Fanno Creek Trail closes its gaps

Fanno Creek

I wrote this article which appeared September 7, 2012 on the newsline page of Metro, the Portland-area regional government. I'm the biker referred to in the last paragraph and I can attest that riding the length of the Fanno Creek Trail (including unfinished portions), from the Garden Home Recreation Center to the Tualatin River in Tualatin, is a wonderful bike ride. Flat, both directions! Such a treat for us Portlanders.

A rutted footpath once followed a creek through the Tualatin Valley, guiding generations of native peoples on migrations between the falls of the Willamette River and the Oregon Coast. In 1847, immigrant Augustus Fanno followed this path. Finding rich soils along the unnamed creek, Fanno claimed the land. Later, railroad builders chose this time-tested route for a new kind of transportation corridor. By the 1970s, much of the rail line went unused – but the ancient pathway was not forgotten by the generations that followed.

A vision was born: a 15-mile walking and biking greenway to connect Portland to the cities on its southwestern flanks. Today the Fanno Creek Trail, despite some remaining gaps, does exactly that. Creating it has been like assembling a five-city jigsaw puzzle.

Some homes back right up,
sans fences, along the trail

"The Fanno Creek Trail is much greater than the sum of its parts," says Kathleen Brennan-Hunter, Metro's Natural Areas Program director. "So many different organizations and agencies have brought pieces of it to the table."

The plan started in 1975: a trail from the Willamette River in Portland to Fanno Creek's confluence with the Tualatin River in Tualatin. During the next quarter century, major sections were built in Beaverton and Tigard. Besides running across or near land owned by scores of public and private interests, the trail passes through five cities, two counties and many neighborhoods, across busy roads, and along a floodplain vital to the health of wildlife and water quality.

An Oregon white oak along the trail
near a open-in-2012 section in Beaverton,
adjacent to the old Greenwood Inn site.

Since 1995, Metro has taken the lead in trail planning, land purchases and procurement of easements, using funds from two voter-approved bond measures. The cities of Beaverton, Durham, Portland, Tigard and Tualatin have secured permitting and funding, and designed and built trail segments; Clean Water Services has planted thousands of trees and restored sections of floodplain to a more natural hydrology. Other significant players include Washington County, Tualatin Hills Park & Recreation District plus other public agencies, private landowners, neighborhood groups, conservation organizations and resident volunteers.

The result: a trail used by an increasing number of commuters and recreational walkers and bicyclists.

One July morning, Susan Frost stopped along the trail to join two fellow walkers peering into summer-shallow Fanno Creek. "I've seen eagles, herons, a white egret, coyotes and even a honeybee swarm in an old oak," she said. "I feel energized by the beauty on the trail. Every day I see something new."

Closing gaps in the trail benefits water, wildlife and people

A regional trail isn't truly regional until enough discrete segments have been connected. In 2012, the Fanno Creek Trail is reaching this benchmark, thanks to the commitment of local partners and community volunteers.

In January, a 0.6-mile segment opened in Beaverton, between Scholls Ferry and Denney roads. With two short on-road connections at either end, this segment closed a gap between Garden Home and the trail's longest contiguous stretch: 3.8 miles from Denney Road in Beaverton to Woodard Park in Tigard. This segment, said Wendy Kroger, was 18 years in the making. Until 2011, she was the head of THPRD Trails Advisory Committee and one of the trail's most vocal advocates.

"I was a cheerleader, a visionary, a polite prodder," Kroger said. "Some advocated that this segment should run along Allen Boulevard. But we lobbied hard to have it run through the natural area, writing letters, testifying, speaking on behalf of permitting and funding requests." That meant a lot more property acquisitions and restoration work. But the result is stunning: an urban oasis with a trail winding artfully around native plants and creek bends under a canopy of tall firs.

In Tigard, two trail gaps are getting closer to construction and a new acquisition will offer a large piece of parkland along the trail. When new sections open, walkers and bikers will be off the streets and next to the creek.

Trail work is not all about closing gaps, Brennan-Hunter said – it's also improving Washington County's water quality. Since 2006, Clean Water Services has converted 800 feet of once-straightened stream channel in Beaverton's Greenway Park to 1,200 feet of meanders and floodplain, and planted 80,000 native plants.

This focus on water quality and wildlife habitat was not a primary goal of trail planners, who in the 1980s and 1990s developed trailside parklands in the style of traditional urban parks, with playgrounds, ball fields and picnic shelters. Joe Blowers is a middle school teacher and president of the Tualatin Hills Park & Recreation District's board of directors. He and his students have been working on Fanno Creek tributaries since 1994. Blowers called out Englewood Park in Tigard as a place where growing knowledge about riparian habitat has changed greenway design.

"When it first opened, the park was grassy, with lawns mowed right up to the creek," Blowers said. "Today about 11 acres, especially in wet areas, are left unmown and have been replanted in native plants – swaths of marshy grassland, Ponderosa pines and willows."

The trail's newest section in Beaverton highlights state-of-the-art trail building and streamside restoration. As it returns to its more primeval roots, the greenway, once a near-monoculture of invasives, again offers mammals, amphibians and fish a refuge in an otherwise intensely urban setting.

Play, commute, connect

One trail element still missing is signage, making it a bit challenging to find some trail segments. Way-finding signs scheduled to be installed next year along the entire trail length will help bicyclists and walkers navigate, particularly in the gaps.

"We're really close to completing the acquisitions, but there are still gaps over big streets." Brennan-Hunter said.

Most of the trail's street crossings have pedestrian-activated or painted crosswalks. But one of the busiest crossings still to address is at Hall Boulevard in Beaverton. There, a tunnel and bridge were rejected as too costly. People must leave the trail, walk to a stoplight and then return. The solution, due in 2013, will be a mid-block crossing, with a pedestrian-activated crosswalk that triggers a red light for cars.

It may take 10 more years to build out remaining gaps in the entire 15 miles of the trail, from the Willamette River to Tualatin. Even so, the trail is already a busy regional corridor that offers places to play, a beautiful commute, and connections to downtowns, neighborhoods and shopping.

As one cyclist pedaled the nearly flat length of the trail on a warm July day, she drafted off a dragonfly, heard freight trains wailing in the distance, nodded to countless other bikers and walkers, and tasted a few early berries along the way. The Fanno Creek Trail – a regional gem created by the vision and persistence of hundreds of people over nearly 40 years – combines community involvement, urban planning and Oregon beauty.

Trails updates to walks in the books

Steps from SW Broadway Drive to Hoffman

The revised edition of Portland Hill Walks is coming out March 2013 with five new walks, some of the long--6 to 7 miles. All were revised and one walk was cut. The new book will have 24 walks.

Portland Hill Walks
Walk 9 Willamette Park to Terwilliger Loop
The trail at point 7 on the map is closed due to construction on I-5. Suggested change: at point 6, don't descend the trail in George Himes Park; instead, return to point 3 by using the map or retracing your route.  It will be a few more years, I think, until the construction is over and the trail under I-5 through George Himes is rebuilt.

Walk 12 Dunthorpe Gardens
Berry Botanic Gardens is permanently closed. But the Bishops Close is still worth a visit.

Walk 13 Sellwood
The trail up the bluff between point 2 and 3 is washed out, permanently. A new trail has been built. From point 2 in Oaks Bottom, veer southeast toward the bluff and you'll find the new trail. It climbs the bluff and ends at the same place, point 3, on the map, so the detour is slight.


The Portland Stairs Book
p. 87 Outer Southwest Peaks and Valleys
This uses the same George Himes Trail mentioned above, so instead of crossing under I-5 via that trail, cross over I-5 on SW Brier Place (it's on the map).

A Jolly Good Sidewalk

Until around 1904, most Portland sidewalks were wood. In that year, a city ordinance declared no wooden sidewalks

"shall be built or constructed hereafter upon any street (in Portland in certain districts); [it is] the duty of the property owners to construct sidewalks of artificial stone, vitrified or repressed paving brick or asphalt.”

So one era ended and in this decade,

most of our “artificial stone” sidewalks are turning the century mark.



One Portlander couldn’t let the moment pass unnoticed when her sidewalk, in historic South Portland, turned 100 this year. Katie Urey, a GIS professional and board member of the Willamette Pedestrian Coalition, threw her sidewalk a party in August and I was delighted to have been invited.

Katie lured in pedestrians with neighborhood stories like that of boys at a South Portland
orphanage who ran away to find the place where the sun sets.

Around the corner, a display of old news articles brought the stories back to life.

Hiking the Wildwood: 3 days at 2 miles per hour

We love mile markers: a blue blaze and quarter-
mile increments were trail highlights.
The dog joined us on Day 3.

It’s the longest hiking trail within a U.S. city’s limits. Portland, Oregon’s Forest Park invites you to travel deep into its 5,000 wooded acres via a 30-mile-long wilderness trail, the Wildwood Trail. At about the 800 foot elevation line hidden in the folds of this rugged landscape, the Wildwood carries you into and out of deep ravines, through mature forests of Douglas fir, cedar and hemlock, and across countless streams. All the while, you never leave Portland city limits. At times, views of Mt. St. Helens or Mt. Rainier peak through. In places, clangs, booms and whistles of docks, tugboats and trains pierce the cathedral-like calm. Pileated woodpeckers laugh maniacally, bald eagles soar silently above the fir tops and songbirds welcome you with outbursts of joy as you pass through their world.

Eight year old Eleanor wanted to claim the Wildwood. So this spring break, with mornings in the 30s and grey skies occasionally gracing us with showers, we hiked its length, plus 6 extra miles. The route brought us off the Wildwood the first night, down a mudslide of a firelane, to a motel on the highway below the park. The second night brought us to some friends’ home in a quiet dead-end above the park, and the last day, we walked to our house just beyond the park’s north end.

Most people hike the Wildwood in segments, looping onto it from firelanes and side trails that carry you down to the trail from streets above or up from the neighborhoods or highway below.

Stumps of trees cut a century ago nurture new life.

But a one-way excursion heightens the sense of adventure, of discovery and of awe at the length and wilderness that the Wildwood traverses. It's a landscape that has been logged, yes, but is in robust recovery, as wild-seeming in places as some of the more remote areas of the Olympic peninsula.

A one-way excursion on the Wildwood like mine is possible, even if you don’t have friends living up on Skyline Boulevard.

Start at Mile 0, at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington Park. Pass through the Arboretum and below homes perched on hills; climb to the Pittock Mansion, and vow to come back another day when your feet are not caked in mud; descend trails cut by Mr. Pittock to Cornell Road and the Audubon’s sanctuaries. That’s at mile 5, and visiting the birds who live there adds a nice educational component. We ate lunch watching a spotted owl preen, crouch and swivel on the arm of a volunteer. From there, it’s down to Balch Creek, then up and out of the canyon, then traveling above the Willamette Heights neighborhood. After a bit, the neighborhood peters out and it’s just you, a few dogs and their owners and miles of trail.

Oxalis, one of countless shades of green in the park.

We stopped at Mile 11 at about 4 p.m. and hiked down the very steep Firelane 1 to its start at St. Helens Road and Yeon Avenue, where La Quinta Inn provided just the sort of oddball juxtaposition I like on a walk. A swim in the pool, pizza delivered by Bellagios, two hours of fluff tv, and snuggling in a big clean bed made for a perfect day’s end.

There are no other motels next to the trail, so the 11 mile mark is the best place to descend if you want to spend the night in a warm bed other than your own. (Camping is not allowed in the park.)


A true friend shares the last of her frozen
peaches with some tired hikers.

Day Two took us back up the firelane, about 1.8 miles of mud alternating with wash outs. Views of trains and tank farms below offer disturbing but interesting juxtapositions with the firelane’s wild, tumbling streams and beautiful stands of Oregon white oak and madrona (relatively rare in Forest Park; seen along the lower elevations above Highway 30). Once back on the Wildwood, we walked to our friends’ home for a day’s distance of 14 miles. The next day we hiked to the Wildwood’s end at Newberry Road, and three more miles to our house.

The end of the trail.

But if you care to walk faster than our two-mile-per hour pace, you could make Day 2 as long as you want, even making it to Newberry Road, at the end of the Wildwood. There, you can walk downhill on Newberry (about 1.5 miles) to Highway 30 and a TriMet bus stop where you can pick the mud out of your boots while you wait for the ride back to town. For a shorter walk, bail off the Wildwood at many places between the 20 and 28 mile marks, heading downhill on firelanes or trails. You’ll end up at or near a TriMet bus stop on the highway.

The Wildwood’s a great walk for kids: level, runnable and so, so close to Portland neighborhoods. If you go, Marcy Houle’s book One City’s Wilderness is an indispensable guide. In print since the 1980s, it’s been updated in 2010 with new maps, full color photos of the birds and plants you’ll see, and great stories that explain the landscape you’ll pass through. The Forest Park Conservancy, a nonprofit advocacy group, leads frequent walks into the park, and offers interpretation, opportunities to help remove invasives or maintain trails, and a wealth of other information about the park.

Portland's Riches: Its Citizen Activists

This post first appeared on Powell's Books blog in December 2010.


Ivy Pullers at Marquam Nature Park on a wet November morning

 I've been writing about Portland for years.

Without gushing, let's just say Portland is one gorgeous setting in which to wake up each morning.

While I give props to volcanic eruptions, the Missoula Floods, and damp marine air for the riches they left behind here, overlaying these natural assets is something perhaps more intriguing: individual citizens whose passions and tenacity have shaped the city — fighting back proposed freeways, mucking garbage out of urban streams, righting toppled headstones in forgotten cemeteries...


They started with no more background or skill than many of us, and simply adopted a corner of town — and over the years, incrementally, have created urban treasures. I've met many of these people in my research and they are, I think, some of our most shining urban assets.

A citizen, the American Heritage Dictionary says, is "a person owing loyalty to and entitled by birth or naturalization to the protection of a state or nation."

Robin Jensen is a Portland citizen who hasn't just enjoyed the entitlements and joys of living in this beautiful corner of the country, but who has put a citizen's loyalty into actions that have resulted in two Portland places now celebrated by guidebook writers and meetup groups.

Robin's adopted nook in the city is a steep, deeply forested gulch in the West Hills called Marquam Nature Park. She got involved 18 years ago because of a neighbor, a then-82-year-old who in the 1970s had helped prevent the canyon's hillsides from being developed into a 600-unit apartment complex. She and other citizen activists had formed a nonprofit, the Friends of Marquam Park, knocked on doors for donations, and written grants to purchase the land. They raised $1 million ($4.9 million today), purchased about 120 acres, and gave the land to the City of Portland. It's the city's third-largest park (now at 176 acres), and the only park purchased by citizens and given to the city.

"I was just really impressed this was all citizen-led," Robin says. She didn't admire from afar, however, and right away began attending meetings of the Friends of Marquam Park. She laughs, "I soon found myself on the board. You start going to meetings, you're automatically a board member." She is now the board president.

Marquam Nature Park is not just a neighborhood greenspace but a regional treasure. Click here for a map. While it's a forest oasis in itself, its trails connect to Council Crest, the highest point in town, link to other trails ending at Willamette River beaches, and to the Wildwood Trail on which you can hike 30 miles into the hinterlands of Multnomah County.

The land's wild yet proximate beauty is part of what motivates Robin. "I love the park, because it's so close to downtown; to be able to get out into a secluded forest, safe, beautiful, home to a lot of wildlife... People's mental and physical health benefits from being in nature, and because the park is so close to the city, it provides these benefits for a lot of people."

Acquisition of land is the first but not last task of stewardship. And that's where citizens like you and I can contribute. At first, the Friends focused on trail maintenance, but in the last decade, the need for removal of invasive species like English ivy has brought in work crews from Hands-On Portland, AmeriCorps, and informal groups such as Trail Mix, a group of hiking friends started by Portlander Debbie Asakawa.

Debbie has recruited her group four times in the last several months to pull ivy. As a regular ivy puller on my own land, and one of Debbie's crewmembers, I recommend regular ivy pulling as satisfying on many levels:

• Physical: computer-puny arms get a workout
• Social: you get to laugh and chat with friends without consuming calories
• Spiritual: helping a forest fend back an invasive species feels so tangibly right... so much of our work is, how shall I say, not driven by need but by desires. Yet our forests are beautiful places that truly need help from people; it feels good to give them a hand, lifting off a burden they are not meant to be carrying
• Civic: if you're like me, you probably love your city, and it just feels good to give something back

In every city, some people see problems and shrug them away. Others see them and do something. Cities aren't inanimate collections of static places. They do change for the better with our attention; and for the worse with our apathy. It's not enough to be a resident of a city. We must be its citizens.

So bring a plastic bag and pick up trash each time you take a walk, sign up for some mornings of community service in your favorite park, join the board of a group whose work you care about, and revel in being a good citizen.

Poetry on the Block: Literary Posts Abound in Portland

This blog post and others I wrote in December 2010 first appeared on the Powell's Books Blog



Mike Ryerson, not letting a bit of rain get between himself and some poetry

 When stressed by money, people or deadlines, I take my feet into a Portland neighborhood and start walking. Soren Kierkegaard wrote, “Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness.” So true. I have Portlanders to thank for my relatively good mental health. I live in the forest just beyond the city’s limits, and many afternoons I leave my computer and kitchen to climb around in our woods, pruning saw in hand, cutting back dead limbs and toppling small trees shaded into death by our growing firs. I come back tired and peaceful. But walking in the city’s neighborhoods makes me laugh and come home optimistic and enthusiastic. At an observer’s pace, the small displays of human creativity seen on an urban walk stand up to make you smile: a chimney turned into a climbing wall, a tile lizard inviting you to sit and rest in a homeowner’s parking strip, and the poetry posts that are proliferating in yards around town—

A poem about rain, on rain-soaked paper

A few weeks ago Portland author Gabriel Boehmer emailed me about Portland’s poetry posts. Gabe wrote a book called City of Readers: The Book Lover's Guide to Portland and is tuned into Oregon poets and writers the same way I tune in to manhole covers and urban staircases.

A poetry post (or poetry pole or poetry box) is a wooden pole, usually, mounted on private property, so that it faces pedestrians. On top of the pole is a box, with a glass or clear face and a lid. Inside the box is a sheet of paper containing a poem (or, sometimes, prose or a photograph). Sometimes the pole is absent, the box mounted to a tree. That’s it.

Gabe and I went on a poetry post tour of his Grant Park neighborhood and passed a poem on NE 36th Avenue. “My daughter and I pass this post every day on our way to Grant Park. She wants to stop and read the poem so we always do.” She’s four; she’s reading poetry in a stranger’s yard with her dad. A magical memory, one she can pull from the depths when, at 49 or 54, she’s unable to sleep one night, wondering how to pay the college tuition bill and pondering other exigencies that cause a middle-aged person to reflect on life and choices. A memory to smooth the coming bumps.

After hearing about that post, Gabe’s wife Jennifer had a poetry post built in their yard as a birthday gift for him.

As we walked back to Gabe’s house, his neighbor Frank raked sodden leaves away from the curb. “I’m enjoying your poetry,” he told Gabe as his puppy attacked the rake. “Are you typing them on a typewriter?”

Gabe admitted he was, and then Frank revealed he and his wife had put the very first poem in, while Gabe was away on a trip. They had seen the new poetry post, still empty, and typed up the poem, “A Man is a Success,” that had been on the back of Frank’s dad’s funeral card. Someone had swiped the poem out of the box soon after, and both Gabe and Frank agreed that taking a poem from a poetry box was a fine thing.


Gabriel Boehmer placing a new poem in his poetry post


That’s the civilizing effect of poetry posts that Portlander Tony Pfannenstiel appreciates. His poetry box is located in Southwest Portland, atop a steep hill. I called Tony to ask why he installed a poetry box after reading his comments on the Google Group, “Portland Poetry Box.” 

I caught him while he was out walking his pug dog in the South Park Blocks. Tony was happy to talk, and I was delighted to hear his poetry box had a connection to my book Portland Hill Walks, which features a 152-step staircase next to his home. The success of that book has brought a lot of people, Tony says, up those stairs, where he installed the poetry box at the top to “offer people a chance to catch their breath and read something beautiful.” He talks of small gestures by citizens as a way for any of us to offer strangers a moment’s respite, free of charge, as a way to soften our rather harsh world. “It’s gratifying when I see seven or eight people holding your book, huddled around the tree, reading the poem aloud. It warms my heart!”

Tony changes the poems every few weeks and, like Gabe, focuses on Portland and Oregon poets with his own poems added to the mix at times.



Tony Pfannenstiel’s poetry box offers climbers of one of Portland’s most grueling staircases a reward for their exertions

The posts have a couple of nuclei: one in Northeast Portland, around Grant Park, and another in Southeast, on Mount Tabor. Matt Blair, a Portland programmer, is close to finishing an iPhone app that reveals the location of many Portland poetry posts.  The app is being developed in response to the City of Portland’s Civic Apps for Greater Portland contest to use public data to create user-friendly content. Matt’s Heritage Tree app won a Civic Apps award; it’s available free in the iTunes store.
The poetry post app will be interactive, so walkers encountering an unmapped post can photograph it and add its image and address to the universe of posts. Matt was approached by fellow Portlander Sue Gemmell, whose interest in mobile technology, communities and culture inspired her to start the Portland Poetry Box Google Group as a virtual gathering place for people to share ideas about poetry posts. Before Sue talked to Matt about her idea for a poetry post app, he says, "I hadn't even seen one; I didn’t even know it was a phenomenon that existed in Portland.” But he must have been the right man for the job, because even while talking on the phone about what he loves about the posts, Matt crafts little nuggets of distilled imagery.

“Poetry posts,” he says, “take poetry out of rarified places and into the places where people walk their dogs.” At a post he passes often, just east of NW 23rd Avenue on Kearney Street, Matt says, “I stop, then someone sees me reading it and stops. I leave and turn back and someone else has stopped. The posts create whirlpools of attention.”

Some posts are built by the homeowners but two Portlanders will build them to suit: Doug Trotter and John Milliken. Click here for a gallery of his posts.



A note left in a NE Portland poetry post



Graham Oaks: Take a walk in our newest park

THEN
A women’s prison or a National Guard vehicle maintenance facility: these were two options considered for what is now the 250-acre Graham Oaks Nature Park in Wilsonville. The land was once managed by native peoples with fire to create an open, rolling oak savanna. It's a habitat rare today in the Willamette Valley. With settlement, the land,  like most of the valley, was farmed. A wetland was tiled and drained to create more aerable land.

NOW
After acquisition by Metro, the land saw extensive restoration work such as:

• Water courses were restored, returning some of the acreage to its native wetland habitat.

• Six years worth of ivy removal has allowed an old growth Douglas fir forest soar again, unencumbered by this nasty hanger-on.

• One hundred million wild flower and grass seeds have been sown.

• One hundred fifty thousand oaks, pines, firs and native shrubs have been planted.

TO COME
Seeing this work in progress, of a land healing from monoculture and degradation, can be a little puzzling--there aren't a lot of spectacular oaks yet...but what is intriguing is the story of the place--what it was, how it was shaped, how it was damaged, and how it is being repaired. The next chapters are to be written, but visiting Graham Oaks now, and again in a few years, will be one of those walking experiences, I believe, in which optimism, hope for an improved future, will be what walkers take away.

Below the photos are links to a self-guided walking tour of Graham Oaks.

The Elder Oak and a newcomer to the neighborhoood




Rose hips in October; wild rose's thickety growth
makes great cover for small animals




Snowberry, native; in the honeysuckle family.
Birds like the fruit but it's
considered poisonous to humans.



Villebois: where cars are meant not to be seen or heard.
These houses hide the garages behind; they front on a large common green space, a shared front yard, with no street

  


5,000 pound basalt acorn reminds
visitors what it's all about at Graham Oaks

 




In the old growth forest; native basalt rockwork
like this harks back to the Cascadian style stonework
seen at Timberline, the Columbia River Highway
and sites where the WPA built roads, tunnels and bridges.

  
The land is dominated by one enormous lone oak, estimated at about 200 years, preserved by native peoples and left intact by farmers. Our grandchildren will have a harder time finding it, amid the thousands of trees that are beginning now to grow up around it.

Some land at Graham Oaks is being managed to return to oak savanna; other areas, more densely planted, will enlarge the existing oak woodland at one end of the park. Two areas I love on the site are the wetlands in the east; even in the dryest part of July, cool water created an oasis of deep green; another oasis of a different sort is in the southwest corner, where the cathedral of Douglas fir is a welcome sanctuary after the open savanna.

North of Graham Oaks and visible in the aerial shot, was Dammasch State Hospital, a psychiatric hospital from 1961 to 1996. Its grounds, seen in a 1960 aerial photo, are now the intriguing Villebois planned residential community, the largest in Oregon. Visit its website to see images of how dramatically the site has changed.

I wrote and narrated the audio tour for Metro, the Portland-area regional government that manages Graham Oaks. Download the 10 MP3 audio files of the audio tour to your computer or smart phone, and/or the printed script, along with a wonderful map by Metro at Metro's website, where you can also find info on other great natural areas acquired by voter-approved bond measures.

If you like the tour, let Metro know! This audio tour is a bit of an experiment; if there’s positive feedback, perhaps more will follow.

Aerial view of Graham Oaks: lone oak in center left; filbert orchard bottom right is now the park entrance.
 At the top, north of the lone oak, is the  Dammasch site, pre-Villebois.

Walking Old Roads

Old roads can live thousands of  years. The Via Appia, or Appian Way, heading south from Rome, was built 2000 years ago. It is still is trod and even driven in parts. Portland has its own roads—ancient by our standards-- that are still in use.

SE Stark Street was platted in the 1850s; it was then called Baseline Road, running along an east-west baseline (the Willamette Baseline) that, along with the north-south Willamette Meridian formed the basis for mapping and measuring all real property in Oregon and Washington. The legal description on your home’s deed or mortgage describes where your property lies in relation to these two lines. The baseline and meridian were mapped in 1851. They cross in Portland in the West Hills at Willamette Stone State Park.

For a steep walk up to the Willamette Stone State Park, see this link to a tough climb through forest and neighborhoods, with a killer stair climb to boot. 

Stark was the  main route into town from the east; along its length you can still find old stone mile markers (P2, P4) that indicate the number of miles from “P”—Portland’s Multnomah County Courthouse, according to http://starkstreetmarkers.blogspot.com/. The Courthouse, now known as the Pioneer Courthouse was built between 1869 and 1875. The stones, it is thought, date from the 1870s. A fellow lover of Portland trivia has created a great little blog about them.

The Stark Street Ferry was the final leg that brought travelers in to Portland. In the 1850s, it was just a few blocks along the Willamette. It was on the ferry landing in 1858 that Danford Balch shot his brand-new son-in-law, Mortimer Stump, because he had eloped with Anna Balch. Danford fled the scene, hid out in the woods along Balch Creek (now Forest Park) and was caught and hanged in 1859 at the site of today’s Salmon Street Springs. Balch Creek is named for him; he and his wife and children homesteaded along it.

The P2 marker in the wall of Lone Fir Cemetery in Portland

Stairs to Love

It's raining so it's a good day to walk. Why? Because chances are it's going to stop soon and it'll be you, the mist, the trees and maybe a rainbow. But if you hate cold and damp, there are still good places to explore. These are four of my favorite Portland indoor public places, clockwise from top left:

Portland City Hall
The Pioneer Courthouse's cupola
Multnomah County Library's Central Library
The Portland Armory, now home to Portland Center Stage.

I write about them in The Portland Stairs Book. Yes, you have to walk outside to get to all of them, but that's what food carts and coffee shops are for. Enjoy November.

Swan Island Beaches

An Urban River Walk

When I tell people I like to walk on Swan Island’s beaches they usually think I’m talking about Sauvie Island and the conversation gets a little convoluted when I start talking about factories and Forest Park views…but then we get straightened out and they’re intrigued. You will be too if you appreciate a marginal place, one steeped in local history. A beach walk on Swan Island takes you along that thin urban margin, that permeable border between water and land, industry and nature, beauty and abuse.

Best place to access the beach is just beyond the vast sea of parking next to Daimler’s headquarters (formerly signed as Freightliner). Don’t park there; it’s a private lot. A bus (the 72 or 85) will drop you off or you can bike downhill to Swan Island via Failing Street.

Along the way, last week we found: half dozen fisherman fishing for sturgeon, a sandy beach, rocks to hop on, enormous driftwood trees to tightrope on, plenty of intriguing garbage and flotsam (bring a big plastic bag to pack some out and make a treasure hunt out of the walk), big views across the river of Forest Park and downtown. There’s a nice walkway on the bank above the beach; it’s clean and paved, and is part of the npGREENWAY, an envisioned pathway between the St. Johns Bridge and the Steel Bridge.

Best time to go is when water levels are low, but it was still walkable last week. We came home with two tennis balls, shells, pretty driftwood (my 8 year old was along) and two Douglas fir disks, cut about 3 inches thick, perfect for some future project. We dropped a huge bag of surprisingly light trash in the garbage (Styrofoam, mostly) and had a splendid time.

If you want to learn more about Swan Island's history and take a longer walk linking up to the very cool Kenton downtown, see my book Portland City Walks.

MAX Exploration No. 2: Historic Gresham

Looking for a mini-exploration? Take the MAX to downtown Gresham. Here's what you'll find in this former agricultural center, now Oregon's fourth largest town:

• a compact, charming urban center that’s fun to explore
• an art deco high school with a Timberline Lodge connection
• a bookstore, toy store, coffee shops, restaurants including a branch of Nicholas restaurant (of Portland fame)
• an old Carnegie library (now the Gresham History Museum) that looks like Cromwell could’ve studied there
• a brand new, blocksize Arts Plaza, which makes a great place to relax in a quiet setting
• a living link in Oregon’s agricultural history; plan a visit when the Gresham Farmers Market is operating May through October on Saturdays; it's at 3rd and Miller downtown.

Details:
> Get there via the Blue Line MAX
> Bring money for food, drink, shopping
> The walk is flat, on sidewalks
> Bring your bike aboard MAX and bike the 16 miles back to downtown Portland on the Springwater Trail

Directions:
Take the MAX Blue Line to the stop at Gresham City Hall. In the complex north of the MAX tracks just about everything official in Gresham takes place from fire to schools to arts. Across the tracks a large shopping mall occupies the former site of a mill and log pond.

Walk east across Eastman Parkway on a marked crosswalk north of the MAX tracks. It leads to a path that ends at 12th Avenue and Victoria Street. Walk a few shaded blocks; pretty homes date generally from the 1920s.

At N. Main Avenue is the Art Deco Gresham High School, built in 1940, near the end of the Great Depression. Go over for a closer look. Ironwork at the doors (and visible inside the auditorium if you peer through the doors) is the work of O. B. Dawson, who was responsible for the spectacular ironwork at Timberline Lodge. An interior view is at the head of this blog post. Dawson also did the work at McMenamin’s Chapel Pub (once a mortuary) on NE Killingsworth Street in Portland.

Fun to study are the bas-relief sculptures of athletes above the gymnasium entrance. Also beautiful are the two large gingko trees at the front entrance. Gingko trees are either male or female. While the female's fruits are edible (and grown commercially in China), they're encased in an incredibly smelly little package. These trees likely would not have reached their advanced age if they had been females. Gresham keeps track of its significant trees; find their locations on the City's website.

About 1700 students are enrolled at Gresham High; this school is one of three high schools in the Gresham Barlow School District. I assume the "Gresham Union High School" sign refers to its incorporation of outlying, smaller schools into this one building at the time of construction.

Gresham’s Train History
From the school, walk south on Main. Cross the MAX tracks. Here ran an interurban line starting in 1908 from Portland’s Montavilla area to Gresham and beyond, ending at the confluence of the Bull Run and Sandy rivers. A connecting line ran north to Troutdale. With the line to Portland, a six hour horse and buggy trip was reduced to a 50 minute trolley ride. Students rode the trolley from east county farms to high school in Gresham. Portlanders would use the line to head out to fish along the Bull Run River.

The tracks from Gresham to Bull Run were pulled up in 1930. The rail line, after it ceased carrying commuters, carried freight until the 1980s.

(The Springwater rail line—now the Springwater Corridor, is 25 miles of car free biking; it intersects Main’s dead-end, about six or so blocks south of here.)

Berry era
Gresham was known once as the “Raspberry Capital of the World.” Around 1915, a new commercial crop was introduced to east county farmers: raspberries. Along much of the current light rail line through downtown, storage buildings date from Gresham’s fruit processing heyday, the 1920s to the 1960s. Along 8th Street farmers unloaded boxes of berries picked by children, housewives, students, and delivered them for processing at the Gresham Berry Growers Cannery. It was run by the Gresham Co-op, which at one time numbered over 500 growers. There were other processing plants too. Processed berries were shipped to markets in Portland and beyond via rail car. Over the years, the cannery and processing plants expanded into beans, broccoli, corn and cauliflower. By 1960, 18 million pounds of produce were processed here. In 1965, times were changing: there were issues with sewage and waste disposal with the city, and encroaching suburbia was transforming former berry lands. Also, some growers were transitioning into higher-value nursery stock. By 1965, the co-op merged with what became Stayton Canning Company, packing under the Flav-R-Pac label and moved out of the area. (It is now part of NORPAC, founded in 1924 as North Pacific Canners and Packers.)

Old Downtown Gresham & the Multnomah County Fairgrounds
Keep walking south on Main past old houses, now businesses on Main’s east side. At 5th and Main, a line of trees marks the former main entrance to the Multnomah County Fairgrounds, here from 1908 to 1969. The fairgrounds extended west from Main. In 1976 the 50 acres were sold to the Foursquare Church which built the building at 701 N. Main Avenue. In 1985, the church sold 35 acres; the land is now the Gresham Town Fair, a shopping center, with acres of ground swathed in asphalt.

Pass the 1928 Zion Evangelical Church, now a store.

Across 4th from it is the Tudor-style Gresham Library, built in 1913, one of over 2,500 libraries worldwide funded by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation.
It’s faced in a beautiful burned brick. The architect is Folger Johnson of Portland; one of his most notable buildings is the Town Club, a private women’s club on SW Salmon Street in Portland. He also designed some of Portland’s Carnegie libraries, such as the one in Lair Hill (now owned by Portland Parks).

Look for its series of leaded glass colophon windows. In book publishing, the colophon is a note about the typeface. A less frequent use of the term is for a printer's mark or logotype. In Renaissance-era printing shops, a title page would feature the printer's mark (colophon) near the bottom of the page, usually above the printer's name and city. These marks are what are seen here.

The library was replaced in 1990 by a new library at 3rd and Miller. Now this lovely building is the Gresham History Museum, open 12 to 4 p.m., Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Inside, above the door is a WPA-era sculpture similar to those on the high school exterior but made of plaster of Paris and horse hair, on a steel frame.

Keep walking south on Main and enjoy the many shops and places to nosh. Buildings date from 1909 (323 N. Main) to 1926 (336 N. Main) to 1930 (229 S. Main). Detour right at 2nd to Dakota Books if you want to browse. It’s at 30 NW 2nd.

Powell and Main: The Heart of Old Gresham
Wander further down Main to Powell Boulevard, the core of Gresham’s history, where two pioneer paths intersected:

• The north-south Damascus Road (now Main Avenue) ran between Fairview to Damascus and Oregon City.
• The east-west Powell’s Valley Road (now Powell Boulevard) ran between Sandy and Portland.

The two roads crossed in a blocklong union near Johnson Creek (the creek is just south of this intersection in Main City Park); that crossing became the center of the village.

There was once a fountain in the middle of this intersection, with a statue of liberty atop it. Similar to downtown Portland’s elk statue at SW Main between 3rd and 4th Avenues (installed 1900), this one served to water thirsty horses. In 1920s, when the road was being paved for cars, the fountain was deemed a hazard and torn out. Ironically, that sort of traffic calming device is now installed at intersections to make roads safer.

Businesses once lined the south side of Powell. They were set on pilings, because the land was a floodplain. Beyond Johnson Creek is Gresham Butte, an 840-foot high Boring lava dome. Metro acquired 140 acres on it to preserve as a greenspace. Click the link for a hike on the butte.

At this intersection don’t miss a Murdock Manufacturing drinking fountain. It’s the rare solid metal object still made in the U.S.A., in Cincinnati by the same family that has been making fountains for five generations. Enjoy some cool Bull Run water, not far from the source.

From Main and Powell, walk one block east to Roberts Avenue; turn left and then right on 2nd.
At 108 NE 2nd is Dr. Corine Trullinger Chamberlin’s office, built in 1942. Dr. Chamberlin tried to attend the University of Oregon’s medical school but it admitted few if any women. She went instead to the Women’s Medical College in Pennsylvania, returning to Oregon to purchase a retiring doctor’s practice in 1937. Dr. Chamberlin was beloved for her concern not only for the physical health of her patients but for their mental and spiritual health too (her husband was a pastor of the Pleasant Home United Methodist Church). As many as 25 patients would wait at any given time to see her. She delivered more than 5,000 babies. She died in 1981.

Walking east, Selma’s Bakery and Deli, at 184 NE 2nd, looks good, but I didn’t try it.

At SE Hood, enter the Center for the Arts Plaza, a park new in summer 2009. This outdoor living room, a la Pioneer Courthouse Square, is broad and open, the former site of a bus parking facility. A lone Ponderosa pine predates this latest incarnation of the landscape. An arts building is planned for the plaza's east side. Summer 2010 events include Monday noontime brownbag concerts and more. See the Gresham Center for the Arts for events.

To end the walk, walk north on Hood Avenue to the Gresham Central Transit Center and board a train to head home or ride your bike south on Main to Gresham Main City Park where you can jump on the Springwater Trail and head west to Portland.

MAX and the Mountain: Riding the MAX Green Line to a Mt. Talbert Hike

In my years of exploring so many great places in the Portland area I've discovered it's easy to scratch the explorer’s itch without a long drive.

This hike is green in more ways than one: leave your car behind, and hop on your bike or MAX to get to 200 forested, mountainous acres. You’ll very likely be amazed at the beauty that exists just a yodel away from Clackamas Town Center.

This hike takes you from transit stop to wilderness in a surprisingly short time. It illustrates beautifully the benefits of preserving close-in greenspaces.

Details

• Find a map at http://library.oregonmetro.gov/files/talbert_map_web.pdf. Another map link, slightly different, is at the end of the post.

• Restrooms are in Clackamas Town Center at the walk's start/end and on Mt. Talbert at the Mather trailhead (south side).

• Elevation gain is about 550 feet: 200 feet at the end of the MAX Green Line, and 750 feet at the top of Mount Talbert. Route length varies depending on how much of Mt. Talbert you explore. It's one mile from the Green Line to the entrance to Mt. Talbert.

• Eating and drinking places abound at Clackamas Town Center.

• The hike is muddy in winter and spring; I recommend keeping your shoes clean by doing it barefoot.
  
  Directions
  Start anywhere MAX runs and get yourself to the MAX Green Line. http://trimet.org/maxgreenline/routemap.htm. The I-205 Bike Path runs along the Green Line's route, so you could bike to the start of this hike instead of taking MAX. The 11-mile I-205 bike path is maintained by ODOT, and was built in the 1980s. It’s the antithesis of scenic, but it’s flat and gets you out there efficiently. The Green Line ends at Clackamas Town Center, right on the I-205 bike path. More on CTC at the end of the trek.
  
  From the Clackamas Town Center MAX stop, it’s one mile to the entrance to Mt. Talbert. Walk or bike south on the bike path. Cross Sunnyside Road at the crosswalk and continue south on the path. Cross Sunnybrook Road and turn left on it (east). Cross over I-205. Turn right at 97th and left at the first left, Talbert Street. Go to its dead-end, an entrance into the Mt. Talbert forest.
  
  Before you enter the park, scrape your feet on the boot scraper: this is one of the most ivy-free places around, and helping keep seeds out (which can ride in the cracks of shoe soles) will keep it free of ivy and other invasives.
  
  From this entrance, one of several, follow the trails to the summit. At each intersection they’re marked. One trail seen on the maps, the North Loop Trail, is closed because when the land was surveyed and trails laid out, parts of this trail were mistakenly thought to be within the park. Metro and the North Clackamas Parks and Recreation District are working to acquire more land to bring this trail totally within the park. It is signed now as "Closed."
  
  Seen and heard on a rainy but balmy February day:
  
  On the West Ridge Trail: this trail is noisy, being the closest to I-205. Hundreds of slender young Douglas fir trees rise above a green groundcover of lacy sword fern, reminding me of the 7-year old legs of my classmates and me, rising skinny and straight above our fringed white anklets in our First Holy Communion photo. The area was last logged in the 1950s.

Siberian miner’s lettuce, a food reputedly consumed by starving goldminers in California.

Soft paths, ideal for running barefoot. I’ve run barefoot this winter in temps as low as the 40s, on trails in the West Hills. Try it! Until things dry out, the fir cones are squishy, little branches in the path saturated, and the muddy trails allow your toes to dig in and grab a bit of the earth. It’s one way to strip it down and be a child again. But beware: I didn't see it in February but poison oak is rampant, according to Tonia Burns, Natural Resources Coordinator with North Clackamas Parks and Recreation. She says they cut it back regularly but...if you're worried, the barefoot idea/with shorts may be best saved for a place without the poison.

Girdled Douglas firs. Girdling (cutting through the cambium layer) kills select trees so the slower-growing Oregon white oak can thrive here. Native
Americans managed many of the Willamette Valley forests similarly, but by burning the firs, creating vast savannahs of oak and grass.

A bridge over Mt. Scott Creek. It flows into Kellogg Creek just below North Clackamas Park. Kellogg Creek flows into the Willamette at downtown Milwaukie. For photos of Mt. Scott Creek's headwaters and confluence with Phillips Creek, see http://www.ncuwc.org/content/mt-scott-creek-sub-watershed-photo-gallery

Visit the park again with Metro naturalist and Portland author James Davis on Saturday May 15 from 9:30 a.m. to noon. He’ll talk about the songbirds of Mount Talbert (chestnut-backed chickadee, pileated woodpecker, olive-sided flycatcher, red-breasted sapsuckers and more). Register at North Clackamas Parks and Recreation or call 503.794.8092. James says about the park, “It is awesome for mushrooms in the fall. Another fungus fan here at work and I have a list of about 75 different species so far.” For more info on James's hike, see http://www.oregonmetro.gov/greenscene. Metro has another link, of a map and text for a Mt. Talbert exploration at http://library.oregonmetro.gov/files/mounttalbert.pdf

Come down off the mountain and back to suburbia at Clackamas Town Center. See http://www.clackamastowncenter.com/dining-entertainment for restaurants in and around the mall. Clackamas Town Center opened in 1981 with an ice rink where Tonya Harding practiced on her trajectory toward the 1991 World Figure Skating Championship, at age 21, and her later debacle at the 1994 Olympics, a night which ranks as one of the most memorable evenings I have ever spent in front of the television. The rink closed in 2003.