Talbot-Lago

Photos of a 1939 Talbot-Lago at the Allure of the Automobile show last year at the Portland Art Museum.

Zero Gravity Research Facility

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A few photos from the Zero Gravity Research Facility at NASA's Glenn Research Center, next to the Cleveland airport. I was there during the NASA tweetup I went to back in March. The name sounds exotic, but the concept is actually pretty simple: There's a 510 foot hole in the ground, lined with steel and sealed, with vacuum pumps to remove all the air. Experiments are enclosed in protective vehicles and dropped from the top of the shaft. The drop vehicle experiences 5.18 seconds of free fall (the zero gravity part) before landing in a pit of foam beads at the bottom.

A datasheet about the facility lists various things it can be used for, like testing new hardware, prototyping experiments that might go to space later, and so on. As it was explained to us, in recent years the facility's been used primarily for testing things you may not want to try on board a space shuttle or space station, like studying how fire behaves in zero gravity. I get the impression this research doesn't fully utilize the facility, and the datasheet mentions possible commercial uses, which I think means it's rentable if you have money and a legitimate use for the facility. If you fit that description, you'll probably want to start by reading the detailed User's Guide (the version online dates to 1999 so the bits about instruments and data handling are probably obsolete, but it still gives a general idea about how the process works.)

The guide mentions that they have a variety of still and video recording options, including high speed video cameras, but none of this video seems to have made it to YouTube, unfortunately. GRC does have its own YouTube channel, although it isn't updated regularly, and they don't seem to have any videos from here or the other unusual & heavy-duty facilities they run. At least not so far.

We were a bit pressed for time and only got to see the facility from the top, which was kind of a shame. The Wikipedia page about the facility includes a photo looking up from the bottom, with a drop vehicle about to hit the foam beads, and another photo on archive.org shows a vehicle as it enters the bead pit. A Cleveland Magazine article visited the bottom of the pit, and the author seemed to be somewhat freaked out about being in such a deep hole.

Sacajawea, Washington Park

A few photos of the Sacajawea statue in Washington Park, by the early 20th century sculptor Alice Cooper.

The city Parks & Rec Bureau's page on Washington Park says:

A bronze statue of Sacajawea holding her son Jean-Baptiste is located near the Chiming Fountain. In commemoration of the heroic Shoshone Indian woman who helped lead the Lewis and Clark explorers through the mountains of the west, the statue was unveiled on July 7, 1905 at the Lewis and Clark Centennial. Among those present at the event were Susan B. Anthony, Abigail Scott Duniway, and Eva Emery Dye. The project was promoted and paid for by subscriptions solicited nationwide by a group of Portland women headed by Mrs. Sarah Evans. The committee commissioned Alice Cooper of Denver, at that time an understudy of Lorado Taft, to sculpt the statue. It was cast in New York and required 14 tons of copper which came from the Sweden mine, just below Mt St Helens. The copper was donated by Dr. Henry Waldo Coe of Portland. In April 1906, the statue was placed in its current location in Washington Park. Its inscription reads, "Erected by the women of the United States in memory of the only woman in the Lewis & Clark expedition, and in honor of the pioneer mother of Oregon."

A post at Portland Public Art has a bit more background about the piece. It's not a snarky post, which is unusual; the post you're reading now isn't meant to be snarky either; I generally roll my eyes at vintage statues of Indians made by white people. This one's sort of different in that it depicts (or at least symbolizes) a beloved historical figure. Note the fresh flowers at the base and what appears to be lipstick on the statue.

Normally this would be the point where I explain that a certain beloved historical figure was overrated or misunderstood or something. I even started trying to write that tangent a few times, but they were just wordy ways of saying "Nobody Knows". I can't even get snarky about people filling in the gaps with mythology or wishful thinking, since that's pretty much what happens with all historical figures to some degree. So I think I'll just leave it at that.

North Falls, Silver Falls

A slideshow from North Falls in Silver Falls State Park, downstream from Upper North Falls and a short walk from the North Falls trailhead. I don't have a lot to add about the park beyond what I covered in the Upper North Falls and Winter Falls posts, but I should point out that this is one of a couple of Silver Falls waterfalls where the trail goes behind the waterfall. (South Falls is another, and there may be others that don't spring to mind right away.) I loved that sort of thing as a kid; it was easy to imagine you were hiding out in a secret Gondorian fortress, despite the steady stream of hikers wandering through. This was always interspersed with occasional moments of "Hey, wait, what if the whole thing gives way & collapses while I'm under here?". Actually that's still more or less my reaction, despite knowing how incredibly unlikely a cave in would be. Am I the only person who ever thinks that?

"The Coming of the White Man", Washington Park

Today's piece of deeply unfashionable public art is "The Coming of the White Man", an early 20th century sculpture of a pair of Indians, located in a suitably obscure corner of Washington Park. The previous link goes to a post at Portland Public art, which notes that from a technical standpoint it's a very well executed sculpture. Hermon Atkins MacNeil, the sculptor, was nationally renowned in his day, and is probably best known for designing the US Mint's Standing Liberty Quarter, minted from 1916 - 1930. There's even a website devoted to his works, which includes a page about this piece. It's just that the subject matter is... problematic.

Books have been written about the "Noble Savage" aesthetic that was so popular in those days. It comes across as patronizing but not overtly hostile, and the artists of that era most likely felt they were creating sympathetic portrayals of their subjects. But you can't really consider this kind of thing in isolation; it was a product -- not a critique -- of the political and economic climate at the time, which was anything but sympathetic toward the Indian population. The key idea behind "Noble Savage" art was that the Indians were a proud, honorable people, sadly destined to "make way" for the White Man, in the name of Progress. Which is a fancy way of saying, "We're fascinated by you, we even admire you in some respects, but we're still taking your land."

The city parks page for Washington Park gives a bit of background on the piece:

Coming of the White Man was given to the city by the heirs of David P. Thompson, an early Portland mayor and donor of the elk statue on Main between the Plaza Blocks. Completed in 1904, this bronze statue, sculpted by Hermon Atkins MacNeil and cast by Bureau Brothers Foundry in Los Angeles, features two Native Americans standing on a block of rough-hewn native stone. Facing eastward, they look down upon the route that ox teams trudged bringing settlers to this part of the country. The older of the two is said to represent Chief Multnomah of the Multnomah people. At some point, the oak branch held by the younger figure was broken off.

Chicago's Field Museum has a circa-1910 vintage photo of the sculpture in their Flickr stream. It looks about the same as it does now; I pass it along because the caption mentions it was taken by the Huron H. Smith expedition to Oregon, which came here to collect botanical samples and take portraits of trees, as if Portland was a barely settled frontier town. It amuses me that they were still using the word "expedition" in 1910, as if they were visiting Antarctica, or a remote spot in the Amazon rainforest, or the "unexplored" Pacific Northwest of a century earlier. If you can arrive by train, and can then wander around town taking photos of contemporary art and such, you should probably be using the word "expedition" at least semi-ironically. Which is more or less what I do here on this humble blog.

Tallulah Gorge

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Some old photos from Tallulah Gorge in the scenic North Georgia mountains. There are a series of waterfalls in the area, but I don't recall whether we saw any of them or not. I know I don't have any waterfall photos, but I could simply have been out of film at the time or something. I'd be willing to go back and try again if I find myself in Georgia at some point and have a few hours to spare for the drive. It's quite a beautiful spot, even if you think you're jaded by western scenery.

Despite what you may have heard, if you visit here you will most likely not be killed and eaten by the natives, or made to squeal like a pig, or any of the other vicious rumors that have filtered out of the area over the years. It turns out all that stuff only happens in the next county over, or maybe it was two counties away, the one where everyone has the same last name and there are entire towns populated by sixteen fingered cyclopses. Man, those guys are savages.

Sunset, Phoenix Airport

Another old photo, taken while waiting for a connecting flight at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix. You can tell it's an old photo because the plane carries the logo of the late, unlamented America West Airlines. I can't really put my finger on why I like this photo. I wasn't a fan of the airline, or the airport, and Phoenix has never been my favorite city on the face of the earth either. Maybe it's the connecting flight thing. It's not that I prefer or even really like connecting flights. There's just something about stopping briefly in a city you'd never visit otherwise that somehow makes it feel like you're really traveling. Is that weird?

Bison, Yellowstone

An old photo of a herd of bison blithely walking down the middle of the road, somewhere in Yellowstone National Park. We were driving along and came around a corner, and suddenly there were bison everywhere. We, and the other vehicles on the road, stopped to stay out of their way and let them pass. So we sat there as they walked by, some just inches away from our car, while we tried to be quiet and not make any sudden moves or do anything that might annoy the beasties. I should point out that we were in a tiny MG at the time, so we were actually looking up at the bison, with just a thin leather convertible top between us and them. That was actually kind of cool, although I admit to being a bit nervous at the time. I later realized that an adult male bison can weigh over 2000 lbs., which is somewhat more than an MG and two adult humans combined.

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.

Rational Exuberance

A few photos of Rational Exuberance, a sculpture that used to sit in front of the Encore condo tower at the north end of the Pearl District (not to be confused with the swanky Encore in Las Vegas). These were taken back in June 2009, and apparently the piece has gone elsewhere now; I went back for a do-over, to take some photos of it that wouldn't have quite as much sensor grime, but I couldn't find it, which given its size probably means it wasn't there. Apparently it was always intended as a temporary installation until the city got around to working on the Fields neighborhood park, so I assume it's gone for good now, and I'm pretty sure nobody's going to pay me to use the few photos I have of it.

Anyway, the title kind of cracks me up, being a play on "irrational exuberance", the famous phrase coined by Alan Greenspan during the crazy years of the dot com bubble. It cracks me up because the Encore was among the last condo towers built in Portland before the irrationally exuberant real estate bubble burst and the economy flatlined. So, the irony, it has layers.

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.

Lafayette Locks • Yamhill Falls

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Today's adventure takes us out to rural Yamhill County, to Lafayette Locks County Park, on the Yamhill River near the town of Lafayette. It's hard to believe today, but back in the early 20th century the little Yamhill River had a bit of commercial steamboat traffic on it, shipping Yamhill Valley crops to market. Shipping was impeded by some rapids (known somewhat generously as "Yamhill Falls") at this point in the river, so local boosters convinced the US Army Corps of Engineers to build and operate a modest lock system, the remains of which you see here.

The old locks were on the far side of the river and aren't accessible from the park, and the riverbank's thick with trees these days, so you really don't get a good look at things like you do at Cascade Locks. Nor is there good access to the river unless you're up for a muddy scramble down a steep bank. Still, the park has a large and well-maintained picnic area, and it's a pleasant place to stop even if the park's signature attraction is across the river and behind some trees.

The locks are a little-known historical footnote, and usually it's hard to find a lot of information online about something this obscure. But back in 1990 the Oregon Historical Quarterly published a long two-part article about the locks: "From Dream to Demolition: The Yamhill Lock & Dam", by Suann Murray Reddick, in Vol. 91, Nos. 1 and 2, which as far as I can tell remains the definitive work on the Lafayette Locks. The previous link goes to a JSTOR preview of Part 1; if you have a Multnomah County library card, and you want to read the full text of both parts of the article, you can get PDFs at 2 permalinks: Part 1, Part 2. The locks are also mentioned briefly in an earlier article, "Tributaries of the Willamette: Yamhill, Santiam, Calapooya" ( Vol. 44, No. 2 (Jun., 1943)), by Ruth Rydell, giving a perspective on them while they were still in operation.

The two parts of the Reddick article come to about 90 pages. I've read the whole thing, along with the relevant parts of the Rydell piece, and I'll try to summarize the tale briefly. But if that's still TL;DR for you, I'll pass along a couple of other links first: Here are three historical photos, a YouTube video about rafting the rapids here, and a short blog post with a few photos. Also, the City of Dayton, downstream of the locks (and home to the Ferry St. Bridge), has a short article on their website about Yamhill river shipping. Dayton was effectively the head of navigation on the river until the locks came, and the article indicates river traffic had dried up there by the 1920s.

Now back to our story. Part 1 of the Reddick article details the decades-long struggle to get the locks built. Yamhill Falls was one of the few places the Yamhill River could be forded, so an Indian trail passed through here prior to European settlement. Settlers saw the value of the area early on, and the falls were homesteaded in 1840, well before any sort of local government had been instituted. By the 1850s, the Yamhill Valley had become a prime agricultural area, and initially the only way to get products to market was by boat (the same state of affairs encountered at Butteville, Cornelius, and elsewhere.)

The falls, puny as they were, still presented an obstacle to river traffic, and the first proposal to build locks on the river came in January 1859, a month before Oregon statehood. This privately financed proposal went nowhere, as did further attempts continuing into the 1870s. At that point railroads had come to the Yamhill Valley, but exorbitant freight charges led local boosters (but never quite enough investors) to see an opening for a cheaper river-based alternative. After the last private proposal fell through in 1876, attention turned to convincing Congress to fund the locks instead. This took another twenty years of lobbying, with a reluctant Army Corps of Engineers repeatedly surveying the area and coming up with different (but never very positive) recommendations every few years. Finally, in 1896, the political pressure succeeded, and Congress appropriated up to $200,000 toward the locks proposal.

Part 2 picks up with the construction of the locks. Construction turned out to be more difficult than expected, due to problems with flooding and weak, eroding river banks. The locks finally opened on September 22nd, 1900 -- rather than the original target of December 31st, 1898 -- and construction ran to over $72,000, about 20% over budget. The article points out that the locks were essentially obsolete the day they opened; the first proposal had come in 1859, when much of the area was still howling wilderness, but four decades later the Yamhill Valley had electricity, telephones, multiple railroad lines, and a few paved roads, and riverboat traffic was declining even on the Willamette and Columbia.

Within a year, the cheaply built locks proved inadequate to the task, and sustained serious damage due to the same flooding and erosion issues it had encountered during construction, as well as collisions with drifting riverboats and errant logs from log rafts. The Corps of Engineers invested an additional $22,000 in repairs just in the first year. A 1903 study gave a couple of options for strengthening and upgrading the lock and dam, but suggested they weren't worth investing in as the locks saw very little traffic. The lack of traffic was something of a chicken-and-egg problem; the locks were inoperable during high river levels, and shipping companies were unwilling to risk having their boats stranded on the upstream side of the locks in that situation. This absence of traffic in turn made the Corps not want to bother fixing the dam's high water problems.

So by 1903 traffic through the locks had essentially petered out already, only three years in, and the Corps of Engineers floated a serious proposal to abandon the locks altogether. Naturally there was a local public outcry, and suspicions that the railroads were in on the proposal. The matter was forwarded on to distant Washington DC, where it ran into bureaucratic inertia: The locks were neither abandoned nor upgraded, but simply maintained in their current state and repaired every so often.

Various schemes for shipping people and cargo on the Yamhill River came and went, and none lasted long. By 1912, the article notes, just 386.6 tons of freight and 327 passengers used the locks in the course of the entire year. This minimal level of traffic continued into the 1920s, and the Corps classified the locks as "proper for abandonment". Rydell quotes an Oregonian writer to the effect that, during this time, there was so little river traffic the locks were opened every ten days "just to shake the rust out and to show that all is well."

Traffic picked up in the late 1920s thanks almost entirely to log rafts, and local farmers became increasingly interested in the reservoir behind the dam as a source of irrigation water. Another study was commissioned in 1931 on options for upgrading the dam, but again nothing came of it. Log traffic increased through the 1930s and peaked in 1943, when 101,981 tons of logs passed through the locks. Rydell mentions that in 1942 (the previous year) an average of two log rafts per day had passed through the locks. At that point there was every reason to assume this level of traffic was the new permanent state of affairs.

The log raft trade declined quickly after World War II, however, as the Yamhill Valley started running out of trees, and modern log trucks took much of the remaining business. By 1953 the locks were back on the chopping block, thanks to the loss of traffic and Congressional budget cuts. As in 1903, there was a public outcry, in part about the locks themselves, and in part about the adjacent park, which had been developed by the first lock keeper back when the locks opened. This time, local protests proved futile, and the locks and dam were officially abandoned on February 4th, 1954. The newly formed county parks department took over the locks and the park roughly a year later.

Back in 1908, the state's Deputy Fish Warden had already raised alarms about the dam as a barrier to migrating salmon, and he somehow convinced the feds to install a primitive fish ladder at the dam. The article doesn't mention any further concerns about fish until after the abandonment of the dam, at which point the Oregon Fish Commission stepped in and raised new concerns about the dam and salmon. The dam was still used for irrigation water at that point, and a farmers-vs.-fish battle ensued that should seem all too familiar to anyone who witnessed Southern Oregon's Klamath River water wars just a few years ago. And similar to the Klamath situation, the state sided with the fish. Or more precisely, it sided with sport fishermen who thought the river looked promising. By 1960, the Oregon Fish Commission was insisting that the county had to provide adequate fish passage, or the dam would have to be removed. Meanwhile, the abandoned and unmaintained locks and dam continued to deteriorate, and the county had no funds on hand to repair them. They county sided with farmers and dragged its feet cooperating with the state, and several years of legal wrangling ensued. Then, in 1963, a subtle and little-noticed change to state law removed the county's power to block state action on the dam, and on September 18, 1963 the state dynamited the dam, to the great surprise and dismay of the local community. A 1976 proposal to build a shiny new dam for irrigation went nowhere, and contemporary (circa 1990) discussion around building a new dam or at least creating a fish pond at the old locks seems to have come to nought as well.

The article goes on to point out that, from a sport fishing perspective, the promised benefits to fish may have been somewhat oversold, and (as of 1990) neither coho nor chinook salmon populations had become established in the river. It isn't indicated whether there had ever been coho or chinook in the river before the dam went in, which is the key point ecologically speaking. It's quite possible nobody knows.

Another thing the article barely mentions, but which I'm intrigued by, is the fact that the old Yamhill Falls site was a major river crossing prior to European settlement, so presumably local tribes had been using this spot for thousands of years before pioneers arrived with their money-making schemes. So the area is at least potentially an archeological site, albeit a heavily disturbed one. I wonder if anyone's ever taken a professional look at it?

Anyway, thanks for reading this far. I don't usually do blog posts quite this long anymore, but I basically go wherever the source material takes me. As I mentioned earlier, the park isn't terribly exciting these days even if you're a history nerd like me. But it does preserve an unusual bit of local history, and it's certainly a change of pace from other better-known Yamhill Valley attractions: The aviation museum, the big Indian casino out west of McMinnville, pretentious wineries and art galleries everywhere, and that sort of thing. So if you go, take a picnic lunch along, slow down, and just watch and listen to the river for a while. It's quite nice, really.

Salmon Street Springs

A slideshow of the Salmon Street Springs fountain, in Waterfront Park at SW Salmon, just north of the Hawthorne Bridge. The city Water Bureau, which is responsible for the fountain, describes it:

This fountain celebrates city life. A computer regulates the changing patterns of the water display. At full capacity the fountain recycles 4,924 gallons of water per minute through as many as 137 jets at once. There are 185 jets.

The Portland Development Commission funded the fountain. It was dedicated in 1988. A contest generated the name in 1989. Robert Perron Landscape Architects and Planners designed the fountain. The three cycles of the fountain are called misters, bollards and wedding cake.

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The slideshow has photos of all 3 modes, plus a few taken while it was turned off for the winter. The fountain's a local landmark, and it's also relatively recent in origin, so I don't have any obscure historical details to share about the thing. Which is probably why I haven't gotten around to covering it until now. Still, it's pleasant enough & I figured it at least merited a slideshow here.

line.plane.object

The ongoing public art tour visits the east side again, with a stop at line.plane.object, a temporary art installation at East Burnside & MLK, on the odd-shaped chunk of land created by the Burnside-Couch Couplet a few years ago. The project's Wordpress blog (where the previous link goes) explains the project a bit more, and shows additional objects that were either gone when I dropped by (due to the whole temporary thing) or were there and I just didn't notice them (which happens to me a lot).

It wasn't so long ago that this part of town resembled Detroit from the Robocop movies. You just didn't want to go there at any time, day or night. East Burnside's become a hip (though still a bit edgy) neighborhood in recent years, and this spot is supposed to be part of the long-delayed Burnside Bridgehead project someday. In the meantime, the Portland Development Commission is sponsoring art projects like the one you see here, similar to what they did at Block 47 across from the Convention Center. This is the point where I make a not-terribly-original observation about artists and hipsters serving as the vanguard of gentrification, raising the tone of the area and making it safe for upscale condo buyers.

That said, I do like the pieces here, taken on their own merits. Whoever selects art projects at the PDC seems to know what they're doing, or at least they have a feel for what the Right Sort of Art is. Tasteful abstraction is a good thing; a giant gold animatronic statue of Rush Limbaugh would probably be a bad thing, and would almost certainly attract the wrong sort of condo buyer to the neighborhood. Sorry, I honestly thought I was done being snarky, but talk about the PDC just sort of inspires that reaction in me. So in conclusion let me just say the area's interesting right now; nice, but not too nice. But in a few years it'll be crawling with retired Boomers from the Bay Area, people who care about aligning their chakras and finding the perfect $500 cabernet to the exclusion of just about everything else. At which point the neighborhood will be perfectly safe and pleasant and terribly boring. You might as well go and have a look around before that happens.

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.

Winter Falls, Silver Falls

A few photos of Winter Falls, in Silver Falls State Park. As the name suggests, it's much more impressive in the winter and comes rather close to drying up during the summer -- which unfortunately is when I went and took these photos. Even during the winter this waterfall isn't the main event at the park; North Falls and South Falls are the main attractions any time of year. I do actually have photos of them too, but I took a lot more of them and still haven't sorted through them all yet.

If you've ever wondered why I have so many posts covering second-tier attractions like this, and like nearby Upper North Falls, it's because I usually have fewer photos to sort through, and there's generally less source material to dig through while writing the post. In short, it's just easier. I always eventually get around to posting the good stuff, but usually not on any kind of reasonable schedule.

This month will hopefully be different though; several people I know observe November as National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, in which you try to write an entire novel in 30 days. I'm not feeling remotely that ambitious right now, but I've set a somewhat more modest goal for the month, that of having an empty Drafts folder on 12/1, which is a situation I'm pretty sure I haven't had in at least 5 years (considering there's one oddball draft post that's been sitting there since March 2007). I do have draft posts there for North & South Falls, so you should expect to see those within the next few weeks, and if you don't, you're entitled to make fun of me, or at least to roll your eyes a little at the failure of my modest ambitions.

Lower McDowell Creek Falls

And here are a few photos of Lower McDowell Creek Falls, part of Linn County's McDowell Creek Falls County Park, east of Lebanon, OR. As you can see, it's really pretty small, not something you'd really go out of your way to see. But it's right next to the trail through the park, so you'll pass it on your way to Royal Terrace Falls, Crystal Pool Falls, and Majestic Falls, and the rest of the park. So if you're there to look at waterfalls, you might as well stop by so you've collected the whole set, so to speak.

The one tip I have to offer about the park as a whole is that if you go during the summer, there may not be a lot of water going over the falls. Most of the photos of this waterfall you'll see out on the net show much more water going over it, like this one, this one, and this one. You might also enjoy this 360 degree VR panorama at the falls at Whole Reality Photography.

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.

Transcendence

Couple of photos of Transcendence, the salmon-smashing-through-a-building sculpture above the Southpark restaurant at SW Salmon & Park Ave. It's been around for years (and was there when the B. Moloch restaurant occupied the space), but I didn't realize it had a name or counted as Art until just recently; turns out it's by the same artist who did Portal (the arch made of a pair of large hammers) on 1st Ave. just south of downtown. His website has a better photo of Transcendence. It also shows up in a blog post at Travel for Aircraft, and in Flickr & Facebook photos beyond number (here are just 3 of them: [1] [2] [3] that I thought were decent).

While searching for info for this post, I ran across a Stumptown Stumper at the Tribune about yet another piece by the same guy, something called "Mimir" on NW 27th between Thurman & Upshur, near Macleay Park, described as "a combination of Norse mythology, gibberish, fish and space creature". Pretty sure I'm going to need to track it down now and take a few photos. Discovering new topics like this may be the very best part of this entire blogging racket.