willamette sunset, 1/16/22

willamette sunset, 4/9/22

willamette sunset, 9/26/19

mt. hood, may 2014

Sellwood Riverfront Park

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Today's adventure takes us down to Sellwood Riverfront Park, just north of the Sellwood Bridge, in -- unsurprisingly -- the Sellwood neighborhood of SE Portland. These photos were taken a few years ago, and I think this area's all torn up with Sellwood Bridge construction right now. I'd gone there to take photos of the (soon-to-be-replaced) current bridge, and managed to also take a few decent ones of the surrounding area. So I figured I could get a post about the park out of the deal. Unfortunately I had a bit of a lens dust issue that day, and many of the photos included an obvious hair or piece of lint. So I dropped some photos in a folder and procrastinated about them, because trying to repair dust errors in photos is really annoying and tedious. After mumble-mumble years of ignoring them, and also not going back for dust-free photos, I decided to just go ahead and post them, apologize for the ugly specks, and try to make up for it with scintillating historical research and a sea of fascinating facts.

That strategy would work better if I had more history to work with. But I don't. The park is surprisingly recent in origin, and I've only got a handful of items to share, none of them particularly earthshattering:

• The city recorded the park as "Undeveloped" in 1983, and applied for a $150k National Park Service grant to help develop it. The Wikipedia article for the park says this was previously a mill site before becoming a park, but that statement isn't sourced and I'm having trouble chasing down info about this previous incarnation.
• The park was dedicated July 1986, as the very first public river access for SE Portland. (There's river access at Oaks Park too, but it may have still been a private for-profit concern at the time.)
• Failed renaming attempt in September '86, would have been named for a (then-)living man. Would have become "Dent Thomas Neighborhood Park" if the proposal had gone through. Neighborhood activist, advocated by local neighborhood association. Would have also renamed Alberta Park as "Mumford Park" after a recently deceased local minister, and Irving Park would have become "Stevenson Park" after a recently deceased security guard. Reactions were mixed to the idea.

light rail bridge construction, march 2014

cherry trees, waterfront park (2014 edition)

Shifting Assets

Some photos of Shifting Assets, a collection of both real and concrete rocks along the Springwater trail's Willamette River segment. I ran across these while tracking down the city's very obscure Riverside Park several years ago. I took a few photos but I wasn't really doing a public art project at the time, so I just filed them away.

Then last year I wrote posts about Portals and Eye River, a pair of recent public artworks located between the Hawthorne Bridge & OMSI. Both were by local artist Linda Wysong, and the (semi)-trusty RACC database mentioned she'd also created Shifting Assets. I vaguely remembered I had photos of it/them somewhere in iPhoto, and made a mental note to go dig them out. I finally got around to doing that, so here they are.

Shifting Assets has two RACC pages for some reason; both offer the same description:

This work consists of two "stopping places" along the trail. The rocks have been retrieved from the Willamette River and are glacial erratic from the Missoula Floods that occurred during the Pleistocene Age, two million years ago.

The sliced stones refer to the layers of time that are part of the area’s geology and history. The acrylic layers are metaphors for the natural environment. The cast concrete stones with layers of steel reflect the mix of natural and industrial influences in this section of the trail.

This isn't the only way to see glacial erratic rocks around here, obviously. In fact there's an Erratic Rock state park in the rural Willamette Valley that protects a very large example of the genre. I've never been there, although it's on my legendarily big todo list. I'm fairly sure there will be a blog post about it someday, at whatever point I finally get around to visiting. What I do have right now, Missoula Flood-wise, are posts about the spectacular Dry Falls and Sun Lakes area of Eastern Washington, where the floodwaters spilled over a 400 foot cliff, forming an enormous waterfall three miles wide. NE Portland's Alameda Ridge is far less spectacular, but apparently the ridge is an ancient gravel bar left over from the ice age floods. This likely precludes building a proper Batcave or Bond villain lair deep beneath the streets of Alameda, but hey.

willamette river, december 2013

moss, hawthorne bridge

Willamette Falls

A slideshow of Willamette Falls photos, from the viewpoint off 99E on the Oregon City side of the river. This is about the best view you can get of the falls without owning a boat or getting a job at one of the paper mills next to the falls. It's the only industrialized, urban waterfall we have in the area and doesn't fit our usual idea of waterfalls, which are tall, skinny, and mostly untouched by the modern world. So tourist guidebooks to the area often ignore these falls. The closest US analogies I can think of might be the Falls of St. Anthony in Minneapolis; Spokane Falls in Spokane, Wa; and High Falls in Rochester NY.

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Willamette Falls is a significant place in Oregon history, so at the risk of sounding like a third-rate Wikipedia clone (and one that relies heavily on Wikipedia, at that), it feels like I should at least try to relate a few interesting tidbits about the place rather than just going, hey, here's yet another slide show, enjoy.

The waterfall

People who care about these things claim Willamette Falls is somewhat of a big deal: 17th widest waterfall in the world, and 37th largest by volume of water. It would be in the top 20, in fact, except that much of the river is diverted away for hydropower, which we'll get to in a minute.

Fish

Several of the photos in this set show people fishing below the falls. The falls have been a prime fishing spot for migratory fish since time immemorial, primarily salmon and lamprey. Because of this, Willamette Falls and other major waterfalls around the Northwest were major cultural centers for native tribes of the region, and figured prominently in stories and legends. (One appeared here recently in a post about Coalca Landing State Park, explaining the origin of the park's once-famous balancing rock). The tribes retained their traditional fishing rights here after the 1855 treaty in which they lost virtually all of their land. The word "retained" is important here: Despite what the nation's racist uncles may have said over Thanksgiving dinner, this is not a matter of the federal government granting special rights to a minority. They were here first, the falls and the fish were theirs to begin with, and they never gave up their pre-existing rights.

I should note, however, that fishing rights don't guarantee an actual supply of fish. Lamprey populations continue to decline, and salmon runs are no healthier here than they are anywhere else.

History

The falls also explain why Oregon City is where it is. The town was founded in 1829 as a Hudson's Bay Company outpost (the main fort being across the Columbia River at Ft. Vancouver), as the falls were a convenient way to power a lumber mill. It would be several decades before the founding of Portland, so Oregon City was the major settlement in the region and served as the territorial capital. That, in turn, meant that the Oregon Trail ended here, as newly arrived pioneers had to stop by the courthouse to file their land claim papers.

The falls also meant that Oregon City was initially the head of navigation on the Willamette. A number of East Coast cities were founded along the Fall Line, and it would have been reasonable to think the pattern would repeat here as well. Ships couldn't go any further upstream, and moving products by land in the pre-rail, pre-paved road era was difficult and something you wanted to minimize if possible, so it seemed logical that a seaport would develop here. Portland soon took this role away from Oregon City, however; the credit's often given to (relatively) easier land routes, particularly the old Plank Road west to the farmland of the Tualatin Valley. This later evolved into Canyon Road, and then today's Sunset Highway (US 26).

Transportation

The falls didn't remain a barrier for long; in 1873 the Willamette Falls Locks opened, giving river traffic a route around the falls. They were initially a private venture but later became an Army Corps of Engineers project.

Over time river traffic lost out to the railroads, and both dwindled further once paved roads and motor vehicles arrived in the Northwest. The falls saw very little traffic in recent years and maintenance costs continued to escalate, so the Corps finally placed the locks in "non-operating status" in 2011. This seems to be bureaucratic lingo for "permanently closed" without actually saying "permanent".

Power

People in the Northwest usually think of hydroelectric power as something that involves a massive Bonneville-style dam, but Willamette Falls is home to PGE's historic Thomas W. Sullivan Plant, which has just a low dam above the falls to divert water into its turbines. Constructed in 1895, it's one of the nation's oldest hydropower plants still in operation, and was recently certified as "green power", which seems to mean that it's considered relatively benign to fish. An earlier hydro project at the falls enabled the nation's first long distance transmission of electricity, in June 1889, sending power from the falls to downtown Portland, 14 miles away. A historical marker in downtown's Lownsdale Square marks the event.

A page at the Willamette Falls Heritage Foundation provides a look inside the Sullivan Plant, which has a set of rather steampunk-looking vintage turbines.

Paper

The most prominent, and smelliest, part of the development around the falls is the paper industry. The falls were home to the Blue Heron paper mill on the Oregon City side, and the West Linn Paper Company on the West Linn side of the river, but the Blue Heron mill closed abruptly in 2011. The mill specialized in paper recycling, and apparently it's now more profitable to ship waste paper to China than it is to recycle it here. Which is yet another reminder that international trade is often bizarre and nonsensical. There are a few photos of the now-demolished powerhouse for the Blue Heron mill here

Future

In 2011, both the locks and one of the two paper mills at the falls closed, and both closures seem to be fairly permanent. The other mill seems to be prospering, as far as I know, and the hydro plant is licensed to operate thru the year 2034, but the closures still raise a question of what (if anything) to do with the falls going forward.

Willamette Falls Heritage Foundation and the Willamette Falls Heritage Area Coalition are interested in the historic preservation aspects of the falls, the latter group wanting to involve the National Park Service in the effort. The city government is apparently interested in shifting gears and becoming a creative class hub, and Metro's expressed interest in buying the old Blue Heron site, which would likely mean at least part of the site becoming a park at some point in the distant future, and probably repurposing at least some of the historic mill buildings, similar to what's under discussion for the remote Bull Run Powerhouse. Speaking strictly as someone who likes taking photos of waterfalls, that sounds like a great idea. With one important caveat, namely that I'm not interested in throwing anyone out of work just so I can get better waterfall photos.

november sunset (ii)

November Sunset

Here's an Instagram photo I took on the Morrison Bridge earlier today. I think it turned out ok, so here it is. Also, I'm just sort of exploring how to embed Instagram photos in Blogger. Handcrafting the HTML seems to be the only way to go, at least for now. Kind of old-sk00l, but I can live with that. At least they finally have web profiles now. Mine's here, if you're interested. Or whatever.

Updated (November 2013): Ok, IG has official embeds now, so I'm switching my hack job out for the real deal. Enjoy.

Coalca Landing expedition

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Today's adventure takes us to obscure Coalca Landing State Park, on the Willamette a bit south of Oregon City, just off Highway 99E. This is yet another Willamette Greenway parcel (a situation I explained in my Grand Island post a while back), so I'm not sure "State Park" is part of the official name, but there's a tiny State Parks sign at the driveway into the park, so I think we'll go with that.

Coalca Landing is a long, narrow strip of land on the east bank of the Willamette, with the river on one side, and Highway 99E and a major rail line on the other side. The entrance is fairly low key and easy to miss. Heading south on 99E, look for a railroad crossing just south of the Pearson's Art Gallery (a former historic tavern), with a few mailboxes out front. The aforementioned tiny State Parks sign is right there at the turn, but it's very little help as it's so small you won't really see it until you're practically past it. Anyway, once you're across the railroad tracks, the park's oddly enormous parking lot is off to your right, while directly ahead and off to the left are some residential driveways. The description to someone's Flickr photo of the park indicates the turnoff is near highway milepost 17, and a blog post I ran across has directions plus some great photos. Or if you prefer to go by GPS, I have coordinates of about 45.307810, -122.662881 for the parking lot, if that helps at all.

The park sits at a scenic stretch of the river known as the Willamette Narrows, much of which is part of the Greenway system (including three even more obscure areas on the far side of the river, "Rock Island Landing", "Pete's Mountain Landing", and "Peach Cove Landing".) Other parts of the area are owned by Metro. The obvious potential of the area led a 2009 University of Oregon design class to dream up a few proposals to enhance the site into a full-fledged state park, but as far as I know nothing's actually in the works. As the state's recent Willamette Greenway Parklands Strategy points out, the entire greenway system has been in a sort of political and financial limbo ever since the initial burst of enthusiasm faded in the late 1970s.

This is by no means the only scenic spot along the Willamette, but Coalca Landing has a couple of unusual points of interest:

• If you know where to look, you can spot the once-famous Coalca Pillar, our fair metropolitan area's very own balancing rock. If you look across highway 99E and uphill, you'll notice a rock that looks like it's sorta-balancing high above the highway. It might take a minute to see it; it's not quite as dramatic as the balancing rocks you may have seen in Road Runner cartoons. Still, this rock was once a big local tourist attraction, back in the days when 99E was the main road into Portland from points south. Back then the area been logged relatively recently and trees were smaller, so rock formations like this were easier to spot. And, for whatever reason, in those days motorists could actually be engrossed by a freakin' balancing rock. Which, let's be honest, just sits there and balances. It was an innocent and wholesome age, or so we're told.

  It was also an era when access to the pillar was apparently much easier than it is today. The library's Oregonian database lists numerous hikes and climbing trips to Coalca Pillar during the early part of the 20th century, but that seems to have tapered off prior to World War II, and I haven't come across any contemporary accounts of anyone visiting it.

  The rock's name comes from a local Indian legend. A circa-1898 melodramatic account of the story comes to us from a Southern Pacific Railroad guide to sights along their Shasta line as it travelled the West Coast:

  Coalca's Pillar.

  SOME three miles south of Oregon City, the Shasta Route passes below a rock-cliff, two hundred feet in height and standing out boldly toward the Willamette river. Its top is a level plateau, five acres in extent, which can be reached only by an almost impassable trail up the mountain side. Surmounting the edge of the cliff stands the wonderful stone pillar which our photographer has so successfully transferred to his camera. Coalca's Pillar is twenty feet high and weighs probably sixty tons. Its supporting stem or base is eight feet high and only thirty-five inches in diameter! While the passerby marvels at its equipoise and the geologist speculates over its formation, the chief interest in this strange monument centers in the Indian legend therewith connected.

  At the Great Tumwater, Willamette falls, once dwelt Chelko, a famed and thrifty chief of the Clackamas, who held a trust on all the adjacent fishing grounds. All neighboring tribes paid Chelko tribute for the privilege of his fishing preserves, although salmon are said to have been then so plentiful below the falls that Indians walked across the Willamette on their backs.

  Nearby lived the Molallas, whose stalwart young chief, Coalca, loved Nawalla, the only daughter of Chelko. But the daughter of a salmon king looked not with favor on the suit of a chief of an ordinary deer-hunting tribe, who lived on Molalla grasshoppers and jerked venison. Nor did her father favor the wooing of Coalca, and with the toe of his moccasin expressed energetic disgust whenever the latter appeared to pay court to Nawalla.

  Coalca was resolved to have the maiden at all risks, and at dark of one moon, when the old chief was spearing salmon, he, with three of his braves, swooped down on Chelko : s tepee and carried away Nawalla. That night there was dancing and great joy in the Molalla village over the great capture and equal lamentation among the Clackamas, when was discovered the abduction of their princess by a rival tribe. The Clackamas braves donned their feathers and war paint and the tocsin was sounded. For months waged a bitter war; Nawalla, an unwilling prisoner, died of broken heart ; Coalca's band slowly pressed back the Clackamas and finally determined to capture their village. Stealthily they trailed among the rocky cliffs and for the night camped on the plateau upon which our pillar now stands. Here, in restful security, they tarried before dealing the; final death blow to Chelko and his tribe. But they contended with an older and craftier warrior, who wearied not nor slept. Before the morn Chelko scaled the rocky pathway, drove the Molallas over the cliff, and permitted not one of them to escape death.

  The Indian legend further recites that the Great Spirit, sorely grieved at the untimely death of the beautiful Nawalla, wreaked vengeance upon Coalca and the three braves by turning the four Molalla warriors into pillars of stone and placing them at the edge of the cliff, exposed to the heat of summer and the storms of winter — that their stony forms might be an awful warning to passing Indians for all ages. But in time the heart of the Great Spirit softened to the three Molallas, who had but done Coalca's bidding in the abduction of Nawalla. Their spirits were released and permitted to go to the happy hunting grounds; three pillars were thrown to the bottom of the precipice and form now a part of the broken rock along the Shasta rails.

  The pillar sits on ODOT land, technically outside the state park proper. The state bought the land in June 1950 when Highway 99E was being widened. The linked Oregonian article indicates the state considered putting in a highway wayside near the pillar, but that seems to have never come to pass. The lack of parking might help explain why the pillar has been mostly forgotten in recent decades. I'd seen a vague mention that it was in the vicinity, but I only noticed it because a talkative fisherman pointed it out to me. Speaking of which, on behalf of him, and the few other fishermen who were there, I'd like to point out that there's absolutely nothing at all to catch here whatsoever, and you'd be wasting your time even trying.

• To find the second point of interest, you'll need to locate the trail heading north/downstream from the parking lot, and follow it a short distance. The trail passes several mysterious concrete structures, or remains of structures. From the info I've been able to gather so far (see, for example, this 2005 survey of the Highway 99E "green corridor"), the park seems to have once been the site of a sawmill owned by the old Doernbecher Manufacturing furniture company. Logs arrived by log raft, were pulled out of the river and milled, and the milled wood was then shipped by rail to the furniture plant near Portland's Hollywood District, around 28th & Sandy. This might also explain the park's enormous parking lot, much of which is fenced off: It might have been employee parking at one time. Documentation is still lacking here and I could be wrong about some of the details, and by all means feel free to correct anything I have wrong here if you know otherwise. Whatever the concrete structures were, they're kind of spooky now, and it probably goes without saying that they're not exactly kid friendly, even for kids who are current on their tetanus shots.

Apparently the Southern Pacific Railroad once had a station named "Coalca" somewhere in the vicinity, and there's still a rail siding by that name just north of the park. I came across a bunch of railfan stuff about it while looking for info on the park, so I figured I might as well pass a few links along for anyone who's into that sort of thing: A southbound train stopped & waiting for a northbound train to pass; a forum thread about the stop and its history; and a collection of train videos filmed here.

Oregon City's historic survey includes the Coalca area in the same historic district as the Art Deco tunnel on 99E that leads south out of town. It's kind of a stretch since Coalca is several miles south of the city proper, but hey. I mention this because one of the PDFs linked there mentions that the highway was once known as the "Road of 1000 Wonders", back in the days before people rolled their eyes at melodramatic names like that. The term also comes up on the City of Canby's history page, so I suppose it must have been in common use at one point. I'd imagine the balancing rock would have to count as one of those thousand wonders, but even if it wasn't, the name was just too fun not to share.

Finally, the "Best American Travel Writing 2012" anthology includes an excerpt from "Railroad Semantics" by Aaron Dactyl, in which the author rides the rails, hobo style, up through the Willamette Valley and on to Seattle. The train stops at Coalca due to some sort of malfunction, and our intrepid correspondent has to sneak around to dodge a nosy railroad worker. The rest of the story's fun to read too, btw.

Butteville Riverboat Landing

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Some photos of Butteville Riverboat Landing, at historic Butteville on the south bank of the Willamette between Champoeg and Wilsonville. Butteville is best known for the Butteville Store, which is supposedly the oldest continuously operating business in the state. It probably doesn't hurt that the store sits at one end of the Champoeg State Park trail system and (I assume) sells water and snacks. It turns out, though, that Butteville was once a small but thriving river port, and a few remnants of those days survive to the present time. About a block directly downhill from the store, toward the river, a sign says "PUBLIC ACCESS" and names the spot as "Butteville Riverboat Landing Marion County Historic Site". Beyond it is a narrow parcel of land sandwiched between two houses, with a short trail leading to the river and some concrete remnants that may have been a dock at one point. I assume this means the county owns the land in some capacity, although Marion County Parks doesn't say a word about it. Possibly it still falls under the Ferries department, but I'm really not sure. In any event, the key thing is that it's a public river access point, whoever technically owns it.

An excerpt from the fascinating book Willamette Landings describes Butteville thusly:

Butteville (aka LaButte). On the south side or east shore of the river. Established in the 1840s by George Abernethy and Alanson Beers, it was little more than a river landing, with a warehouse and a few dwellings. During the flood of 1861 it incurred extensive damage. By the 1870s, most of the local agriculture was being shipped via the Oregon & California Railroad which had been constructed several miles to the east.

Which is more or less the story we see all along the Willamette River: A locality along the river sorta-thrived briefly, only to be killed off by some combination of floods and railroads. In Butteville's case it wasn't completely the end though; after commercial traffic up and down the river petered out, the town was still home to ferry traffic across the river for a while. a 1905 photo shows a town that appears larger than today's sleepy Butteville. The caption reads:

This is Butteville in 1905. The town site is located on the Willamette River about sixteen miles south of Oregon City. The road leads downhill to the former Butteville Ferry dock.

To this day, there's a street named "Butteville Ferry Road" directly on the far side of the river. That's usually a good clue.

A 1910 photo shows a different but similar waterfront, with the caption:

This photograph is of a picture of the waterfront at Butteville, Oregon on the Willamette River in northern Marion County. The town is mentioned in journals as early as 1845 and was variously known as Butes and La Butte in the mid-1800's when it was a busy shipping point for wheat and other valley crops. Its business district encompassed several blocks and its events were reported up and down the valley. When the Oregon & California Railroad was routed several miles to the east in 1871, the agricultural products which had previously gone by river were shipped by rail and the town gradually began to decline. This picture, taken in 1910, shows pilings at the waterfront and few frame buildings on the road into town. The original photograph is from the collection of Captain Eckhart.

Finally, a 1954 photo from the Butteville side of the river shows a quiet scene, with a few decayed pilings that look like those in the earlier photos. The photo caption:

Butteville is located about nine miles south of Oregon City and was staked out about 1845 by George Abernethy & Alanson Beers. In 1895 it had 4 stores, 4 warehouses, blacksmiths, 3 saloons, and a ferry across the Willamette River. Two steamboats called daily; it was an important trade center & shipping point until near the turn of the century. In October 1954, the ferry landing was no longer in use and the town was nearly a ghost town.

The book A History of Oregon Ferries since 1826 indicates ferry service existed intermittently at Butteville into the early 20th century, and includes the 1905 photo as documentation. It seems the first recorded Butteville Ferry sailed in 1851. In 1857 it became known as Hibbard's Ferry when a gentleman by that name was licensed to operate for one year. In 1860, the Vaughn Ferry plied its trade here, as did the Curtis Ferry circa 1870-72, the Schwartz Ferry in 1913, and the Scheurer Ferry in 1915-16. The last citation refers to Butteville city council minutes, meaning this little burg was an actual incorporated city at that time.

Lambert Slough Bridge

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The Lambert Slough Bridge is one of the more obscure destinations the ongoing bridge project has visited (so far). Lambert Slough is a small side channel of the Willamette River, separating Grand Island from the west bank of the river, and this little bridge is the only way on or off the island. I figured I ought to at least take a photo of the bridge on my way to the state park on the island, since I'd already established that this project included bridges on the Willamette at least as far south as Salem, and bridges out to islands were fair game, since I'd done the Sauvie Island Bridge. So I pretty much had to do this one for the sake of completeness. And completeness it is, since with this I think I've covered every bridge as far as Salem, plus one in Eugene. Except for the Champoeg Road pipeline bridge near Newberg, and I've more or less convinced myself that it doesn't count.

As with the OR-219 bridge, there's no page for this bridge at BridgeHunter or Structurae or any of the usual bridge fan sites, but there is a page about it at UglyBridges.com. In which we learn it's a reinforced concrete deck girder bridge, built in 1964, and any historical significance was "not determinable at this time" as of 2009. At that time it was given a 64.2% structural sufficiency rating, which is decent (certainly compared to the Sellwood Bridge's 2% rating) but down from 87% in 1991, probably due to an increase in traffic -- although 428 vehicles per day still counts as light traffic, I think.

As mentioned in my earlier Grand Island post, the island is threatened by a proposed gravel mine, which is currently working its way through the courts and the county permit process. Since this bridge is the only way on or off the island, gravel mining would mean a steady stream of big gravel trucks. The county commissioned an engineering study of the bridge in 2010 that concluded the bridge could handle the truck traffic, although not everyone's pleased that Yamhill County would be on the hook for higher maintenance costs due to increased wear and tear.

Union Street Bridge

A slideshow on Salem's Union Street Bridge over the Willamette River. It was built as a railroad bridge in 1913, but the railroad abandoned it in the 1990s. The city of Salem later purchased it and converted it into a bike and pedestrian bridge. Which, as you can see in my earlier posts about the nearby Center Street and Marion Street bridges, is something that was sorely needed here. I visited on a cool, drizzly day with intermittent downpours, and even then there was a steady stream of people walking and biking across.

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If the design of the bridge looks familiar, it could be because it was designed by the Waddell & Harrington engineering firm, the same company behind the Hawthorne, Interstate, and Steel bridges in Portland. Unlike the bridges in Portland, the lift span on the Union St. Bridge no longer functions. In fact it hasn't been operational since at least 1980, when the railroad was still using the bridge.

There was a brief time in the late 1990s or early 2000s when it looked as if the lift span would have to be repaired, to accomodate the Willamette Queen river cruise ship during high river levels. I can't find a definitive link about the story, but as I recall under federal law the railroad would have had to put the lift span back into operation if any commercial user demanded it. However it turned out to be much cheaper to modify the riverboat, the only vessel that would have needed the lift span. Its smokestacks were the real obstacle, and they were actually purely decorative, so they were given hinges to fold down so the ship could fit under the bridge. As I said, I wish I had a link to pass along as I might have some of the details of the story wrong, but that's how the story played out as best as I can recall. Anyway, the lift span is another interesting relic of the brief era when commercial shipping was a dominant form of transportation across Oregon, before railroads and eventually cars and trucks assumed that role.

Since it's strictly a pedestrian and bike bridge, walking across is pretty pleasant, and there's a nice view of the river and the other bridges. You see a bit of the city too, but Salem has a fairly low-rise and unphotogenic skyline, apart from the state capitol, and the city just isn't oriented around the river to the same degree that Portland is. In addition to the bridge itself, on the West Salem side of the river you also cross a long elevated train trestle over land; I was coming from the downtown Salem side and turned around before walking the whole trestle (due to the whole intermittent downpours thing I mentioned), so I haven't personally seen where it ends up. The video I linked to above starts from the West Salem side, though, so you can see it that way, if you're curious.

Gibbs St. Pedestrian Bridge

A slideshow of the shiny new and long-awaited Gibbs Street Pedestrian Bridge, which crosses I-5 directly beneath the Portland Aerial Tram. It looks better than the design sketches I'd seen of it; the slight curve makes a big difference in it not looking like just another ugly overpass. The bridge was a long time coming: First there was a federal grant to obtain (which IIRC was originally supposed to rework the Naito Parkway overpass/intersection with SW Arthur St.). Once the money was finally in hand, the project finally kicked off, and it was time for an interminable Portland-style design process, and a parallel process of discovering what could and couldn't actually be built with the money on hand.

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The South Waterfront side of the bridge includes several flights of stairs to get down to street level, plus an elevator that's been in and out of service repeatedly in the months since the bridge opened. Which is a problem since, as a series of BikePortland posts note, the current bike gutters on the stairs aren't really up to the task.

I'm sure there are people whose daily commute was revolutionized by the new bridge, or it at least made it easier to get around as a pedestrian. The impact would undoubtedly be even greater if it was easier to get to the west side of the bridge, but the stretch of Naito between I-405 and Barbur was built as a limited access semi-freeway back in the 1940s, and getting across it involves one of various creepy tunnels under the street, and/or the old skybridge over to the Bermuda Triangle area (where the naturopathic college is located). A few years ago I wrote a couple of posts about the transportation issues in this part of town. I was a bit more wound up and snarky about things back then, so please take that into account, but my point there basically stands. In these days of austerity and shrinking budgets for everything, I'd be happy if they simply added a traffic signal or two (and crosswalks) on that part of Naito, for now. I haven't seen any recent discussion about doing that, though I admit to not paying close attention for the last couple of years or so. If we're lucky, maybe the new bridge will lead to pressure on the city to finally do something about the Naito situation.

Grand Island expedition

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Today's adventure takes us to the Willamette River's Grand Island, just north of Salem, which is home to a picturesque little state park you probably haven't heard of. It goes by either "Grand Island State Park" or "Grand Island Access", but it doesn't appear by either name on most maps or guidebooks, or even on the state's main official list of the Willamette Valley state parks. I'll get to why this is in a minute, but first a bit about the place.

The park is a small meadow on the south/upstream end of Grand Island, on a side channel of the Willamette where Lambert Slough splits off from the main stem of the river. It's mostly used as a river access point for boaters, although I should point out there's no boat ramp here, and you can certainly drive or bike to the park like I did, assuming you know it's here (note the big green arrow on the map above). There's a second State Parks sign facing the river so boaters know they're in the right spot. The park even has a fire pit and space to put up a tent, although apparently it's only legal to camp here if you arrive by boat. So if you bike to the park and decide to stay the night, you might want to pack an light inflatable raft or something to use as a decoy, and hope Officer Friendly isn't too curious about current river conditions. I'm not promising this would actually work, mind you.

Grand Island as a whole is low, flat, and agricultural, and it's connected to the mainland by a single narrow bridge. It reminds me a lot of Sauvie Island, but without all the hordes of tourists. Surprisingly (and probably thanks to strict zoning laws) there aren't any bed and breakfasts, wine bars, twee antique shops, or any of the other touristy amenities that blanket much of the rural Willamette Valley. Even the Grand Island General Store is on the mainland, where the road to the island intersects OR-221. The island itself is just farms, one obscure state park, and nothing else as far as I can tell. For now, at least. There's a current proposal to begin mining gravel on the island, near the park. As you might expect local residents are quite unhappy about this. It seemed like every house I drove past had at least one Protect Grand Island sign out front. In May of this year the Yamhill County Commission voted 2-1 to let the mine go forward, so this fight is probably headed to the courts next.

There's also an Occupy Grand Island page on Facebook, though it seems to focus on the usual Occupy concerns and not so much on the gravel thing.

As for why the park is so obscure, it turns out the place is part of the state's Willamette Greenway system, a collection of dozens of obscure parcels along the river that were purchased primarly during the 1970s at the behest of Gov. Tom McCall. (See this "Public Parcel Inventory" guide from 2004 for a partial list.) McCall proposed that the state own the entire stretch of Willamette riverbanks from end to end, which turned out to be both controversial and unaffordable. The legislature eventually pulled the plug on this idea, but not before the state had title to various bits and pieces of land along the river, including this spot, Wapato Greenway near Sauvie Island, and French Prairie just upstream of Wilsonville.

It's possible the state's downplayed the existence of these places because of the initial controversy, for fear of riling up crazy Tea Party militia types or something. A more boring possibility is that they've just fallen through the bureaucratic cracks somehow. It's ambiguous whether each greenway parcel is an official state park on its own, or a distributed part of a single very large (but still very obscure) state park, or something else entirely, and the whole greenway program probably falls under someone else's bailiwick within the state Parks Department, so including the list of greenway areas along with other state parks and having them show up on maps would probably involve years of meetings and millions of dollars just to figure out how to eventually pull it off someday.

French Prairie State Park

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This is the grand entrance to French Prairie State Park, an obscure little state park on the Willamette River, just downstream of Champoeg State Park and upstream of Wilsonville. The is one of the state's many obscure Willamette Greenway sites; they don't appear on most maps, the state parks website doesn't list them, and the only road sign indicating you're in the right place is the tiny one pictured above. I'll cover the Willamette Greenway park system further in a later post about a place I was actually able to visit. This one was "Closed for Winter" when I stopped by, even though it was after Memorial Day. The sign doesn't give any indication about when winter ends in these parts. In reality it's probably closed due to the state's budget woes, or maybe vandalism, and all they had was a "Closed for Winter" sign.

But suppose winter really has persisted into the summer months in this one small area, and there's a sheet of glacial ice here that isn't visible from the front gate, and ice floes on the river, plus drifting snow and so forth. What supernatural cause might be responsible for all this? Does a Snow Miser live here? Or maybe a white dragon from D&D has taken up residence. I lean toward the latter hypothesis, because white dragons are always chaotic evil, and that would explain why the gate is closed locked and visitors are quietly discouraged and the place's very existence is not exactly shouted from the rooftops. And the state certainly wouldn't undertake all these dragon-mitigation measures if dragons didn't actually exist, which to me is kind of a big deal even apart from the whole state park thing. It all makes perfect sense, right?