Mount Tabor, Portland, Oregon

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Mt. Tabor Reservoir

Mount Tabor is an extinct volcanic cinder cone, surrounded by a city park, surrounded by a neighborhood, in the Southeast section of Portland, Oregon. The name refers to Mount Tabor, Israel.

1 The cinder cone
2 The park
3 The neighborhood
4 External links

[edit] The cinder cone

This cinder cone is one of at least three in the city, along with Rocky Butte and Powell Butte. The crater is located in the northwest part of the park. Half of the cone has been cut away (now housing a basketball court and outdoor ampitheater) and the cinders were used to pave the nearby parking lot. Mt. Tabor now contains a permanent exhibit of the volcanic cone.

The Tabor cinder cone is part of the Boring Lava Field, an extensive network of cinder cones and small shield volcanoes dating to the Plio-Pleistocene era.

Portland is one of only two cities in the continental U.S. to have an extinct volcano within its boundaries; the other city is Bend, Oregon with Pilot Butte. The volcanic features of Mt. Tabor became known in 1912, years after it was included in a public park.

[edit] The park

196-acre (0.79-km²) Mt. Tabor Park (1909) is known for its six reservoirs, three of which were accepted to the National Register of Historic Places in January 2004. Its elevation and central location relative to the city of Portland made this an ideal place for the city to house a water supply from the Bull Run Reservoir. The Mt. Tabor reservoirs were built during the period of 1894 and 1911 and, along with their gatehouses, are artistically constructed, incorporating extensive stonework and wrought-iron.

Mt. Tabor Park also features a Depression-era sculpture by Gutzon Borglum (of Mt. Rushmore fame) representing Harvey Scott, long time editor of The Oregonian.

[edit] The neighborhood

**Mt. Tabor, Portland, Oregon**
Neighborhood representation
Association	Mt. Tabor Neighborhood Association
Coalition	Southeast Uplift Neighborhood Program
Neighborhood geography
Area	4.14 km² (PDF map)
Location	Interactive map
Demographics (2000)
Population	10037 (density 2424/km²)
Households	4316 (96% occupied)
Owned	2808 (65%)
Rented	1508 (35%)
Size	2.33 persons (average)

The Mt. Tabor neighborhood lies between SE 49th Ave. (SE 50th Ave. south of SE Hawthorne Blvd.) on the west and SE 76th Ave. on the east, and between E Burnside St. on the north and SE Division St. on the south. It borders Sunnyside and Richmond on the west, the Center Neighborhood on the north and west, Montavilla on the north and east, and South Tabor on the south.

Mt. Tabor Park is the neighborhood's principal feature. The campus of Warner Pacific College (affiliated with the Church of God [Anderson]) is also located here, just south of the park. The neighborhood also marks the eastern end of the Hawthorne District.

Before becoming part of Portland in 1905, Mt. Tabor was a rural farming community dating back to the 1850s. It became a city-recognized neighborhood (encompassing a far smaller area than its historical boundaries) in 1974.[1]