reflections, dreamer fountain

Fremont Bridge, Seattle

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The bridge project takes us north again, to Seattle's historic Fremont Bridge, not to be confused with Portland's own vastly larger (but less historic) Fremont Bridge. As with the nearby Aurora Bridge, this one photo was taken way back in 2006, well before I ever thought of this bridge project. So I didn't take a lot of photos, and I didn't walk across the thing.

For something that's apparently quite the quirky and beloved symbol of a quirky part of town, I haven't come across a lot of interesting stuff to share (and, coincidentally, to pad this post out to a more respectable length). It has a Structurae page if you're interested in the engineering side of things. If you're more up for the artsy-quirky stuff, it turns out that in the summer of 2009 the bridge hosted its own artist in residence. Residence, in this case, meaning hanging out in one of the drawbridge towers, watching the world go by and gathering artistic thoughts. Which sounds like a great job, although I expect the living-in-Seattle part would quickly become annoying. Still, if this software thing doesn't work out, maybe the sorta-new bridge in Charleston needs a blogger in residence, or if not, maybe the shiny new one next to Hoover Dam does, or possibly one of the Ala Wai Canal bridges, or the Millau Viaduct, or, or, or....

aberdeen, wa | september 2006

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From the archives, a few photos from Aberdeen, Washington, a gritty blue collar logging town and seaport on the Washington coast. We occasionally pass through the town on our way to Lake Quinault and points north, and I seem to recall taking these photos as we drove through without stopping.

The one thing in Aberdeen that I wish I had a photo of and don't is a little addendum to the big "Welcome to Aberdeen" sign at the edge of town, a small acknowlegement that Kurt Cobain slept here, once upon a time.

150k

So my Sitemeter counter just ticked over to 150,000 a few minutes ago, for whatever that's worth. That number sounds fairly huge, even spread over the 5.5 years this humble blog's been around. Although that also works out to about 75 visitors per day, which is distinctly non-huge. So whatever.

In any case, lucky visitor #150,000 arrived, not from Google, but from something called Fast Browser Search, which I'd never heard of before. They searched on the phrase "octet plus one", which led to an old bad movie post of mine from way back in December '06. You'll have to go read the post if you're curious why I used the phrase; as for the search hits I get on that phrase (a surprisingly high number), I haven't the foggiest idea about what they're actually looking for, and the other search results besides me don't offer any obvious clues. This particular visitor didn't stay long, and all I know is that he or she is a Comcast customer somewhere in the US, on either Pacific Daylight Time or Arizona (blech!) Time, using Internet Explorer 7 (blech!) on Windows XP (blech!), and (I think) MS Office installed (blech!). And they arrived at precisely midnight local time, which seems appropriate somehow, this being a serious major milestone and all.

This milestone probably just means this blog's warranty has now expired, and everything will rapidly go to pieces after this. I would find that entirely unsurprising.

In any case, if you find yourself pining for a bit more tasty bad movie goodness, why not check out the new Tumblr site called Trailr that I created a few days ago? It's not just cheesy movie trailers, but I liked the name and I wanted to use it even if it's only mostly accurate. So enjoy, or whatever.

screamer, sw morrison

after hours

car coming

scrub jay, july 2011

flag shadow

horsetail falls, may 2011

Ferry Street Bridge, Dayton OR

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A few photos of the Ferry St. footbridge over the Yamhill River in Dayton, OR. I happened to be in the area back in April and stopped briefly for a look. In retrospect I probably ought to have, y'know, looked around the town itself as well, but I was on vacation and trying to hit a bunch of places on the blog todo list, and being a bit monomaniacal in the process. And in my defense, a torrential downpour opened up while I was on the bridge, so it wasn't really a great day to be walking around looking at old buildings and so forth.



The city of Dayton is thinking about replacing the current bridge with a new structure, as they think it's a bit long in the tooth for a wooden bridge in this climate. That document doesn't go into any depth on the origin of the current bridge; it mentions it was built some time in the 1970s (but they weren't sure exactly when) and the easement status for it is unclear. Which kind of suggests to me that building it wasn't an official city project. Or it was and they just weren't as wound up about meticulous recordkeeping back then. Or everything's documented to the hilt, but whoever wrote the report didn't spend a lot of time on historical research. These are all possibilities.



As the name of the bridge suggests, the bridge is at the foot of Ferry Street, which is the main drag through town. And as the name of the street suggests, there once was a ferry across the river at this spot. The local historical society's "about" page mentions that the ferry came first, in the 1840s, and the town later grew up around it. The book A History of Oregon Ferries since 1826 has a couple of pages about Yamhill River ferries, and it seems to indicate Dayton didn't get a (non-railroad) bridge over the river until some time in the 1890s. The current bridge is just outside of town, a bit upstream. There's a bit of debris on the bank of the river immediately upstream of the bridge that looks like it might have been a dock at one point, although it's hard to imagine that any part of a wooden dock would have survived the elements for ~120 years. It's probably something much newer and unrelated.



In any case, the bridge seems nice enough. It has that groovy 70s Oregon look, where we were all going back to the land and building everything out of good, honest solid wood from here on out: Geodesic dome houses, hot tubs, probably even the solar panels. Note that this was back before anyone ever heard of spotted owls, obviously. It totally looks like it could've been someone's DIY project, using plans from the latest Whole Earth Catalog.



The only problem with the bridge is that it doesn't really go anywhere. There's a bit of parkland on the far side of the bridge, along with what looks like, um, the municipal sewage lagoons. Or maybe they're just irrigation ponds, I'm not totally sure. But that's about all there is. The bridge might be convenient if you're on one of those long distance bike rides around the Willamette Valley that my coworkers love to brag about doing, and you'd kind of like to avoid riding on state highways clogged with 18 wheelers and casino-bound RVs. That would make sense anyway.

small subjects, tanner springs

green & violet, tanner springs

lovejoy fountain, july 2011

Rippling Waters Park expedition

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Today's thrilling adventure takes us out to little-known Rippling Waters Park along Gales Creek in western Washington County. Those of you who are, inexplicably, long-time readers might remember me mentioning this place twice before; for the rest of you, a brief recap. Washington County doesn't have an extensive county park system; there's Hagg Lake south of Forest Grove, little Metzger Park near the Washington Square Mall, and this place, which almost nobody has ever heard of. It seems that the county itself forgot about the place for several decades, and when they finally realized they owned it, they promptly put up the big scary No Trespassing sign you see here. There wasn't (and still isn't) money in the budget to operate it on an official basis, and they can't ignore people using it on a less than official basis because then someone would inevitably get hurt and sue for big bucks. The only approved visitors seem to be occasional groups of volunteers, pulling up invasive plants and taking water quality samples and so forth. And, unofficially, it seems the place has always been a traditional local fishing and swimming hole.



So you might have noticed I didn't get very far on this so-called expedition. I didn't even pass the No Trespassing sign, since I wasn't sure how strictly that was enforced. I wasn't in the mood to get tasered that day, or to get tasered later after posting photos on the net, or for that matter to get sued after someone else saw the photos on the net, went to the park, and got tasered. So there's that. I mean, if I thought there was something really amazing I needed to see past the sign I would've considered it. But some underbrush and a creek? Nah.

Also, I was on my way back from a quick day trip to the coast (including a visit to Munson Creek Falls), and I was running a bit behind schedule (and about to get stuck in Portland weekday rush hour, as it turns out), so even if there was an unexplored Egyptian tomb just up the trail I still might have left it for another day.



The point (at least this time around) was simply to find the place and take a token photo or two so I could reasonably do a post about it. I was intrigued by the park, or at least the idea of the park, when I read those 1999 Oregonian stories about the place. I was fascinated that a chunk of land this size, ostensibly a public park, could simply fall off the county's radar and be forgotten for decades. It's fair to say that, in a roundabout sort of way, this eventually led to this humble blog's ongoing park project, for good or ill.



I checked the Oregonian historical database for earlier mentions of the park, and there are a few starting back in the 1920s. The articles suggest that the park had already been around for a while when it first appeared in the Oregonian. My guess is the Portland paper started mentioning the place around the time its readers started buying cars and it became possible to visit the park on a day trip from the city. As a caveat, I'm not absolutely certain these early mentions are about today's Rippling Waters Park. The park in those days seems to have been privately owned, and offered swimming and group picnic facilities (numerous mentions of the place were in relation to company picnics, school reunions, etc. being held there), and even overnight cabins. I realize I didn't venture very far into the park, but I didn't see any of that stuff, or any obvious evidence it had once existed. So maybe it was the same park (or a portion of it) and nature's thoroughly claimed it back over the last century, or maybe it was another place by the same name in the same general vicinity. I can't rule that out since I ran across quite a few midcentury real estate listings advertising that they were in the Rippling Waters area. In any case, that early period came to an end in the 1940s. This notice appeared in the July 13, 1941 Oregonian:

RIPPLING WATERS PARK -- Famous park on Gales Creek, Wilson River road, 16 a. [acres?] picnic, swim, cabins. Must be sold. Take Portland or sub. home as part. LYMAN ROSS, ALOHA OR Excl. agent

Additional sale notices appeared over the next couple of years, and then the park basically dropped off the Oregonian's radar until 1985, at which point it was a poorly-maintained county park. Neighbors complained to the county about unruly teen parties (which, given the year, could easily have included classmates of mine) and even occasional gunfire, and the county briefly considered what to do about the place. A couple of typical stories from that era:

• July 10, 1985 article "Complaints bring county steps to limit park use"
• June 6, 1985: Park status asked for Rippling Waters trail

I didn't go through and read all of the 1985 stories, since it's quite obvious that if they made any grand plans for the park, they didn't follow through on them. Chances are they punted on the idea when they realized it might cost money. The big scary Keep Out signs may have come later, during the even briefer 1999 handwringing episode about the park.

So I realize there are pretty big gaps in the story. We don't know when the place started, and we don't know when or how the county ended up with it, assuming it's the same park. I imagine we'd have a much clearer picture if only there was an online database for the Forest Grove newspaper, or even the Hillsboro one, but as far as I know neither of those is currently available. So feel free to leave a comment if you happen to know anything more about the place, or you have fond (if vague) memories of those wild 1985 keg parties you'd like to share, or you'd just like to cuss me out for telling the entire internet about your local secret swimming hole. I suppose that would be only fair, although I've been telling the internet about all kinds of local secret spots for years now, and I've never once been important enough for anyone to even notice, much less care.