Milestone P4

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So I'd like to announce the achievement of another milestone. This time it's P4, at the corner of SE 61st & Stark. It's at the NE corner of the intersection, next to the Tabor Heights Methodist Church parking lot. I'm rather pleased about finally finding this one. I tried and failed to find it maybe 3 or 4 times before, albeit strictly from a moving vehicle each time. This time I noticed it right away -- seeing milestones gets easier after you've seen a few others -- and this time I stopped and took a few photos. The stone's not extremely prominent, and there are a bunch of juniper bushes around it, but someone was nice enough to trim out a cozy little niche for the milestone so passers-by can see it. Aww, how cute...



Across the street is Cooper's Coffee, which (according to one Yelp reviewer) also has a tasty beer selection. And wifi. So despite being 4 miles, or over 21 thousand feet from downtown, we still haven't exited the civilized world just yet.

Of course we're still on the west slope of Mt. Tabor at this point. All real Portlanders know for a 100% truthy fact that there's nothing on the far side of Mt. Tabor except meth labs and pit bulls as far as the eye can see, and you won't see another trace of the civilized world until roughly the Hudson River. And even then, there are a few parts of Manhattan we aren't too sure about.

Well, except for Montavilla. As I've already mentioned, Montavilla's quite cute. Which means of course that as soon as the real estate market comes back to life, we'll have to tear out large chunks of it to put up condo towers for the rich Californians, because that's just how it is, and resistance is futile.

Oh, and Ikea. Ikea's civilized too, although a bit less so of late. You have heard of Verdanagate, right? Right?



All snarkitude aside, I do have a few more links and items to pass along:

• I just discovered that someone has put together a custom Google map pointing out all the milestones. So check out the "Baseline Road Mileposts" map, and send props to whoever put it together.
  
• A couple of Gresham Outlook stories to pass along, profiling a local retiree who investigated the milestones well before we interweb folk ever heard of them: "Marking the miles of history" and "Retired administrator takes up local history".
  
• And the latest two milestone posts over at the ZehnKatzen Times (although unlike this humble blog, he does actually cover stuff besides old rocks with numbers on them.) "The Stark Street Milestones" references my P5 post, so it's only fair to return the linky luurrrve. And "More Portland Milestones" mentions those Flickr photos of the other P7 on Capitol Highway.
  
• At the end of my P7 post, I mentioned the existence of additional milestones along the Historic Columbia River Highway, suggesting them as a project for some ambitious soul out there. A commenter then asked if the numbers on those milestones might be a continuation of those on Stark. I was completely skeptical, but I just so happened to be out that way this afternoon, and just south of the Stark St. bridge (over the Sandy River) I noticed a mile marker with a "17" on it. Which meant it was at least plausible. And then, I just tracked down the nomination form for adding the Gorge Highway to the National Register of Historic Places. Right there, on page 5, is this tidbit:
  

  
  Historic Mile Posts (HMPs) on the Columbia River Highway
  Mileposts were established along the CRH at the time of construction. According to a “Mile
  Posting Data” log of the entire highway that the Oregon State Highway Department (OSHD)
  prepared in 1924, HMP 0.00 was established as the intersection of SW Washington Street and
  SW Broadway in downtown Portland. The route leading to the beginning of the CRH and
  nominated district, followed Portland’s arterial system for about six miles before picking up the Base Line Road (also known as Stark Street) or the Sandy Road (later known as Sandy
  Boulevard). Stark Street intersected the CRH on the Sandy River (Stark Street) Bridge, at HMP
  16.7. The Sandy Road crossed the Sandy River two miles downstream over the Sandy River
  Bridge at Troutdale before heading into the county’s road system. The roadway between the
  Sandy River Bridge at Troutdale and the Sandy River (Stark Street) Bridge was added as a
  second access route to the CRH, a few years after work originally began on the highway.[1]
  The Sandy River Bridge at Troutdale is 2.5 miles northwest of the Stark Street structure, so its HMP has been calculated as 14.2. For purposes of this nomination for the CRH, and the 1983
  NR nomination for the CRH Historic District, HMP 14.2 was determined as the western most
  point of the nominated property.
  
  [1]See the entire section of F. N. Drinkhall, “Field Notes: Mile Posting Data, Upper Col. River Hwy., Lower Col. River Hwy., and Old Oregon Trail,” Oregon State Highway Department, Salem, 1924, devoted to the “Upper Col. River Hwy.”
  

  
  It's not clear whether the document was written by the National Park Service or by ODOT, but either way it sounds fairly definitive. Although I'm still not sold on the fabled P0 point being located at SW Washington & Broadway. That would put it a few blocks north of the actual Willamette Baseline. Although I've never actually seen any reference saying P0 was on the baseline; I just keep assuming that was the case, because all the others line up so nicely, and it would be a shame to break up the pattern.
  

Milestone P7

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The latest installment of the milestone series takes us to the corner of SE 117th & Stark, home to Stark St. milestone P7. This one isn't hard to find; it's in a reasonably prominent location at the SE corner of Ventura Park, which is on the north (westbound) side of Stark. There's even a historical marker next to the milestone explaining what it is and what it's for.



I don't know this part of town that well, except that nearby 122nd Avenue is lined with car dealers. So for a bit more local flavor than what I've got here, check out this ZehnKatzen post with a few photos of the surrounding area as well as of P7 itself. I did take a few photos of the park, but I think I'm going to hold off on those for right now, since sorting through photos of roses usually takes freakin' forever.

Updated 9/10/11: Thanks to the library's Oregonian db, I have a bit more info to share about milestone P7, how it was rescued, and how it ended up in Ventura Park. In an article lamely titled "Milepost 'tells' story about Portland history" (quotes theirs), the December 12th, 1978 Oregonian explained:

Craig Decker was reacquainted with an old friend last week, expressing satisfaction that his pal was set in concrete and could wander no more.

"It's good to see it back in the neighborhood," Decker, 30, said.

Decker grew up with milepost 7, which, during his childhood, was in place on the south side of Southeast Stark Street neer 117th Avenue, its hand-carved basalt rising to a pyramid and the obscure horizontal markings that read "P 7" etched into its face.

"It was over there, near the old neighborhood grocery store," Decker said last week as Multnomah County crews were placing the marker in concrete at the corner of Stark Street and 117th Avenue in Ventura Park. Right between those two trees. It took me a long time to figure out what the P and 7 meant."

...

Milepost 7 was found only recently by students of John Woodward, an anthropology professor at Mount Hood Community College.

The 500-pound marker was being ravaged by bulldozers, so the students rescued it and offered it to the county.

Milepost 13 is housed in the Gresham Historical Society and milepost 14 is on the campus of Mount Hood Community College.

Various things I've learned so far, and other things I still don't know, plus some guesses:

• As mentioned on the Stark Street Mile Markers mini-blog, there's another milestone P7 in SW Portland, seemingly marking the course of Taylors Ferry Rd. / Capitol Highway / Highway 99W. I haven't tracked that one down yet, but I did run across someone's photos of it here, along with photos of a newer-looking marker that just says "5". I'm not sure what its significance is.
  
• The sign at this P7 indicates that distances are measured from the old Multnomah County Courthouse, on the west side of the river -- so that spot would be P0, although it's not clear if there was ever a marker to that effect. The current county courthouse was completed in 1914, and it's several blocks south of the baseline. More or less. The downtown street grid isn't aligned with the baseline, so it isn't always obvious how things line up.
  
• Which brings us to a mystery: Where exactly was this P0 point? This page at the Oregon Historical Society asserts that the old courthouse was at the same location as the current one. If true, that would rule out the courthouse, even though that would be a logical place for a P0 mark. So then I thought the reference to the old courthouse might refer to the Pioneer Courthouse instead. It does seem to lie on the baseline, but it's a couple of blocks west of my best estimate, and it's also a federal courthouse, not a local one. Pioneer Courthouse Square is closer to the right spot, but it didn't exist until the 1980s, and prior to that it was a hotel and then a parking lot, so I think we can rule it out as a candidate. So as far as I can determine, the P0 point should be located inside the parking garage between 10th & Park, near the Galleria MAX stop. But I'm not a pro surveyor, and I could easily be mistaken. And I haven't been able to determine if anything important was on this site before it was a parking garage.
  
• As long as we're doing best estimates (which included the help of this Google Maps distance calculator, it looks like this putative P0 point is 4 miles due east of the Willamette Stone. My actual number was something like 3.92 miles, but that's so close to 4 that I'm inclined to fault my estimating powers. If the actual value isn't 4, it would be fair to assume that was at least the intended value. So any milestone you see is that many miles to downtown, and 4 more to the Willamette Stone.


• Although once you're past P4, the road deviates from the baseline briefly. At that point, the baseline runs over the north end of Mt. Tabor, and traffic gets routed around the steepest part on SW Thorburn St. instead of straight over it. There's a disconnected stretch of Stark St. through part of the bypassed area, and the milestones seem to be measuring distance along that direction, not along the street you'll actually be on. So it's a decent bit greater than a mile between milestones P4 and P5.


• Oh, one more fun estimate to pass along. The missing P3 stone is supposed to have been at or around 42nd & Stark, in a quiet mostly-residential area. I'm enough of a math dork to immediately wonder where the mythical Pπ milestone should be, being ~3.14159 miles from downtown Portland. In a delightful coincidence, Pπ seems to be very close to 45th & Stark, and thus near Belmont Station. And if it's not an exact match, you can always change the value of π to make it fit better, like the Indiana Legislature allegedly once did. So there aren't any actual milestones nearby, but you could always drop by their cafe and hoist a pint in memory of the lost P3, and in honor of the Pπ I just made up. Some would call that ridiculous, others might call it stupid. But they're assuming there's such a thing as a bad reason to hoist a pint, and I'm going to have to disagree with that basic premise. Mmmmm... beeeer....


• Ok, one more guesstimate while we're at it. Being the math dork I just mentioned I am, I also had to wonder about mythical milestone Pi, which is not the same thing as Pπ. Pi is genuinely imaginary, rather than merely made up. It would be a mile due north of P0, and I think that means somewhere around 9th & Naito, near the police mounted patrol horse barn. And P-i (that's -i miles from P0) should be just south of 405, in the Duniway Park area.


• The historical marker at P7 says Stark was once called Base Line Road. The only road by that name in the present day is Baseline Rd. in Washington County. The name's an accurate description in parts of Hillsboro & Cornelius where Baseline follows the actual baseline. Elsewhere, the name is just a name.


• So far we've been talking strictly in terms of miles. The mayor and others keep insisting we're a thoroughly European city, with the idea that saying it all the time will make it true. So it's curious that they've never gotten around to trying to have the city go all metric and stop using miles, pounds, gallons, etc. Switching would likely fail miserably and just annoy people in the process, but the Powers That Be always prefer to do a bit of conceptual art and send a symbolic message rather than ever taking any real action. So this might be a good place to tell the world how much we adore the metric system without the expense and inconvenience of actually trying to use it for real. We could just put up a set of shiny new Euro-licious kilometer stones along Stark to go along with the existing milestones. The P_Km24 marker would be just a touch west of where P15 ought to be.


• While we're at it, the same area would also host the 13 nautical mile mark, if we were counting those. The nautical mile markers could look like little buoys, or maybe lighthouses. Since this is Portland, if you're going to be whimsical you probably ought to give your stuff a dour, educational side, so that people can tell you're a Serious Artist. So the buoys would be to let people know it would be 13 miles by boat to the sunken ruins of downtown, if somehow the whole world flooded due to global warming, a la Waterworld.


• But wait, there's more. From the Willamette Stone to P15 is 19 miles, or 30.57 km. Or, roughly, one picoparsec (about 30.85 km). Add in the distance from P15 to the Sandy River, and it's a very close fit indeed. In other words, take the distance along Stark from downtown to the Sandy River, and simply go 1.29 trillion times that far (i.e 1.29 parsecs), and you're at Proxima Centauri, the nearest star (other than the sun). There, that was easy, wasn't it? And simply go 800 quadrillion picoparsecs (or 800 kiloparsecs), and voila, you're at the Andromeda Galaxy.


• Oh, and once you hit the Sandy River, you're on the Columbia Gorge Highway, which has its own system of milestones stretching from Troutdale all the way to the Dalles. Which would be a substantial project, if I (or somebody else) decided to take it on. It sounds kind of tedious, but it would be a good excuse to spend a lot of time wandering around the Gorge. So I'm not going to completely and permanently rule it out. Not today, though, and probably not tomorrow either.

willamette, infrared

willamette, ultraviolet

A little explanation is in order for these photos. These are your basic photos of the sun reflecting off the Willamette River. Except that they were taken using a B+W 403 ultraviolet filter, so that we're mostly capturing ultraviolet wavelengths plus a little infrared presumably mixed in. To take them, I stood on the Steel Bridge facing the sun, and pointed the camera down at the light glinting off the river (which was near-blindingly bright in visible light), and then I had just enough light to get a few non-blurry photos.



I've stared at them long enough now that I no longer have any idea whether they're kind of cool or completely lame. If you think they suck, well, sorry. You won't get those couple seconds of your life back, but at least you didn't pay anything to see the photos. So there's that, at least.

china gate, infrared

black pearl pepper

A Neighborhood Gardener

A few photos of a small statue in Holladay Park, across the street from Lloyd Center. It's simply titled "A Neighborhood Gardener". I hadn't looked at it that closely, but I knew it was a statue of someone gardening. That seemed like a silly idea, and I arrived figuring I'd make fun of it and have a few cheap shots at its expense, but I decided I actually kind of like it. It's one of a trio of works by Tad Savinar that were installed when the park was renovated a few years ago. Somehow the statue makes a lot more sense as part of a series rather than as a standalone object. And the series seems to be a meditation on domestic coziness. I just can't manage to get very snarky and disagreeable about coziness.



If the Neighborhood Gardener had been here back when I was in college and thought I knew everything, I'd have sneered at it and probably called it bourgeois. Well, of course it's bourgeois, that's the whole point, isn't it? It's not exactly a heroic Soviet peasant tilling the soil, is it? Although, amusingly, the facial expression is similar across economic classes: Determined, mildly pleased, and mildly annoyed. Trying to convince plants to live and grow will do that to you. I've discovered this recently.



I'm not alone in being unable to rant about the statue. If anyone could pull it off, it would be the nameless proprietor(s) of the Portland Public Art blog. He/she/it has no doubt forgotten more about art than I will ever know, and manages to be even snarkier than I am when talking about it. And yet, the piece about the Neighborhood Gardener is gentle, even sweet, and expounds a bit on the theme of coziness.



My only complaint, if you can call it one, is that none of the pieces in Holladay Park include cats, even though cats add coziness to everything. I suppose that would just be too easy, and would verge on cheating. I dunno. Like I always say, I've never claimed to be an art critic.

Milestone P5

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Today's fun adventure leads us behind a dumpster a few blocks off 82nd on SE Stark St. Hey, wait, come back, dammit -- don't you care about history!? Seriously, the little obelisk you see here with the "P5" on it is another of the Stark Street Milestones. I covered Milestone P2 wayyy back in November 2006, and I've finally gotten around to tracking down a few others. Well, in truth someone else did all the heavy lifting with the research and tracking down and such (which I'm slightly envious about, truth be told), and I'm just showing up afterwards to take a few photos and make pointless snarky remarks, as is my way.

I stopped here right after failing to find P4, and shortly before failing to find P6. I did manage to find P7 at least, but that's a matter for another post.



So unlike P2, which is embedded in a wall next to a historic cemetery, P5 stands next to an auto upholstery shop at the corner of 78th & Stark, with a variety of junk arrayed around it. Some people might get up in arms about this and argue that historical monuments should be treated more reverentially. I actually think it's fine this way though; the stone's survived the Oregon climate and who knows what kind of abuse for 150 years, and it's not going to be harmed by an old tire or a piece of cardboard lying next to it. And most importantly, it makes for more interesting photos this way.



I should point out that the photos kind of give the wrong idea, as the surrounding Montavilla neighborhood is rather cute actually. Just across 78th, behind where I stood when I took these photos, is the Flying Pie pizzeria and adjacent Art Deco-ish Academy Theater, featuring the classic Portland combo of pizza, beer, and movies. Mmmm.... beeeeer....

mysterypark

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If you're like me, which you aren't, and you ride MAX through the Lloyd Center area, which you probably don't, you might've noticed this little park-like area on Holladay St. between 6th & 7th Avenues. It's relentlessly geometric and full of signs forbidding pets and smokers, but there's no obvious sign of who's doing all the forbidding.

As usual, PortlandMaps rides to the rescue, letting us know the place is actually not public property. It doesn't give the official name for the place, because that's not what PortlandMaps does, but we do learn that it's property ID R182211, owned by "KAISER FOUNDATION HEALTH PLAN ATTN: PROPERTY ACCOUNTING".

So this is a little taste of what the world looks like when huge health insurance conglomerates run the show. No pets allowed, smoking anywhere strictly forbidden, even if you're outdoors with nobody around to breathe your secondhand smoke, etcetera, etcetera. If it's bad for you, or there's any chance of anyone suing anyone else (like over dog bites), it's banned, and if it's good for you, it's mandatory. No doubt the blue metal chairs here are designed to enforce correct posture.

I'm tempted to call them up and say I want to set up a hot dog cart in their little park, just to see what they say. Although cynical and rebellious thoughts are probably another form of unhealthiness, and therefore forbidden as well, and they'll be sending Salvatore the, uh, Legitimate Sicilian Chiropractor by to readjust my kneecaps, even though I'm not even a customer of theirs. It all stands to reason, anyway.