Steamboat Park, Cornelius

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A few photos of Steamboat Park, on a bend of the Tualatin River out in Cornelius. The name refers to a brief era when commercial steamboats plied the river, shipping grain and produce downstream to market. Feel free to be amazed and doubtful about that; the Tualatin isn't very wide or deep, it meanders all over the place, and it's always full of logs and other obstructions. The Tualatin Riverkeeper guide to the river doesn't recommend boating upstream of Hillsboro, even in a canoe or kayak. So the Tualatin River's steamboats can't have been very big. A pdf about the city's points of interest describes those days:

So even though the Tualatin was narrow, shallow and overhung with tree limbs, it was the best way farmers could get their wheat, and later their fruit and timber to market. In 1867, the Oregonian noted that piloting a steamship down the river was not an easy task: “In summer, the size and great number of mosquitoes sometimes obscure the vision of the captain or attack him so furiously as to compel him to let go of the wheel…. collisions with the bank are not infrequent.”

The steamboat era ended when the railroad came to town.

In fact, the city of Cornelius is named after the guy who convinced the railroad to come to town, if that gives you any idea. It's a shame, really. It's fun to imagine that the Tualatin once had a vanished era of glamorous Mississippi-style paddlewheel steamers, full of riverboat gamblers and fancy ladies and mysterious strangers and intrigue galore, with Cornelius's answer to Mark Twain writing it all down for posterity.

The park doesn't currently have a lot that harks back to the steamboat era. The city's discussed putting up interpretive signs, but they aren't the region's most affluent city and they don't have a big budget to work with, so it hasn't happened yet. They received a Metro grant some years ago to do habitat restoration along the river, and this July they discussed getting a federal grant to put in a boat launch for non-motorized boats (as there's no river access in the park at all right now), which would put the interpretive sign plan on hold again. Until, I imagine, grant money becomes available, or someone volunteers.

Autumn, Tualatin River Bridge

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The ongoing bridge series ventures south once again, this time to a rather obscure location. The bridge you see here carries Highway 99W over the Tualatin River, out in the 'burbs between Tigard & Tualatin. It doesn't appear to have a proper name, as far as I know. It's often called "Tualatin River Bridge" (for example Structurae and Bridgehunter), although that's a bit silly considering how many other bridges there are over the Tualatin. Other sources call it "Highway 99W Bridge", which is also silly since this is far from the only river 99W crosses. It probably doesn't help that when you drive over it, you barely even notice you're on a bridge. The St. Johns it's not, I guess that's what I'm trying to say here.

The original reason I thought I'd go check it out was that at least one source indicated it's a Conde McCullough bridge, which is a big deal if you know who he is, otherwise not so much. Ok, so that source is merely a caption on a Flickr photo, but the photo's by a local author who's written a number of bridge books and who runs a well-known Bridge of the Month Quiz. So I imagine the attribution is more than just a wild guess. I mean, I could just go down to the library or the historical society, or possibly check with ODOT, and find out for certain. I really ought to do that, probably. I'll update this post if I ever get around to doing that, but for now I'll just call it a "could be". At minimum, we know it was built by the right agency (the state highway dept.), at the right time (the 1920's). Whoever designed it, it's fair to say it probably doesn't number among their signature works. It's your basic steel truss bridge, nothing too remarkable about it. And the old bridge just carries the southbound lanes of 99W these days. The northbound lanes travel on a concrete bridge of unknown (but much more recent) vintage. Again, nothing terribly remarkable about it.

I do like the setting, though. Autumn leaves, a still river, the bridges, the morning light... It was kind of fabulous. I'm almost afraid to go back. I'm sure it wouldn't be the same.

It turns out there's a bit of history to relate about this spot. There's been a river crossing at this location since pioneer days. If you've ever driven Taylor's Ferry Road and wondered about the name (while you were waiting at a light or whatever), here's your answer. The ferry was replaced with the first bridge at this location way back in the 1860's (not too surprising, as the Tualatin isn't a very big river). Yet the name of the road has persisted to the present day, although the name's no longer used anywhere near here. All of this comes from "A Bridge over Time", a fun history poster from the City of Tualatin, with a bunch of old photos of the area.

The poster has a photo of something called "Roamer's Rest", a long-vanished river recreation spot once located right around here somewhere. Here's a local newspaper article reminiscing about the place.

I didn't actually walk across the bridge this time. I didn't see anywhere I could park and walk across the southbound (i.e. old) side, and it didn't seem really necessary anyway. The spot I took these from is primarily a canoe-launching site on the south bank of the river. When you drive over the bridge, it's not obvious that there's any public river access nearby, as there aren't any signs or obvious turnoffs.

Directions, from a page at the Tualatin Riverkeeper site:

99W Bridge & Hazelbrook Rd., Tualatin (RM 11.5 RB)
From 99W turn south onto 124th. Turn east onto Tualatin Road. Turn north onto SW 115th Avenue. Turn left (west) onto Hazelbrook Road. There are four parking spots at the
put-in. No restroom. More parking at Hazelbrook Middle School, two blocks east. This was the historical site of Taylor’s Ferry. Pilings from an old wooden covered bridge
are still in the river here.

If you look at the map above, the tiny parking lot is right at the sharp bend in Hazelbrook Road, and from there there's a short path to a viewpoint & put-in, right between the two bridges.

A local newspaper did a piece about this bridge, in the wake of that nasty bridge collapse in Minneapolis: "Highway 99W bridge old but 'in good condition'". So I suppose if you were going to walk across it, or I was going to go back and walk across it, it's at least not going to collapse under you, which I suppose is a relief, unless the idea of collapsing bridges hadn't occurred to you until just now, in which case not so much, and I humbly apologize for bringing it up. Or whatever.