Historic Portland Maps: 1866 Portland Map

The last in this particular era of maps, this survey map highlights the tracing of ‘disappeared streams’ throughout the urban area, which requires research and layering of a number of historical maps onto the modern urban form. One map that has some interesting waterways is a Map of the City of Portland, Surveyed and drawn by order of the Common Council, By C.W. Burrage, City Surveyor, 1866.



This map traces a detailed route of Tanner Creek, the waterway that meandered through modern-day Downtown and Pearl District, through the Northwest Industrial area that was occupied by Couch Lake. The ‘lake’ which was mostly a fen, or wetland, is located in a parcel (marked J.H. Couch), but the boundaries are not delineated. There are some other maps that exist showing the boundaries, which will be layered in as well.



Another interesting waterway is along the east bank, originating in at the intersection of B & C Streets, at 5th Street. The modern location of this would be around the outfall of Sullivan’s Gulch (around the I-84/I-5 connection)… the forked creek meanders through the Central Eastside area, outletting at the Water Street at ‘J’ Street (presently Water at Oak – along the Eastbank Esplanade).



The other interesting feature was the location of the Lunatic Asylum Grounds in Southeast Portland. The location of this facility is somewhere between Ladd’s Addition and the Central Eastside Industrial District… showing that SE has always been the locus of the ‘Keep Portland Wierd’ idea.

Historic Portland Maps: 1852 Cadastral Maps

Probably the most detailed and broad ranging of these early maps are from the collection from the Public Land Survey System (or Cadastral Maps). These were generated throughout the 1850s in the Portland metro region, with the main portion of Portland encompassed in two maps, which were obviously the base material for the 1852 Survey Map, as it contains much of the same data.





Zooming in a bit on the area of current downtown Portland, we see the nascent grid forming along 'The Clearing', and see the edge of the Tualatin Mountains (West Hills) to the west, even a trail leading toward Beaverton through a slot in the Canyon where Highway 26 west (Sunset Highway) runs. On the east side of the river is the lowland marsh and streams that were subsequently filled to create the Central Eastside Industrial area. Within the Willamette River to the south, Ross Island is intact, well before the constant sand and gravel mining operations left it a ribbon of it's former self.



The detail is pretty awesome, as you really get a feel for some of the drainages that existed, still in visible dendritic forms making sub-watersheds. This section also shows the routing of a 'road' that connected to Milwaukie and Tualatin to the south.



The northern section captures the upper reaches of Downtown, as well as the current Pearl district and Northwest Industrial Zone. Closer to downtown, the original routing of Tanner Creek is made evident by it's headwaters at the 'Tannery' adjacent to the road to the Tualatin Plains. This fed Couch Lake, a wetland adjacent to the Willamette that is currently the location of Tanner Springs Park, a metaphorical daylighting of this lowland. Finally, in the pre-bridge era, the location of ferry crossings connecting east and west are shown



Another notable items on the upper west includes Guilds Lake, a significant water body that was the site of the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted - which was later filled to create flat industrial land as it exists today.


:: image via Portland History

Taking a closer look at the northernmost section you see the level of detail shown in the marshy edge of the Columbia River called on the map 'Columbia Bayou' and some of the earliest low-density riverfront inhabitation.



I really love this map for many reasons, but the fact that it is referenced to the township, section, range mapping convention, making it easy to use as an underlayment for modern mapping to show a pre-development (or at least early development snapshot of Portland context). It also shows a relatively wide span of the region, making it useful beyond the boundaries of Portland.

I have created a few of these maps over the years which I will post when I get a chance). My ultimate goal is to reconcile these into a graphical layer in GIS that can be used for mapping analyses... any grad students out there want a project? (Find many of these maps from this post and the previous ones at the great City of Portland Publications and Maps Page)

Historic Portland Maps: 1852 Downtown Survey

A focused companion in the same vintage as the 1852 Survey Map (which includes the entire city area) comes from the early Portland 1852 Downtown Survey, a more detailed account encompassing the downtown area adjacent to the Willamette River (oriented with north to the right). One interesting pattern is the street grid running right into the waterfront – as the river was the hub of commerce and building hung right over the water. As the city evolved this interface with the river lefts some interesting patterns which became a highway, and eventually the current Waterfront Park.



A couple of early creek corridors are shown on the south portion of downtown, originating at SW Jefferson Street and winding down SW Columbia to 3rd. There’s another stream originating from Mill Street and continuing southward. I've been mesmerized for years with the idea of these 'disappeared streams' that were later buried under the developed downtown grid.



And the form that continues through of the park blocks, in this form continuing from SW Clay to SW Stark. This is a pattern of park blocks that continues north and south as shown in the 1866 Map (look for this in an upcoming post). I’m curious where in the development pattern the North and South Park blocks were severed.

Historic Portland Maps: 1852 Survey Map

Following up on the previous post, one of my all time favorite maps is the reproduction of the 1852 Survey Map offers not only development and trails, but information on soils, disappeared streams, topographic and other natural features. The map used to be available via a link to the BES website, but I can’t seem to place the source for it at the moment. The overall map covers what is considered the area of modern City of Portland (click to enlarge to a somewhat more readable scale).



A couple of details:

First, showing the area of current downtown, with natural features of Mt. Tabor and Ross Island. Note the curving depression of Sullivan’s Gulch still in full flow, replaced by what is the current routing of Interstate 84 connecting Portland from the east. There is interesting notations referring to 'Land gently rolling, soil 2nd rate, gravelly', denoting the floodplain of the original creek.

Second, focusing on North Portland, including Swan Island, the wetlands of Smith & Bybee Lakes (in proximity to what was used for Portland's landfill for many years), Forest Park, and the prominent eyebrow of the overlook ridge. The references to 'burnt timber' and trails show the marks of early habitation. The map is a great background for some of the current hydrology and ecology of modern Portland - at least to a certain level of detail.

Historic Portland Maps: 1845-1852

The discussions of Portland Urban Form (here, here) got me thinking about a series of posts I originally posted to Free Association Design of a collection of historic Portland maps that I thought worthy of reposting here. It's great to see the origins of the urban form begin to take shape, and it provides a context in which to see what happened over a century and a half previous and it's current ramifications. Starting off, this is one of the oldest maps I’ve been able to find 'The Clearing' shows the core of Portland in the early years. The large parcels on the right are owned by Francis Pettygrove and Benjamin Stark, both prominent place-names of early history. This is the first iteration, including the afforementioned 200' square blocks, which were laid out by the business-oriented duo to maximize valuable corner lots.



This map dates to the inital history of Portland – with the initial land claim by William Overton and Asa Lovejoy, and the subsequent ‘coin-toss’ by Lovejoy and Pettygrove, giving the City is current name. From City of Portland’s Historic Portland Timelines, 1843-1901:

“1945: Overton sells his share of the claim to Francis Pettygrove. Pettygrove and Lovejoy survey the land, deciding to build a city. Previously called The Clearing, Portland gets its name with the toss of a coin with Pettygrove’s home town in Maine winning over Lovejoy’s birthplace in Boston.”

While I'm much happier with the western iteration of Portland versus Boston, it's a interesting factoid to see that coin flips original history, but more telling that the City evolved from the man-made Clearing along the riverside. Tying a bit of this history to the mapping, this early settlement map shows the Lownsdale claim. Again from the City of Portland Historic Timeline 1843 to 1901:

“1850: Portland or “Stump Town”, consists of a steam sawmill, a log-cabin hotel and the weekly Oregonian. Sidewalks are rough planks and the streets are dirt turning to mud when it rains. Houses are small and simple, only 2 houses in town have a plaster interior.”

The map below shows the level of development – tied closely to the larger 1852 Portland map in amount of urbanization. You can also see on the right side where the grid shift will take place (along present day Burnside) as the blocks blend into Capt. Couch’s claim.



The inset of the western section shows the sparse development – including pastureland, orchards, and gardens. There was also some smaller gardens and potato fields along the creek (which is probably Tanner) to the NW.



The City of Portland was subsequently incorporated in on February 8th, 1851, using the established Lownsdale plan as a starting point. The inset shows the ‘developed’ downtown – expanded somewhat from the 1945 map of ‘The Clearing’. To the north was land claimed by Captain John Couch – and to the south was land claimed by James Terwilliger – place names that continue to define NW and SW areas to this day. The road shown on this map led to the Tualatin Plains, running along present-day Canyon Road, which at the time was a plank trail built in 1847 – heading towards present-day Beaverton.



To connect the maps to the level of development, an ’urban’ shot showing the City, circa 1852 – taken from the corner of First & Stark (photo via PDX History)

McDs as Density Indicator

It's interesting to make connections between mapping and healthy communities. In this case it's not just health in terms of people (such as this correlation between parks and obesity) - but factoring in local business, access to fresh/healthy food, and even the idea of non-drive through oriented business. The always fantastic Strange Maps offers a slice of this view, using a map of 'The McFarthest Place' in the contiguous United States. This map case a look at geographical distribution of McDonalds of which there are 13,000 or so in the US.


:: image via Strange Maps

From Strange Maps: "This map is the brainchild of Stephen Von Worley, who got to thinking about the strip malls sprawling out along I-5 in California’s ever less rural Central Valley: “Just how far can you get from generic convenience? And how would you figure that out?” His yardstick for that thought experiment would be the ubiquitous Golden Arches of McDonald’s – still the world’s largest hamburger chain, and to cite Von Worley, the “inaugural megacorporate colonizer of small towns nationwide.” That’s not the whole story: like other convenience providers aimed at the motorised consumer such as gas stations and motels, McDonald’ses have a notable tendency to occur on highways and, specifically, to cluster at their crossroads."

Having grown up in North Dakota, where a 3-4 hour one-way drive isn't uncommon for a quick 'day trip' it's not a surprise that this McFarthest Place comes from that general vicinity of the upper Great Plains - in this case South Dakota amidst the badlands. The exact coordinates are on the post (N 45.45955 W 101.91356) leaving a 145 mile drive to McDonalds (which probably sounds pretty good if stranded in the desolation of the Badlands for a week or so). I've roughly shown this on the map below - and it's also interesting to see how it is equidistant the parallel freeways.

:: image via Google Earth (additional info added by L+U)

The lack of people, coupled with large land area, leads to a specific indication of the density of the US - obviously as the marketing muscle of McDonalds to interject themselves in close proximity to population centers. A quick glance at the map will obviously lead you to some of the less dense areas of the country: More: "This map moreover demonstrates that the spread of McD’s closely mirrors the population density of the Lower 48, the most notable overall feature of which is the sudden transition, along the Mississippi, of a relatively densely populated eastern half to a markedly less populated western half of the country. Some notable ‘dark spots’ in McDensity east of the Mississippi are the interior of Maine, the Adirondack region of New York state, a large part of West Virginia, and the Everglades area of southern Florida."

It may be the best bet if you want to get away from it all - to get as far away from the McDonalds. I actually remember seeing something like this for Wal-Mart as well - which probably has a totally different set of socio-economic markers on location.

Large Parks

In the spirit of one of the finest collections of writing on parks (and landscape urbanism) 'Large Parks' (edited by Czerniak & Hargreaves) a recent post on The Infrastructurist catalogs 10 of the world's greatest large parks. "We thought it would be fun to take ten of the world’s largest, most famous, and most beautiful city parks–some combination of those virtues, anyway–and view them from above, all at the same scale, to get a sense of how they’re situated in the fabric of their respective cities and how they work as a whole." Not sure what the reference of what makes them 'great', not it's completeness - and they admittedly have a Western influence but the idea of parks that are reconciled to a similar scale is pretty cool. Very similar to the graphic in the Large Parks book comparing them in B/W figure ground.

A few of the examples:


:: Central Park (NYC) - image via The Infrastructurist


:: The Tiergarten (Berlin) - image via The Infrastructurist


:: Hyde Park (London) - image via The Infrastructurist

3 Dutch Megacities Map

Another fantastic post from Strange Maps, this time featuring the excerpt from Rem Koolhaas' fabulous door-stop like book 'S/M/L/XL'. In this case, "...a rumination on “Manhattanism” – i.e. the tendency of city centre densities to be taken to new heights, sometimes literally, in the form of an urban grid filled with skyscrapers. These three maps demonstrate the scope of super-concentrated urbanity by applying two distinct types of density to a population-versus-surface configuration reputed to be “full”."






:: image via Strange Maps

It reminds me that when we think of density, we really have not a clue - and if we start looking at this mapped, or merely looking at the gross numbers, we see there's a lot behind the idea of density - or at least more than meets the eye.