest land the rest of the way up. If you're driving up or down the mountain you're going to need to pay close attention for cyclists. Larch Mountain is a very popular ride precisely because it's pretty hard, plus there's an amazing view waiting for you at the top. It's so popular, in fact, that the Oregon Bike Racing Association holds its annual Oregon Uphill CHampionships (or "OUCH") time trial event here. You gain 3816 feet over 16.53 miles, and try to do so as fast as possible. It sounds like a hell of a thing, if you ask me.

Another option, besides driving or biking up the road, would be to hike the Larch Mountain Trail from Multnomah Falls. If you go this route you gain 4010 feet over 7.2 miles; I'm not sure why that sounds less intimidating than the longer-distance, less-elevation bike route, but it does. I've never actually hiked this route but it's on my to-do-at-some-point list, thanks primarily to the many waterfalls the trail passes on the way up. Pretty sure I'd get some decent photos, and thus blog posts, out of the excursion, although the hike sounds kind of brutal. Hence the "to-do-at-some-point" part.

Howell Territorial Park expedition

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Today's thrilling adventure takes us back to Howell Territorial Park on Sauvie Island. I previously posted some photos of apples and hydrangeas taken there, but I haven't gotten around to doing a post on the park as a whole. I think the big reason for this is that the park preserves a historic pioneer-era farm and farmhouse, and I just don't find pioneer history all that compelling. I mean, our local creation story is basically the tale of some farmers looking for better farmland, and traveling a long way to get it. I mean, it's not exactly a Viking saga full of swords and dragons, or a legend about being descended from a moon goddess, even if we do have our own video game. Other than surviving the long journey, I'm not aware that any pioneers really did or said anything particularly fascinating. If any of them kept scandalous secret diaries, they haven't surfaced yet. And then there's the small matter of what happened to the previous human population when settlers showed up.

If you're wondering why I visited at all, I was visiting Sauvie Island to take a few photos of the new bridge (which I haven't quite posted yet), and I made a side trip to wander around Wapato Greenway for a bit. So since I was in the area, I though I'd take a look at this park too.

If you do happen to be a pioneer history nut, sadly the park doesn't offer much in the way of attractions. You'd think that it would, but it doesn't. The historic Bybee-Howell farmhouse is empty and closed to the public. I assume that's due to lack of funds, because this is Oregon and everything chronically lacks funds. I took a couple of photos peeking through various windows, but they aren't very interesting photos. The old orchard is a bit more interesting, as it apparently preserves a number of rare heirloom apple varieties. I've read that there's also an old rose garden somewhere on the grounds as well, although they weren't blooming when I visited so I don't have any photos of that. There's a little info about the grounds here, but I haven't come across anything resembling a guide to the place or even just a list of what's here.

The grounds are home to a sculpture titled Herons, by Portland artist Tom Hardy. This is according to a post at the Portland Public Art blog. I initially knew nothing about this thing, since there doesn't seem to be a sign giving the name or artist on the sculpture itself, or anywhere nearby, or on Metro's web page about the park for that matter. The State Archives has a photo of it, but no further info beyond that, not even a name. So apparently I'm not the only one who's been stymied by the lack of signage.

The park does get a quick mention in a 2000 New York Times article going on about the wonders of Sauvie Island. No, seriously. It's a good article, it's just kind of weird that it showed up in a New York newspaper. I didn't realize the NYT was already stalking Portland back then, but apparently so. Just as a quick factoid for you, it seems that Sauvie Island is 40% larger than Manhattan (33 square miles vs. 23), and has just 1/1000 of the population.

For those of a more wonkish bent, I did find Metro's 1997 Master Plan for the park, as well as a 2000 conditional use permit from Multnomah County basically signing off on the master plan. It's not clear how much of this plan was ever implemented, though. The proposed expansion of visitor facilities doesn't seem to have panned out, at any rate. No gift shop, no overnight guest accomodations, not even a convenient source of coffee, which is just uncivilized.

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.

Broughton Beach expedition

Sure, it's Oregon in December, but occasionally the sun comes out, and then it's time to go to the beach. So here are a few photos from Broughton Beach, which is actually a river beach on the Columbia, next to the west end of the airport. I was about to say it's not a "real" beach since it's not on the ocean. But it does have water and sand, and I think that's pretty much the dictionary definition of "beach", so I guess it counts as one. And "real" or not, it's a lot closer than the ocean, so there's that at least, and it's not all that noisy unless there's a jet taking off next door.

A 2007 Oregonian article insists you can't be a real Portlander until you've hung out here on a hot summer day. That must only be true for out-of-towners moving here.

The place is probably packed with screaming kids in the summer anyway. This morning, in contrast, I was the only person there for a while, and then a few people showed up with dogs. It seems to be a popular place for that. The long, flat Marine Drive Trail runs past Broughton Beach, so running and cycling are popular here too. Plus there's watching fireworks. And there's just hanging out on the beach, too, I guess.

This used to be a Multnomah County park, but it was handed over to Metro back in the 90's along with the boat ramp next door, and all the other Multnomah County parks.

The beach is named after one Lt. Broughton, and assistant to George Vancouver when they explored the area way back in 1792. Broughton Bluff, near Troutdale, and Broughton Landing, further upstream near Hood River, are named after the same guy.

A page about Broughton Beach at Columbia River Images mentions that it was once known as "Diddlers Beach". I can sort of understand why the name was changed. A name like that is liable to attract the wrong sort of person.

Woods Memorial Natural Area

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Photos from a brief jaunt to Woods Memorial Natural Area, one of several large, but little-known, nature parks scattered around the hilly southwestern corner of Portland.

Woods Memorial is your basic forested canyon type of place. There's a bunch of these in town, and they're all basically variations on the same theme, so you'll have to forgive me if none of the photos show anything particularly unique to this one park. Which is not to say there's anything wrong with it; it's quite nice actually, and I'm sure it's nicer when the weather's better.

The cynic in me is quite certain that the real reason we have all these woody ravine parks around town is that the city always ends up with all the unbuildable bits nobody else wants. This particular park was donated, sure, but it's possible that happened after someone realized it was unbuildable and they might as well get a tax writeoff for it. I don't really know. The park sure looks unbuildable, at least.

The park's crisscrossed with trails heading off in all directions, so you could easily get lost if you don't have a map or know your way around. They seemed to be just out of maps on the day I visited, and I didn't know my way around, and I had a meeting at 10:30 and couldn't afford to get lost (as fun as that can be at times), so I didn't wander quite as far as I otherwise would've liked to. That might've been for the best, though, as it was also pretty cold that morning, and numb fingers tend to drop cameras, which would be Very Very Bad. Although it's also true that the shiny new Canon 50D is out now, and it offers a number of compelling technological advances over my old (as in year-old) 40D. So, you know, if I was somehow forced to buy a replacement, it wouldn't be all bad.

The city's vegetation survey page rates much of the place as having "Poor" ecological health, with a few areas rating "Fair" and others coming in as "Severely Degraded" (I'm not sure whether that's better or worse than "Poor"). And here's a recent invasive species report about ivy in the park. Although it hasn't completely taken the place over like it has in other areas around town, like Marquam Nature Park for example.

The US Fish & Wildlife Service has a doc about restoration efforts here that occurred back in the 90's. And I've come across at least one report of an elk sighting here. So I imagine the place can't be too degraded, if you get elk showing up now and then. Unless maybe they come to eat the ivy. I'm not really sure how that works.

Elsewhere on the interwebs:

• ExplorePDX has a trail map and a couple of pages on trail construction, with a few photos. The park also gets a mention in the site's "Jay Walk #5" through the surrounding neighborhood. If you ever think I tend to get a bit obsessive and pedantic at times here, I suggest you go to ExplorePDX and check out the pages on map errors. I always come away from that feeling that I'm relatively normal and well-adjusted in comparison, although I'm also pleased that someone's doing this, and I can see how one could easily get sucked in to that sort of undertaking. It's a slippery slope, I tell you.
• An old 1987 Oregonian article, "City May Have Money Tied Up In Land Holdings, mentions the park as a potentially surplus chunk of land the city could sell to raise money. I don't recall what sort of budgetary straits the city was in back then that would've put this idea in play, but it obviously didn't go far. The parks director at the time is quoted as saying the bureau doesn't have any surplus land, just undeveloped parks. This may explain why they now use the term "Natural Area" instead of "Park" for places like this, to convey the idea that the place has been left "undeveloped" on purpose, so (in theory) nobody at City Hall will get any funny ideas about selling the land to their greedy developer friends. Ideally.
• The park and a few others like it are explored in a post on Around the Sun, "Exploring SW Portland on Foot With Ten Toe Express".
• A cool photo in someone's portfolio on photo.net.

Autumn, Beggars-tick Wildlife Refuge

A few photos from Beggars-tick Wildlife Refuge, a Metro-run wetland area out in outer SE Portland. Metro's info page about the place insists you need to visit twice to really appreciate the place -- once in the winter, to get the full wetlands experience, and again in the summer, to experience the wildlife and plants and so forth. So naturally I showed up in autumn instead.

I parked at the south end, next to the Springwater Corridor trail, and wandered in for a look around. I didn't go all that far, actually; the wetland parts weren't completely wet yet, but they were muddy enough to convince me not to go any further. I think there must be another entrance somewhere further north that gives more access to the place. I haven't yet found a detailed map of the place showing trails and so forth, so I'm not 100% sure about that.

Also, it looked as though homeless people might be living in the refuge somewhere, and there weren't any other visitors at the time I was there, which gave me another reason not to wander blithely off into the underbrush.

The rather off-putting name of the place has a very prosaic explanation, as it turns out. A "Beggars-tick" is a type of plant, various species of the genus Bidens. It's considered an invasive weed in many parts of the world, but here it's a native plant. I didn't know what it looked like before I went, and I don't recall seeing anything that looked like it while I was there. So, in short, I don't have any photos of the refuge's eponymous plant. Sorry.

It seems the refuge hasn't been a refuge all that long, roughly 1992-93. Here's an interesting doc about the wetlands restoration project, from the US Fish & Wildlife Service.

All in all, I'm not sure this was my most successful "expedition" ever. I just saw one corner of the place, and took some decent but rather generic fall photos that could be from anywhere. Oh, well. There's always next time, I guess.

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