Cat in Repose

Here we have some photos of the big stone cat on the Transit Mall, on 5th between Morrison and Alder. It's called Cat in Repose, by Kathleen McCullough, and it dates back to 1977 when the bus mall first went in. And now it's back from storage, as they're finally done with MAX construction.



Most of the original bus mall art is just eyeroll-inducing, and if anything the new crop is worse. But I've always been fond of the cat. I freely admit I'm biased, and I'm not very objective when it comes to cats, even when they're made of limestone. If you're looking for challenging, cutting edge art you may want to look elsewhere, but it's a cheerful and soothing presence, and it just works in its own way.



Scanning the interwebs for info about it was notably unhelpful. There's no shortage of guidebook-type sites that give it a quick mention, briefly informing the reader that the cat is beloved by children of all ages, or something along those lines. Beyond that, there's not much out there, so I've gathered up everything that seemed halfway useful here for your enjoyment.



Portland Public Art mentioned it once a few years back, when it was damaged by a thoughtless road crew with a pressure washer. They seem to have completely restored it for the MAX grand opening, though.



There's exactly one Flickr photo of the cat out there, that I'm aware of. Other than mine, obviously.



The cat's Smithsonian Art Inventory page has a little more info.



The art inventory also has a little info on the sculptor, and mentions one other work of hers, a lion at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. I ran across a photo of it here, on a blog generally about outdoor art in Chicago. The lion is in about the same pose as our cat, and it's carved from the same Indiana limestone. I don't usually find myself saying this, but I think we ended up with the better of the two. Ours has more of a modern, minimalist look to it, and the lion's more, well, cutesy. Almost folk-artsy, even.



Neither one quite measures up to Richard Recchia's 1931 Persian Cat (SI inventory page here). But hey.



Truth be told, I'd much rather be posting photos of my own cat than posting these, but (as I mentioned a while back) his kidneys gave out on him, and we had to take him in for that one final trip to the vet back in mid-July. I still have a bunch of cute cat photos that I've never posted, and I'm still convinced the net needs more cat photos. But looking at them is still tough, and I'm not sure how I feel about posting them. So maybe someday, and maybe not, but definitely not today.



I'd hate to wrap things up on that note, so let me direct you to "私信 [I am Maru]", a Japanese blog about the life and adventures of Maru, a container-obsessed Scottish fold cat. It's cute and uncomplicated and it's nice to look at when I need a break from grinding out Java all day. So enjoy!

Milestone P14

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So here we have the last Stark St. milestone on our tour: Milestone P14 is way out on the far end of Gresham, on the campus of Mt. Hood Community College. It's near, but not quite at, the intersection of SE Stark and 257th Ave. / Kane Drive. The milestone is east of the intersection, on the south side of stark. There's a low tree-lined berm separating the MHCC parking lot from Stark, and the milestone sits on this berm between a couple of trees. Just a few steps east of it is a big greyish (or maybe green-greyish) utility box of some kind. It's bigger than the milestone and closer to the street, and may be easier to find.



The most convenient way to visit P14 is to park in the college lot just steps away from the thing. As far as I could tell, there's no parking permit system similar to what PCC and Portland State have, and you can park here without getting tased by a campus rent-a-cop. They usually have signs up for that sort of thing and I didn't see any. However, if you do run afoul of a zap-happy security guard, it's not my fault, and I hereby disclaim and renounce all responsibility, real or imagined, for anything that does or doesn't occur here, and you hereby accept that this is one of those inherent dangers that come from acting based on information you found on some random site on the interwebs. A random site with a peculiar and obscure name, no less, run by some random guy with a stupid anonymous nym he doesn't even like very much anymore and is seriously considering changing. Just so we're all clear on where things stand, I mean.



If worse comes to worse, you could always park at the gas station across Stark, or in one of the strip-mall parking lots across 257th. Although they're probably patrolled by predatory towing companies, come to think of it. So there's always TriMet, but the nearest #20 stops are a bit of a walk. Actually this is as far east as the #20 goes; at 257th it turns south and meanders its way down to the Gresham Transit Center. The area's also served by the #80 and #81, which I'm not very familiar with.

Basically the point of all of this handwringing is that I'm trying to conjure up a little excitement around P14, and it's not really working very well. Other than the college, the area is your basic suburban mix of fast food chains, drugstores, big box stores, a few offices here and there, and I'm sure it's perfectly nice and everything... but it leaves something to be desired in the (sub)urban exploration department. You could be anywhere, I mean, if there wasn't a milestone here to tell you exactly where you were.



The stone itself has a pronounced Pisa-like lean to it. If you've arrived here at the tail end of the hypothetical milestone pub crawl I keep going on about, it may help to be aware of this and know that it's not just you. You could probably do some trick photos like people do with the Leaning Tower of Pisa, where you pretend to hold it up, or push it over -- the difference being that your accomplice needs to stand behind the stone instead of in front of it to get the perspective trick right. Which you could easily figure out for yourselves if you were sober, which you aren't, because this is the last of 9 (or so) stops if you're just doing extant milestones, and the 14th of 15 otherwise. Which either way is a whole lot of stops. Speaking of which, there's what looks like a sports bar across from the college on 257th/Kane, or there's a Starbucks just west of here if you'd rather have some coffee at this point, which would be understandable.



The Stark Street Mile Markers blog argues that, as part of conserving and restoring the milestones, P14 should be reset in an upright position. I'd argue "not so fast" on that particular point. The milestone's so old that the lean itself may have some historic value worth preserving. I mean, it's one thing if it started leaning 15 years ago for no reason and it leans another degree or two every year. You'd want to correct that, obviously. But if, hypothetically, it leans due to an accident with an errant Stanley Steamer in 1903, the Northwest's first recorded DUI incident -- or possibly was the work of especially dimwitted Nazi saboteurs in 1942 -- you may want to leave it the way it is. Don't laugh; stranger things happen all the time in the historic preservation world. I'm not saying it should or shouldn't lean; I'm just saying the matter requires further research, and no messing with it in the meantime. There's no rush, after all. It's a rock, it's operates on geological time, and it's survived close to 130-150 years already, which is way more than we can say for whoever put it here.

Besides, I think I kind of like it this way. It's a distinguishing mark. It gives P14 a little character. It's almost jaunty, even. But then, I've been spending far too much time of late staring at old rocks. So it might be best to just ignore me. At least on this particular topic.

sailboat, eastbank esplanade

the buildings in the water

willamette, october

Milestone P13

So we've reached the penultimate stop on our tour of the Stark St. Milestones, namely Milestone P13, in the 23600 block of SE Stark. The closest cross street is Cleveland Avenue, about a block west, so we're squarely into suburban Gresham at this point. At the corner of Stark and Cleveland is the Olympic Gym fitness club, and the milestone sits in a little landscaped triangle at one corner of the gym grounds. Immediately east of the milestone, Stark is bordered on both sides by one of those grey concrete sound walls. Concrete sound walls are usually a clear sign that a road was widened from two to four or more lanes, probably no earlier than the mid-1980's. The Stark St. Mile Markers mini-blog says of P13: "This stone was rescued by the Gresham Historical Society and reset in 1987." I think the story is that it was knocked down by a thoughtless road crew during the road widening, and the local historical society had to go track it down and find it a new home near its original location.

Updated 9/10/11: Thanks (once again) to the magical Historical Oregonian database at the Multnomah County Library, we have a bit more detail on the rescue of milestone (or "mile post") P13. The May 14th, 1987 Oregonian had a piece about the milestone being restored to its rightful place: "Historic Baseline milepost saved in Gresham":

At the 13th hour of the 13th day of the month, a stone marking the 13th mile east of the Multnomah County Courthouse was dedicated on Wednesday. The ceremony took place at the original site of Milepost 13, now adjacent to the jogging track at McIntire's Athletic Club, 23500 S.E. Stark St.

...

The 133-year-old 13th milepost that was rededicated Wednesday had been lost since it was inadvertently removed by workers during a construction project.

By chance, Gresham residents Rob and Bud Bunting found the hand-hewn stone obelisk in a pile of construction debris.

After the marker was rescued by Jim Chase, former president of the Gresham Historical Society, it was nearly lost again when garbage collectors tried to break it up with sledge hammers and haul it away.

When the Multnomah County road department showed no interest in claiming the milepost, Gresham Historical Society members took it upon themselves to move the 500-pound stone to a storeroom for safekeeping.

Ad the Wednesday ceremony, Gresham Historical Society President Connie Johnson and Multnomah County Commissioner Polly Casterline unveiled the obelisk by pulling off a sheet of plastic.
...

Don McIntire, owner of McIntire's Athletic Club, said he was delighted to have his business located near something of historical significance.

"I promise to do my best to safeguard it," he said. "The first thing we should do is give it a bath."

McIntire said Southeast Stark Street is scheduled to be repaved, after which he plans to build a mound for the milepost marker and accentuate it with a spotlight.

At this point, the idea of a milestone pub crawl kind of breaks down, since there aren't any businesses of any kind nearby except for the fitness club. It would require a flexible definition of "nearby". Or friends who live near the milestone and don't mind hosting roving packs of drunk geography nerds.



You might actually have better luck a mile west of here. Milestone P12 is on the MIA list, sadly, but the neighborhood around its former home (roughly the 21700 block of Stark) is known as Twelvemile Corner. I don't know that area very well either, and I didn't actually stop and look around since there wasn't a milestone to search for. But it's Gresham, so there's bound to be fast food nearby, and probably an old-school tavern or two -- windowless, featuring pool tables and video poker, and full of old-timers who gripe endlessly about the new smoke-free law. Also, Google Maps says that there's an Applebee's due south of here on Burnside. I've only been to an Applebee's once, and I don't want sound all urban and snobby and whatever, but it was just soul-crushing. But maybe you're into that sort of thing, I don't know.

A few blocks further west is the only Portland-area outpost of Abby's Pizza, an Oregon-based chain with stores all over the place except Portland. I'm not sure why that is. Sometimes I get the impression the rest of the state eats a lot more pizza than we do here, but I haven't found any stats to back that up.

In any case, "Twelvemile Corner" is one of the rare geographic names derived from the mile marker system. The only other one I know of is the obscure "11 Mile Avenue" near Milestone P11. There's nothing equivalent to Detroit's Mile Road System. The best known of those is 8 Mile Road, which as I understand it is considered the border between the rich and poor parts of town. Plus it's the state's survey baseline (like Stark St. is), and is also the title of an Eminem movie. As I said, we have no local equivalent.

Revenue Bridge, Sandy River

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Here's one lonesome photo of the Revenue Bridge up near Sandy, where Ten Eyck Rd. crosses the Sandy River. I took this on a day I was checking out other bridges in the area, and I'd originally planned to stop here and take a few photos of it too. But I didn't see anywhere to park, and there also doesn't appear to be any way to walk across safely --- there's no sidewalk, there isn't even a bike lane --- and there's also no convenient place to take photos of the bridge from the side or below, and on top of everything else it's not very photogenic anyway. So I think this one lonesome photo is going to have to do.

The bridge is actually very new, less than a year old at the time I'm posting this. Somehow, Clackamas County managed to find the money and then get the project done, without all the endless handwringing that characterizes bridge projects in Portland. The downside of this is that they seem to have produced a supremely uninteresting bridge. What, no "world class" design that we can't possibly afford, even before the cost overruns? What, no endless "visioning process", with hearings and committee meetings with every imaginable "stakeholder", the city promising each and every one of them the moon and stars? How is this possible?

In any case, the bridge is new enough that Structurae has nothing on it yet, although it does have a page about the previous bridge (which it calls the "Ten Eyck Road Bridge"), plus photos. And BridgeHunter lists the old bridge on its page of lost historic bridges for 2009. Calling the previous bridge historic is a bit of a stretch if you ask me. It only dated to 1952, and it doesn't look like it was anything very unique or special. I don't recall ever paying much attention to the old bridge when driving over it, although it's true that I wasn't interested in bridges at the time.

What's more, the old bridge wasn't the original bridge here. Far from it, in fact. There have actually been bridges at this location since the early pioneer days, before Oregon was even a state. And the story behind that also explains the bridge's funny name.

When I was starting to put the post together, I assumed "Revenue Bridge" simply meant that there was a toll charged to cross here at one time. I figured I'd crack a lame joke to the effect that another less likely possibility is that it was just named after someone named "Revenue". Which sounds silly, but it's actually true this time. As this Gresham Outlook story explains, Francis Revenue and his wife were the first pioneer settlers in the Sandy area, circa 1853, and for a time they operated a toll bridge at this location. The bridge was situated on the Barlow Road, the Oregon Trail's scary land route over the Cascades. So it would have been a very lucrative place to own a bridge, right up until the transcontinental railroad went in.

The Sandy page at MountHoodHistory.com includes photos of Mr. & Mrs. Revenue, both looking like they'd just wandered out of the Old Testament. Although that's generally true of people in photos from that era. Something about having to sit motionless for long periods of time while the daguerrotype camera slowly did its thing. The Revenues and their bridge are also mentioned in this account of traveling the Oregon Trail.

And this page fills in a few more details about the Revenues' operation. It mentions in passing that prior to the original bridge, emigrants had to ford the Sandy River as best they could. The Sandy runs fast and cold all year, and every summer it sees a few drownings of unwary swimmers and boaters. So trying to wade across with a covered wagon, a couple of half-starved oxen, and all your worldly possessions would have been challenging.

The Revenues, along with a couple of other family members, are buried nearby.

Still unexplained is the surname "Revenue". It's quite a rare surname, and I don't think I've ever seen it before. I'd imagine it's a case where centuries ago someone was given a surname based on his occupation (see Miller, Farmer, Cooper, Fletcher, etc.), although it's not clear what that would've meant. An archaic synonym for "accountant", perhaps? Royal tax collector, possibly? Or, just maybe, the owner of a medieval toll bridge?

Milestone P11

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Today's episode of Milestone Madness takes us even further east, to the 19800 block of SE Stark. Milestone P11 (the mid-19th Century marker indicating exactly 11 miles to downtown Portland) is, like most of the milestones, located on the south side of Stark. Just west of it is the Stark Market convenience store, and to the east is the Mobile Park Plaza, uh, manufactured home community. The milestone is probably part of the property boundary between the two, come to think of it.

If you're trying to locate the milestone by counting cross streets, be aware that despite the address, the nearest streets to the east and west are both numbered as 197th Avenue. Go figure.



I regret to say that I didn't take any sufficiently closeup photos of P11 to tell whether the yellow on this one is paint or lichen. It's been reported that various milestones show evidence of having been painted either white or yellow at one time. P5 was, and still sort of is, white. But all the yellow I've seen so far has been of natural origin. Maybe P11 is the exception? I guess I could go back and look again, but I think I'll leave this question for other intrepid adventurers, in the unlikely event anyone besides me really cares one way or the other.

One thing worth pointing out is that the historical marker next to P7 lists which milestones are extant and which are lost, and it lists this one as "lost". The Stark Street Mile Markers blog mentions that P11 was stolen some time in the late 90's and later recovered, so that might give us a general time frame for when the historical marker went in.



I also ought to have taken more photos of the trailer park next door, or at least the entrance to it. It's got quite the wannabe-grand entrance, flanked with lions and what were probably fountains at one time. It would be a good subject for a series of moody indie Holga photos, if you're into that. Although from the few people I saw in the few minutes I was there, it seems like many area residents are elderly, so if you're here too long taking photos someone's likely to call the police. And this far east is Gresham, not Portland, so I don't know what their policy is on tasing people who look vaguely suspicious. Also, someone connected with the place is a Republican donor, which I mention just so you know you are no longer in the commie pinko part of SE Portland this far east. But you probably knew that already, or guessed as much on the drive here.



If you'd rather not drive -- whether for ideological reasons, or because you're hitting all the milestones as a pub crawl -- the nearest TriMet stop is just east of here (stop id #5477, served by bus #20), at the corner of Stark and ... drum roll ... 11 Mile Avenue. Also, the Ruby Junction MAX station is at 197th & Burnside, a short walk due south of here.



Well, that more or less concludes this stop on the tour. I don't know this part of town that extensively, so if you're doing a milestone pub crawl there aren't any establishments around here that I can recommend from personal experience. But hey, when you're an intrepid urban explorer, sometimes you just have to go find your own damn beer. If you have an iPhone, there's probably an app for that.