a rainy november night

Lair Hill Park

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Today's adventure takes us to Lair Hill Park, off Barbur just south of downtown Portland. More precisely, we're mostly visiting "Land Form", another of those big rusty 70's sculptures people used to be mad for. I've mentioned it in passing before, in an old post about the tram, and I don't have a lot more to add now. It's just that I have photos this time, so enjoy, or whatever.



If you want to know anything more about the sculpture itself, Portland Public Art has a amusing post about it, its creator, and his other works around town. I linked to the same post last time, but the URL's since changed, and it's a fun read if you're interested in this sort of thing.



There is, obviously, more to the park than the sculpture here. It's actually tucked away in a less-used corner of the park, and it's kind of camouflaged due to its, uh, "organic" color, so you barely notice it's there unless you already know it's there.



The park also sports a playground, tennis courts, walking paths, lots of trees, and a vast army of squirrels. I'm not a tennis player, so there's not much for me to say about the tennis courts, and I don't have kids, so I don't really have an opinion about the playground either. If you're interested in that, I did come across what looks like a great review of the playground, with several good photos. The verdict: Not fabulous, and kind of outdated, although the "pesticide-free" bit is a definite plus.



People also walk dogs here a lot, but I don't have one of those either. Here's a cute photo of a dog here, right next to the sculpture. I bet dogs pee on "Land Form" a lot. I would, if I was a dog.



Back in the 60's and 70's, the park was apparently quite the hippie magnet, our own vastly smaller version of Golden Gate Park. The park's mentioned in a couple of great articles about that distant era: "Something Happening Here...From JDs to Hippies" and "Music on the Cusp: From Folk to Acid Rock in Portland Coffeehouses, 1967–1970".



If you happen to be of the Boomer persuasion, I can see how you might take issue with me calling it a "distant era". But, you know, the Oregon Historical Society is busy cataloging psychedelia. The Oregon freakin' Historical Society. And, look, it was 28 years from Pearl Harbor to Woodstock, and it's been another 39 from Woodstock to the present day. It's not that I'm coming out and calling you a geezer or anything. And if I was, I'm sure there's probably an upside of some sort to being a living fossil, like being able to semi-remember all sorts of trivia from the mists of time that nobody younger than you is even remotely interested in. That sort of thing.



One more useless factoid, and then we're done: There's no hill called "Lair Hill", here or anywhere else. The park, and surrounding neighborhood, are named after William Lair Hill, a lawyer/historian/editor of the pioneer era, who owned land around here for a while. So now you know. Amaze your friends! Confound your foes!

Or not.

Shemanski Fountain

A couple of photos of the Shemanski Fountain, at the north end of the South Park Blocks.

For some reason, I seem to have not taken any pics of the whole fountain, just of assorted architectural details on it. Which, as it turns out, are pretty much entirely female, which I think is typical of gaudy Beaux-Arts baubles like this.

I actually thought about titling this post "The Girls of Shemanski Fountain", but I thought that might be a little crass. I'm sure it would drive page views, though, so if I was trying to sell banner ad space here, I might've gone for it anyway...

So it's clear, the structure as a whole is the Shemanski Fountain, and the bronze statue in the center is called Rebecca at the Well. "Rebecca" in this case being a character in the Book of Genesis, and thus the subject of overwrought devotional art right up to the present day.

The National Gallery of Art in DC has a painting by Veronese on the theme, for example. I could track down more, I'm sure, but you get the idea.

The Smithsonian's Art Inventories Catalog has a page about both the fountain and the statue here, if you like more factual info about either.

It amuses me that if someone proposed to donate this exact fountain to the city now, we'd have to refuse the offer, as it offends on both religious and nekkidness grounds. Which you have to admit is quite an aesthetic feat.

Oliver Barrett, the sculptor behind Rebecca, is apparently the same guy who was later responsible for Portland's short-lived Teddy Roosevelt / Spanish-American War memorial next to Harbor Drive, where Waterfront Park is now. Cafe Unknown has a photo in a great post about various Roosevelt-related mysteries. Somewhere between 1926 and 1939, Barrett seems to have switched over from Beaux-Arts trifles to massive, severe Art Deco edifices. I'm not entirely convinced that was a good idea, although I suppose the market for Beaux Arts had kind of dried up by 1939. And being the Depression and all, I guess you'd want to jump at any possible commissions, even if they involve killer androids with swords.

Now here's the part where I rant about metal-thieving meth tweakers again. Rebecca's been repeatedly targeted by metal thieves. Last year someone tried and failed to steal the whole statue, seriously damaging it in the process. (Cafe Unknown mentioned that incident here.) The fountain was eventually repaired, but in August someone stole the brass nozzles off the fountain. Someone's clearly pretty bound and determined here. And yet, has anyone tried to steal Facing the Crowd? Or Leland One (a.k.a. "Rusting Chunks #5")? Not that I know of. Maybe they're just too big, or maybe tweakers feel a natural affinity for ugliness and creepiness, so they leave certain things alone out of professional courtesy. I dunno. It's a theory.

More (and probably better) photos at Waymarking, PortlandBridges and the city, plus one on Pbase and another on Flickr.

Facing the Crowd

Here are a few photos of Facing the Crowd, the huge creepy face sculptures outside PGE Park. There are two faces, one in front of each entrance to the stadium, to guarantee that all visitors get creeped out before the big game starts. This one's at the east entrance, and is supposed to evoke a child's face. Which it totally does. Just like Chucky. Run away!!!

Portland Public Art rants about the faces in "Results of 'informal' and 'murky'" and a followup, "Government + art = oil + water"

The faces are also #24 at Things About Portland That Suck.

A Willamette Week editorial suggested the faces could use $1000 worth of dynamite. Although that still seems like a waste of taxpayer money to me -- there's got to be a way to solve the problem for free. This city's full of meth-addled metal thieves, after all. Where the hell are they when you need 'em for once?

And in what may be the most fitting use of the faces, they got a visit during Santacon, our fair city's annual rampaging mob of drunk Santas. There's a larger photo here.

For an alternate take on the faces, the artist's website discusses them here, and they're mentioned at Art on File and Arts USA.

PGE Park simply calls them a "unique feature", and a couple of blog posts mention the faces in passing.

Oh, and the New York Times had to mention them too. After the way they've been fawning over Portland and telling the world how fabulous we are, maybe this is their attempt to balance things out a little...

If you can't get enough of the faces, if you find them hypnotic for some reason, if you feel compelled to rise and do their bidding, or whatever, here are more photos from all around the interwebs:
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Scott Triangle

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So this is "Scott Triangle", a tiny grassy bit at the corner of SE 64th & Scott Drive, just north of Mt. Tabor Park. I made a quick side trip here after tracking down Stark Street Island, after seeing a mention of it in a May '08 Urban Adventure League post. As is their usual m.o., they rode here and had a nice meatless potluck. Since it was May, I'm not sure the weather would've been any better than it is now. Imagine, a pack of bike hipsters gnawing on tofu in the rain. I wonder what the neighbors thought?

I agree the place isn't spectacular. And I also agree that my photos of it aren't spectacular. What's more, I don't have much of anything to say about the place. On the bright side, it means it didn't take long to bust out this post. On the other hand, it also raises the eternal question of "Why?"

I ask myself that a lot, actually.

Beryl Triangle

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So we're rifling through the end-of-season dregs and outtakes and such, I guess, which takes us to "Beryl Triangle", a tiny, uh, triangular bit of land at the intersection of NE 84th Ave., Davis St., and Beryl Terrace (hence the name). I don't think it actually has an official name, but "Beryl Triangle" is the name the Urban Adventure League people used when they had a picnic there back in July '07. As far as I can tell, that's the only mention of it on the net anywhere. Until now, obviously. And I don't really have much to add about the place

I didn't actually get out of the car to take these pics. It was raining, and the triangle looked kind of unpromising. Grass, one tree, one utility pole. Judging by the amount of fallen leaves beneath the park's sole tree, it was probably beautiful a couple of weeks ago. Oh, well.

a little fountain at night

Next to one of the entrances to the Regence headquarters building, in downtown Portland, there's this tiny little fountain. It draws little attention during the day, but at night they light it up with constantly changing colored lights. You could reasonably argue that this is kind of cheesy, but it's also kind of photogenic.

I don't know anything about it except the location, I'm afraid. It's small enough that I can see it not having a name, or being "designed by" anyone in particular. But maybe it is, and the info just isn't on the net anywhere. Sadly, that's been known to happen from time to time.

Stark Street Island expedition

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Today's expedition takes us to semi-fabled Stark Street Island, off in the mysterious, exotic lands east of I-205, where one occasionally sights "pickup trucks", some of which bear mysterious inscriptions such as "McCain-Palin", whatever that means.

Ok, ok, I'm trying to spice things up here, and it's not really working, is it? The place really is called "Stark Street Island" (except when it's called "Park 51"), but it's really only an island in the traffic sense. It's a little triangular wedge of land at the corner of SE 106th & Stark, a few blocks east of Mall 205. And don't bother looking for it on the parks bureau's website, because it's not there.

The park's one feature is the Rose Petal Fountain, one of the short list of fountains run by the city water bureau. There's a Water Blog post from early May when they turned it on for the season. I was hoping it'd still be running now, but sadly it's not. That part of the expedition was kind of a complete bust, as it turns out. So instead I had to try to make a dry fountain interesting, which is rarely easy:



So, uh, imagine it just like this, except with water. And with the sun shining, 85 degrees outside, so long as we're busy imagining stuff.

Updated: Here's a Yelp review of the park & fountain, if you can believe that. Apparently this little park is jammed with kids in the summer. I guess that makes sense, since this is the only public fountain for miles around on the east side.

Also, if you're visiting here and you're on Stark anyway, might I suggest some of the other local sights? Milestone P6 is just 7 blocks west of here. And 11 blocks east will get you to Milestone P7, and Ventura Park with its small-ish rose garden. And those are just things that've shown up on this humble blog. The street also features various things of interest to normal people, or so I'm told.

I hate to say it, but I'm starting to think "explore-the-world season" is about over for the year. I'm still quite willing to drive out and take photos, or take the bus, or walk, or whatever, but if I do that I'll just make everywhere I go look cold and dreary and uninviting. Which would give everyone the wrong idea. Or rather, it would give everyone the right idea about what our fair city's like 9-10 months out of the year. And although that might keep a few Californians from moving here, doing it gets old (and depressing) rather quickly. So I suppose I'll have to find something else to blog about until the weather improves someday.

Or, I suppose, I could move to a distant, tropical, real island, off in a genuinely mysterious and exotic corner of the world -- but not so exotic that there's no broadband, obviously. Also, there needs to be a ready supply of fruity drinks with parasols, or maybe those little plastic swords. Yeah....

Riverside Park expedition

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A few photos from Portland's ultra-obscure Riverside Park, on the east bank of the Willamette, just a few blocks south of the Ross Island Bridge. Usually when I call a place "obscure", it implies that it's somewhere out of the way and doesn't get a lot of visitors. That's not really true this time. Riverside Park gets plenty of visitors; they just don't realize they're visiting, is all. The park, you see, is bisected by the heavily-used Springwater Trail, which is primarily used by Portland's legions of bike commuters.

This segment of the Springwater Trail was only officially opened in 2005, although I went through here once in the early 90's, back when I lived in the Brooklyn neighborhood. "Opened", I think, means that they came in and paved it to make it commuter bike friendly, and it looks like they removed some invasive plants and put in some picnic tables in a few spots. When I was here before, the area had an abandoned, back-of-beyond feel, and there were a lot of homeless people camping in the area. I still saw a few people camping out under the McLoughlin half-viaduct uphill, but in general the city and Metro have done a thorough job of making the area safe, or at least making it feel "safe". Whatever that means.

In recent years, Metro's bought up the land immediately to the north and south of the park, probably with Greenspace bond money. I gather that the stretch of now-public land adjacent to the riverbank stretch of the Springwater trail is called "Springwater on the Willamette". Which makes it sound like an upscale restaurant, or possibly a nursing home.

In any case, Riverside Park itself was here long before there was an improved trail, and before Metro was ever involved. So it really was a remote spot at one time. And don't let the map fool you; although it sits next to McLoughlin Boulevard, you can't get here from there, as McLoughlin is maybe 40-50 feet straight up, at the top of the bluff, and there aren't any stairs. Even if there were stairs, there's no way to get across McLoughlin, and I don't think there's even a continuous sidewalk up there.

Back in December 1980 the city council approved building a pedestrian overpass over McLoughlin at Haig St., which would have created a convenient river access for residents of the Brooklyn neighborhood. The overpass was expected to cost $604,942, plus another $110,000 for a fishing pier at Riverside Park that was also never constructed. I haven't yet seen a definitive explanation for why this never happened, but the article contains a couple of clues. First, the council's main opponent of the project was Commissioner Ivancie, soon to be elected mayor. Second, the money for the park was to come from federal funds originally slated for the cancelled Mt. Hood Freeway. The eastside MAX Blue Line was also funded from this pot of money, so it's possible that the overpass was nixed due to cost overruns on MAX construction. In any case, the unbuilt overpass is the only reference I've found so far to the park in the library's Oregonian database, which stretches back to 1861. The park's generic name doesn't really help the search process, but I get the distinct feeling it's pretty much always been as obscure as it is now. Given the city's current position that Willamette River fish aren't fit for human consumption, it may be just as well that the fishing pier was never built.

These days Riverside Park is merely a small part of "Springwater on the Willamette", and not even the most interesting part. When the trail work happened, Riverside was sort of overtaken by events, and went from total obscurity directly into irrelevance. It's just that it often appears on city maps when the rest doesn't, for whatever reason. So there's this mysterious green square on the river you've never been to, and nobody you know has ever been to, and you can't find any photos of on the interwebs. So naturally I'd wondered about the place for years, because I'm like that. I went into this understanding this was a Quixotic "expedition" even by my usual standards, which is saying a lot. And I have to say the park was about what I'd expected it'd be like.

I haven't been able to discover the original idea behind the city owning the place. The generic-sounding name makes it sound like it ought to be a grand place, like "Waterfront Park", or "Central Park", but it just isn't. To the north and south of the park, there are concrete pilings in the river that seem to be the remains of some kind of dock, maybe. I don't know what was here, but it must've been long ago. Riverside Park is narrower and steeper than the surrounding area, so maybe the city got it by default, way back when, because the site seemed unbuildable. I don't know, really.

The last time I was here, mumble-mumble years ago, I thought I'd try to find this "Riverside Park" place I'd seen on the map, since it was in the neighborhood and all. That effort wasn't too successful. It wasn't at all obvious what part of the area was the park and what wasn't, since it all looked more or less the same. It's also true that the quest didn't have my full attention, as I was soon preoccupied with navigating the crappy old trail, which at the time was pretty much a solid mud bog for the whole 3 mile stretch from Sellwood to the Ross Island Bridge. Or at least that's how I remember it.

Today, thanks to the magic of the interwebs, I think I've finally located the place. There's a short stretch along the trail, a few blocks south of the Ross Island Bridge, where there's a sort of cable barrier separating the trail from a steep slope down to the river. That stretch, plus the chunk of bluff on the other side of the railroad tracks, is Riverside Park, more or less. The bit to the north with the picnic tables isn't, technically. The bit to the south with some mysterious public art also isn't, technically. Technically, PortlandMaps knows the place as 3 parcels, with tax IDs R313370, R313371, and R313372, so you can go look it up if you really care.

The area as a whole is kind of cool. Looking north, there's an unusual view of the Ross Island Bridge, with downtown behind it. Due west, there's also an intriguing view of the South Waterfront towers rising behind the trees of Ross Island. So overall it's worth checking out. Just be sure to keep your eyes and ears open for bike commuters, and try to stay out of their way if you can. Jeebus. Those guys are hardcore.

Lake Oswego Railroad Bridge

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The ongoing bridge project takes us south again, to the often-overlooked Lake Oswego Railroad Bridge. Rail-only bridges are pretty much always overlooked, since nobody uses them except the railroad itself. On top of that, this particular bridge is in an out-of-the-way location, is fairly unremarkable-looking, and is very lightly used even by the railroad. That all adds up to "destined for obscurity" -- although it does have its own Structurae page, which I guess is something.

If you took a local survey and asked people if they'd ever heard of this bridge being here, I'd guess the answers would be split between "No" and "Who cares?". And really, why would you care? You can't drive over it, you can't legally walk or bike over it, and the few trains that use it don't carry passengers. In my case, I'm kind of running low on bridges, and I figured I'd go check it out for the sake of completeness, along with a measure of idle curiosity.

Since I didn't walk over the bridge, I don't really have an adventure story to tell this time. I just drove to Rivervilla Park, at the foot of the bridge on the east bank, took a few photos, and went on my merry way. So pretty much what I've got to offer this time are the photos, plus whatever info about the bridge I was able to dredge up on the interwebs. As a result, this post is somewhat overreliant on bullet-point lists full of links, as you'll see shortly. Literature snobs tend to sneer at bullet-point lists, so this post is unlikely to win any awards for its eloquent and skillful use of the English language -- assuming those awards still even exist -- but that's just how the post wrote itself.



This bridge is the only bridge over the Willamette between Sellwood and Oregon City, which is a pretty substantial gap, so it seems (to me) like kind of a waste that it's only used by a few freight trains now and then. I'm not the only person who thinks so, as I've seen occasional discussion about using it for commuter rail, streetcars, and/or pedestrians/bike access, but as of right now there aren't any firm plans for any of those things. One idea is to run commuter rail across it, similar to the upcoming Beaverton-to-Wilsonville WES line. A line like that could run south from downtown Portland all the way out to McMinnville, possibly as a snooty, upscale "wine train", like the one down in Napa Valley (which some locals have dubbed the "swine train"). This line could even be extended and run to Spirit Mountain, which would make it a total geezer magnet. Every last old guy in the country would insist on making a pilgrimage here, to come ride the casino train. I'm not sure that would be a good idea, but it sounds like a very lucrative idea. Oh, and it'd serve actual commuters too, apparently.



Other ideas include adding overhead wires and turning it into a streetcar bridge, or removing the tracks and making it bike/ped only, or cantilevering an additional bike/ped walkway off one side of the bridge, similar to what was done with the lower deck of the Steel Bridge a few years ago. I kind of prefer the last idea, if it can be done safely. Rail traffic could continue, while also allowing me to walk over the thing and take some photos without dying, which is the main thing of course.

Some people (who I guess aren't down with our fair city's anti-car policy) think there ought to be a vehicular bridge here. It's not a terrible idea, but after looking at the current bridge it's pretty clear to me that you couldn't modify it to carry cars. It's just too narrow for that. You'd have to build from scratch, and maybe right here is the best place for that, and maybe it isn't. Either way, you'll need to get in line behind all the other expensive bridge proposals currently on the table. So don't expect to see this any time soon.



A few semi-recent examples of the on-and-off discussion and handwringing about the bridge:

• The Lake Oswego Trails Master Plan envisions a "Willamette Crossing Trail" someday, with an estimated cost of about $5,670,000, in 2003 dollars.
  
• This City of Milwaukie Transportation System Plan Update mentions in in passing, while brainstorming about future commuter rail options.
  
• A doc from Metro's Lake Oswego to Portland Transit and Trail Study mentions the bridge as an "issue", as in, what to do about the bridge if the westside Portland-to-Lake Oswego rail line is turned into a trail.
  
• The City of Beaverton mentions the bridge a 2006 info packet for city council members, which mentions the possibility of using some Metro bond money to renovate the bridge.
  
• A thread at Portland Transport discusses the streetcar option, because they always love the streetcar option over on Portland Transport. One commenter explains why streetcars and freight trains can't coexist on the same tracks.
  
• A RailroadForums thread about the proposed eastside streetcar and Milwaukie MAX projects mentions the L.O. bridge briefly, as in, why are we building all this other new stuff when this existing bridge is practically sitting idle?
  
• A BikePortland thread about the Portland-to-Lake Oswego rail line gets a couple of comments about the bridge. One poster has ridden the bridge a few times and explains what a hassle it is in its current form.
  
• A commuter rail page on Trainweb calls it "the Forgotten Bridge", which sounds about right.
  
• In the August '08 meeting minutes of Oak Lodge Community Council, the bridge is once again described as the "forgotten bridge", but also as a "major asset". Figuring out what to do with this major asset is the hard part, it seems.
  
• An Oregonian story from January 15, 2004 says "Walkway Over Willamette Gains Favor". Favor, that is, with everyone except the railroad. They think it's way too dangerous, describing it as a "very scary bridge". Even if people behave themselves and stay off the tracks, they say, there's a danger people will be hit by stuff falling off the train -- lumber, sheet metal, stuff like that. They do like the idea of commuter rail, though, so that's something. They lease the bridge, I think from Union Pacific, and their lease runs through 2015. So maybe something will happen after that. This article generated a couple of letters to the editor.
  
• A PSU student project, "Milwaukie to Lake Oswego Willamette River Pedestrian Bridge", looked at the feasibility of adding a walkway to the bridge, and they even have a design mockup. The railroad wasn't interested in talking to them, though.
  
• In related news, the Pacific & Western Railroad (which operates the bridge and leases it from Union Pacific) is pushing a new proposal for a Hillsboro-to-Forest Grove commuter line. It's not hard to see why they like commuter rail: When the Beaverton-Wilsonville line gets going, P&W will be contracted to operate it on TriMet's behalf. They also received a bunch of needed capital improvements to the line, paid for with taxpayer cash, so their freight business benefits too. This is either cronyism or a win-win situation, I guess, depending on how you feel about commuter rail.
  
• And the handwringing about safety along the WES line has already begun.
  
• The bridge is also mentioned in an Aug. 5, 1996 Oregonian article, "Metro Revives 1994 Study On Willamette River Crossings". This is from the early stages of our endless "What to do about the Sellwood Bridge" handwringing, when there were options on the table besides just replacing the Sellwood with a new bridge nearby. In passing, it mentions people have been crossing the railroad bridge for years, despite the lack of a nice, public-friendly walkway.
  
• A blog post and a couple of forum threads discuss cyclists using the bridge.
  
• A 2004 post on foldedspace discusses "The Future of Oak Grove". One commenter claims to have seen people walking across the bridge.
  

If you look closely at the bridge, you can see there's a narrow walkway, more of a catwalk really, on the north/downstream side of the bridge. I thought about taking it, but I was dissuaded by what I thought were a few good reasons.

1. I couldn't get onto the bridge from where I was. I think you have to go find the end of the trestle, and I'm not sure where that is.
   
2. It doesn't look very safe. It's pretty spartan, and looks like it was designed for the exclusive use of maintenance people who know exactly what they're doing, and are paid very well to do it. Not much in the way of solid handrails up there, so I have a hunch my rare, occasional fear of heights might kick in, especially if it's windy.
   
3. Nonzero chance that a train might come while I'm up there. I realize it doesn't get a lot of use -- I've seen the figure of about 2 trains a day bandied around -- but I also know what my luck is like. The walkway's pretty close to the tracks, and trains are substantially wider than their tracks, so I'm not sure how much space that leaves you. The maintenance people this was designed for are bound to have a schedule and know when the next train's due. Me, not so much.
   
4. Nonzero chance of being arrested or fined for trespassing. The bridge is railroad property, and railroads aren't too keen on random members of the general public wandering around on their property, if they catch you. It turns out that, thanks to robber-baron-era laws governing railroads, a railroad doesn't just have security guards, it can actually have own Railroad police force. Seriously. Railroad police can operate with the same legal authority as local or state police, they can make arrests, they can even shoot people if the need arises. As is usual with all things railroad-related, your state and local authorities have no jurisdiction or regulatory authority over railroad police. They answer only to Uncle Sam and the shareholders. So it's not too surprising that the Union Pacific Police Dept. had a turn as Willamette Week's Rogue of the Week a couple of years ago. I'll grant that they have legitimate concerns about trespassers, and a real need to keep people off their tracks and out of their equipment. Since it's, you know, dangerous and all. Also, there was a
   pipe bomb incident at the bridge back in 1993, so there's wannabe-evildoers to worry about too, I guess.
   

I suppose I could just call up the railroad and ask for permission, if I really wanted to walk across the thing that badly. I considered doing that before I actually got a look at the bridge, and now I'm not sure I really want to. I won't rule out that I might try it at some point, although I kind of suspect they'd say no. Maybe if I spun it as "I want to explain to the public why it's so dangerous", with lots of photos illustrating the point. I dunno. I've come to realize that I'm more easily dissuaded than most people by the threat of getting an expensive ticket (or worse), even when the actual likelihood of it happening is probably quite low, as it is with this bridge. I'm not usually big on blaming things on parents, much less grandparents, but in this case I really think it's my maternal grandmother's fault. Where some people use "the bogeyman" to scare kids into behaving, she used "the policeman", so as a small child I got a lot of "you be good, now, or the policeman will get you". I'm not kidding. The evil terminator in Terminator 2 spent most of the movie in the form of a cop, and that's a pretty good approximation of what I thought "the policeman" was like when I was a kid. I still don't think I've entirely gotten over that. You walk over the bridge, you might get speared through the eye with CG liquid metal or something. I've never figured out where Grandma picked up this attitude. Was it just a generic Scots-Irish thing? Or did she have a more exciting youth than she led us all to believe? We may never know for sure. And maybe that's for the best.

As you might expect, the bridge shows up on various railfan websites, where we learn (among other things) that the long, curving trestle on the east bank is called the "Menefee Trestle", after a lumber company that used to be next to the tracks a bit further north. The Brooklyn railyard in SE Portland is home to the historic SP 4449 locomotive, which seems to use the bridge regularly when they take it out for a spin. For example:

• Photos from a rail excursion from Albany to the Brooklyn Yard in Portland, including one from on the trestle.
  
• 
  
• A thread about a different excursion on the same train, including a great photo of it crossing the bridge.
  
• Another photo, same train again, crossing the bridge going the other way.
  
• Another page about the SP 4449, with a few more photos of the train on the bridge.
  

Other assorted photos of the bridge:

• an old photo looking across the bridge
  
• And a photo from the air
  
• And a two photos taken up on the bridge itself. If you want to see what it looks like up there, those are your best bet, because I didn't hoof it across the bridge this time.
  
• Some photos and info on a page of Milwaukie sights.
  
• Some great moody infrared photos of the bridge.
  
• And a few other photos, including one of a steam train crossing the bridge.
  
• These two might be of the L.O. bridge too, but it's hard to tell.
  
• And these three, and probably this one.
  
• photos of various local bridges on Pixelmap
  
• More on Webshots
  
• to willamette falls by kayak. While taking panoramic photos every so often. I'm really curious how this was done.
  
• The Lake Oswego Library has a collection of old photos of the area, and they have old pics of the bridge (such as this one) in several of their categories: "Willamette River", "Railroads", and "Bridges".