Washington Park, Portland

Washington Park is a public urban park in Portland, Oregon. Its features include a zoo, forestry center, arboretum, children's museum, amphitheatre, archery range, tennis courts, and many acres of wild forest with miles of trails. The park has 129.51 acres (52.41 hectares) on mostly steep, wooded hillsides which range in elevation from 200 feet (61 m) at 24th & W Burnside to 870 feet (265 m) at SW Fairview Blvd.

History

The City of Portland purchased the original convert|40.78|acre|m2 in 1871 for $32,624: a controversially high price for the time. [cite web | title = Washington Park | publisher = Portland Parks and Recreation | url = http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/finder/index.cfm?action=ViewPark&PropertyID=841 | accessdate = 2006-11-22] The area, designated "City Park", was wilderness with few roads: Thick brush, trees and roaming cougar discouraged access. In the mid-1880s, Charles M. Meyers was hired as park keeper. A former seaman without landscape training, he transformed the park by drawing on memories of his native Germany and European parks. By 1900, there were roads, trails, landscaped areas with lawns, manicured hedges, flower gardens, and a zoo. Cable cars were added in 1890 and operated until the 1930s.

In 1903, John Charles Olmsted of Olmsted Brothers, a nationally known landscape architecture firm, recommended several changes to the park including the present name, location of the entrance, separate roads and pedestrian paths, and replacement of formal gardens with native species. The name was officially changed from City Park to Washington Park in 1909. [cite web | title = Summary of park's board minutes 1901-1920 | publisher = Portland Parks and Recreation | url = http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/index.cfm?c=djehd&a=jfjfg | accessdate = 2006-11-22]

When the county poor farm closed in 1922, the convert|160|acre|km2 were added to Washington Park.

Portland's zoo was founded in Washington Park in 1887 near where the reservoirs are presently located. It moved in 1925 to what is now the Japanese Garden, and moved again in 1959 to its present location at the park's southern edge.

Notable features

* The Oregon Zoo contains more than a thousand animals of more than 200 species (including 21 endangered species) in natural or semi-natural habitats are on display. The zoo is the world's most successful Asian elephant breeding program and home to Packy, the largest example of the species in the U.S.
[
Portland, Oregon high rises of Mount Hood from Washington Park amphitheatre]

* The International Rose Test Garden is the oldest official, continuously-operated, public rose test garden in the United States. It currently displays more than 7,000 rose plants of more than 500 varieties.

* The Portland Japanese Garden is a convert|5.5|acre|m2|sing=on private traditional Japanese garden. It is the top ranked Japanese garden outside Japan of the 300 such gardens studied by The Journal of Japanese Gardening.

* The Hoyt Arboretum contains nearly 10,000 individual trees and shrubs of 1,100 species on convert|185|acre|km2. It was founded in 1928 and today there are many mature species.

* The World Forestry Center offers educational exhibits on forests and forest-related subjects. It was founded in 1906. Permanent exhibits explore the traits of forests around the world. Transient exhibits have featured art (usually related to nature), ecology, wildlife, and woodcrafts.

* The Oregon Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in 1987 to honor Oregonians who gave their lives or who are missing in action.

* The Portland Children's Museum moved to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry's former building in 2001

* The Washington Park station is the only underground stop on the MAX Light Rail system and at convert|260|ft|m below ground is the deepest transit station in North America.

The veterans memorial, zoo, children's museum, and the forestry center surround a large parking lot containing the MAX station in the southern portion of the park. The arboretum is located just to the north of these and the gardens are in the northeast section of the park. Trails part of the 40 Mile Loop connect Washington Park with Pittock Mansion and Forest Park to the north and Council Crest to the south.

* The Rose Garden Children's Park was completed in 1995 with $2 million in donations.

* The Oregon Holocaust Memorial was dedicated on August 29, 2004 to the ALL victims of World War II.

* The Washington Park and Zoo Railroad is a 1950s-era scale railroad carrying passengers between the Rose Garden end of the park and the zoo during the summer months. At other times of the year it operates only within the zoo.

Statues and fountains

* The Lewis and Clark Memorial was dedicated by President Theodore Roosevelt on May 21, 1903 to honor the discovery of the northwest by the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

* Coming of White Man is bronze statue of two Native Americans, one depicting Chief Multnomah. Sculpted by Herman A. MacNeil in 1904 and donated by the heirs of David P. Thompson. It faces east along the Oregon Trail.

* Sacajawea is a statue of the famed Shoshone native American woman who guided the Lewis and Clark Expedition through the mountains. A massive bronze and copper piece unveiled on July 7, 1905 at the Lewis and Clark centennial, it was sculpted by Denver resident Alice Cooper and cast in New York. It was the first U.S. statue to feature a woman.Fact|date=February 2007

* The Chiming Fountain, also referred to as The Washington Park Fountain is named for the sound the falling water makes. It is an ornate concrete, bronze and iron fountain with gargoyles. It was created in 1891 by Swiss artisan woodcarver Hans Staehli in the style of a renaissance fountain.

In 2001 a memorial bench and plaque were created to honor Portland born John Reed. The plaque has a quotation by Reed on his native city:

Portlanders understand and appreciate how differently beautiful is this part of the world—the white city against the deep evergreen of the hillls, the snow mountains to the east, the everchanging river and its boat life—and the grays, blues and greens, the smoke dimmed sunsets and pearly hazes of August, so characteristric of the Pacific Northwest. You don’t have to point out these things to our people. Walters, I think, paints them with more affection and understanding than they have yet been painted.

References

External links

* [http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/finder/index.cfm?action=ViewFile&PolPdfsID=88&/WashingtonPark_map.pdf Map (as pdf)]
* [http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/finder/index.cfm?action=ViewPark&PropertyID=841 City of Portland Parks information]