Washington Park (Portland, Oregon)

Sign at Washington Park

Washington Park main entrance

Washington Park is a public urban park in Portland, Oregon, USA. It includes a zoo, forestry museum, arboretum, children's museum, rose garden, Japanese garden, amphitheatre, memorials, archery range, tennis courts, soccer field, picnic areas, playgrounds, public art and many acres of wild forest with miles of trails. Washington Park covers more than 410 acres (166 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. It comprises 159.7 acres (64.63 hectares) of city park land that has been officially designated as "Washington Park" by the City of Portland,^[1] as well as the adjacent 64 acre Oregon Zoo and the 187 acre Hoyt Arboretum, which together make up the area described as "Washington Park" on signs and maps.^[2]

History

Garden near north entrance

A blossoming tree at night in Washington park.

The City of Portland purchased the original 40.78 acres (16.5 hectares) in 1871 from Amos King for $32,624, a controversially high price for the time.^[3][4] 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.^[5]

When the county poor farm closed in 1922, the 160 acres (64.75 hectares) 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. The only surviving structure from the old zoo is the elephant barn, now converted into a picnic shelter and decorated with tile mosaic of various animals and a life-size brick relief sculpture of an elephant and calf.

Notable features

View eastward of Mount Hood from Washington Park amphitheatre

• Washington Park has over 15 miles (24 km) of trails, some of which are part of the 40-Mile Loop connecting Washington Park with Pittock Mansion and Forest Park to the north and Council Crest to the south.
• The Oregon Zoo contains more than 2,000 animals of more than 250 species (including 21 endangered species) in natural or semi-natural habitats.^[6] The zoo has a notable Asian elephant breeding program and is home to Packy, the largest example of the species in the USA.
• The Washington Park Amphitheater hosts many public concerts, including the Washington Park Summer Festival, an annual free concert series normally presented in the first two weeks of August.^[7]

The International Rose Test Garden

• The International Rose Test Garden is the oldest official, continuously-operated, public rose test garden in the United States. It displays more than 7,000 rose plants of more than 500 varieties. It includes a Shakespeare garden within its boundaries, as well as an alpine garden at its southern end.
• The Rose Garden Children's Park is a playground that was completed in 1995 with $2 million in donations. It includes a large, colorful play structure designed to accommodate all children, including those with disabilities. Adjacent to the Children's Park is the Elephant House picnic shelter, converted from the old zoo's elephant barn.

The World Forestry Center Discovery Museum

• The Portland Japanese Garden is a 5.5-acre (2.2 ha) private traditional Japanese garden. It is the most highly ranked Japanese garden in North America of more than 300 such gardens rated by experts from The Journal of Japanese Gardening in 2013.^[8]

Les AuCoin Plaza above the Washington Park MAX station

• The Oregon Holocaust Memorial was dedicated on August 29, 2004, to the victims of the Holocaust.^[9]
• The World Forestry Center Discovery Museum offers educational exhibits on forests and forest-related subjects. It was founded in 1906 in the Forestry Building of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Northwest Portland, and later established in Washington Park in 1971. Permanent exhibits explore the traits of forests around the world. Temporary exhibits have featured art (usually related to nature), ecology, wildlife and woodcrafts.
• The Washington Park station is located beneath Les AuCoin Plaza, a scenic xeriscaped brick and stone terraced plaza located between the zoo and the World Forestry Center. The Washington Park Station is the only underground stop on the MAX Light Rail system and at 260 feet (79 m) below ground is the deepest transit station in North America.^[10] The station is accessed by four high-speed elevators.
• Hoyt Arboretum contains nearly 10,000 individual trees and shrubs of 1,100 species on 187 acres (75.68 hectares) and was founded in 1928.

Oregon Vietnam Veterans Memorial

• The Oregon Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in 1987 to honor Oregonians who were killed or missing in action.
• The Portland Children's Museum, founded in 1946, moved into the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry's former building in 2001.
• The Washington Park & Zoo Railway is a 1950s-era, 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) narrow gauge railroad carrying passengers on a 2-mile (3.2 km) line between the Rose Garden and the zoo during summer months as well as on weekends starting in mid-April. At other times of the year it operates only within the zoo.

The veterans memorial, zoo, children's museum, forestry center and the MAX station surround a large parking lot in the southwestern portion of the park. The arboretum is located just to the north of these. The gardens, amphitheater, playgrounds and the Holocaust Memorial are in the northeast section of the park.

Statues and fountains

Sacajawea and Jean-Baptiste

• The Lewis and Clark Memorial Column was dedicated by President Theodore Roosevelt on May 21, 1903, to honor the discovery of the northwest by the Lewis and Clark Expedition.^[9]
• Coming of the White Man is a bronze statue of two Native Americans, one depicting Chief Multnomah. Sculpted by Hermon Atkins MacNeil in 1904 and donated by the heirs of David P. Thompson.^[9] It faces east along the Oregon Trail.
• Sacajawea and Jean-Baptiste 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.^[9][11]
• Chiming Fountain, also referred to as Washington Park Fountain, is so-called because of the sound the falling water makes. It is an ornate concrete, bronze and iron fountain with gargoyles. It was created in 1891 by the Swiss artisan woodcarver Hans Staehli in the style of a Renaissance fountain.^[9]

Chiming Fountain

• Loyal B. Stearns Memorial Fountain, erected in 1941 in honor of the former Oregon judge Loyal B. Stearns, is located in the northeastern corner of Washington Park, just south of Burnside Street.^[12]
• Frank E. Beach Memorial Fountain (officially titled Water Sculpture), a stainless steel fountain located in the Rose Garden, was designed and built by Oregon artist Lee Kelly and dedicated in 1975.^[13]

In 2001, a memorial bench and plaque north of the Lewis and Clark Memorial were created to honor the Portland born journalist 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 hills, 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 characteristic 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.^[14]

Public access

TriMet's Washington Park Shuttle

The Washington Park light rail station provides regional public transit access to the park's west end, including the Oregon Zoo. Seasonal public transit service within the park is provided by TriMet's line 83-Washington Park Loop (service launched in 1999^[15] and was formerly called the Washington Park Shuttle), which operates from May through October, running seven days a week from June through Labor Day (early September) and otherwise on weekends.^[16] Line 83 connects with MAX light rail at the Washington Park station and with MAX and other bus routes in the area of Providence Park.^[17] Additionally, bus route 63-Washington Park, which runs on weekdays only but year-round, serves stops at the west and east ends of the park (including at the Rose Gardens and Japanese Garden), but does not pass through most of the park.^[18] The northeastern corner of the park, at NW 23rd Place and W. Burnside, is served by bus route 20-Burnside/Stark, which runs seven days a week.^[19]

See also

• Peacock in the Park

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Washington Park.

• Map of Washington Park
• City of Portland Parks information

Coordinates: 45°31′01″N 122°42′21″W / 45.517°N 122.70585°W / 45.517; -122.70585