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Guild's Lake

AC with 0 elementsFormer lakes of the United StatesHistory of Portland, OregonLakes of Multnomah County, OregonLakes of Oregon
World's fair sites in the United States
Lewis and Clark Expo Portland Oregon ballon at entrance
Lewis and Clark Expo Portland Oregon ballon at entrance

Guild's Lake (also Guild Lake) was a flood-prone lowland near the confluence of Balch Creek with the Willamette River in the U.S. state of Oregon. Indigenous Multnomah people established villages on nearby Sauvie Island but not in the swampy area along the Balch Creek side of the river in what later became northwest Portland. The lake was at an elevation of 33 feet (10 m) above sea level between what later became Northwest Saint Helens Road and Northwest Yeon Street, slightly west of Northwest 35th Avenue in the Northwest Industrial district of Portland.The lake took its name from Peter Guild (pronounced guile), one of the first 19th-century settlers in the area. In 1847, he acquired nearly 600 acres (2.4 km2) of the wetlands through a donation land claim. After Guild's death in 1870, various landowners modified the area to accommodate sawmills, railroads, shipping docks, and Portland's city garbage incinerator. The Guild's Lake Rail Yard, built by the Northern Pacific Railway in the 1880s, became an important switching yard for trains. Beginning in the 1890s, channel-deepening in the Willamette River improved the city's status as a deep-water seaport, as did completion in 1914 of a port terminal. These developments helped make nearby Guild's Lake the most important industrial area in Portland.In 1905, the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, held on an artificial island in Guild's Lake, had helped spur growth in the area. After the exposition ended, developers filled the lake and its surrounds with rocks and gravel sluiced from parts of the Balch Creek watershed in the West Hills above the floodplain or dredged from the Willamette River. Civic leaders promoted the Guild's Lake area as a good place for industry, and by the mid-1920s the lake was gone. Instead, it became "a drying and settling mud flat ... awaiting development during World War II". During World War II, the Guild's Lake Housing Project, an adjunct to the Vanport project, provided temporary housing for workers in the nearby Kaiser Shipyards. After the war, chemical and petroleum processing and storage, metals manufacturing, and other large industries expanded in the area. In 2001, the Portland City Council adopted the Guild's Lake Industrial Sanctuary Plan aimed at protecting the area's "long-term economic viability as an industrial district."

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Guild's Lake (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Guild's Lake
Northwest 35th Avenue, Portland Northwest Industrial

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 45.546944444444 ° E -122.72055555556 °
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Address

Northwest 35th Avenue 3333
97210 Portland, Northwest Industrial
Oregon, United States
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Lewis and Clark Expo Portland Oregon ballon at entrance
Lewis and Clark Expo Portland Oregon ballon at entrance
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Balch Creek
Balch Creek

Balch Creek is a 3.5-mile (5.6 km) tributary of the Willamette River in the U.S. state of Oregon. Beginning at the crest of the Tualatin Mountains (West Hills), the creek flows generally east down a canyon along Northwest Cornell Road in unincorporated Multnomah County and through the Macleay Park section of Forest Park, a large municipal park in Portland. At the lower end of the park, the stream enters a pipe and remains underground until reaching the river. Danford Balch, after whom the creek is named, settled a land claim along the creek in the mid-19th century. After murdering his son-in-law, he became the first person legally hanged in Oregon. Basalt, mostly covered by silt in the uplands and sediment in the lowlands, underlies the Balch Creek watershed. The upper part of the watershed includes private residential land, the Audubon Society of Portland nature sanctuary, and part of Forest Park. Mixed conifer forest of Coast Douglas-fir, western redcedar, and western hemlock with a well-developed understory of shrubs and flowering plants is the natural vegetation. Sixty-two species of mammals and more than 112 species of birds use Forest Park. A small population of coastal cutthroat trout resides in the stream, which in 2005 was the only major water body in Portland that met state standards for bacteria, temperature, and dissolved oxygen. Although nature reserves cover much of the upper and middle parts of the watershed, industrial sites dominate the lower part. Historic Guild's Lake occupied part of the lower watershed through the 19th century, and in 1905 city officials held the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition there on an artificial island. After the exposition, developers converted the lake and its surrounds to industrial use, and in 2001 the Portland City Council declared the site to be an "industrial sanctuary".

Forest Park (Portland, Oregon)
Forest Park (Portland, Oregon)

Forest Park is a public municipal park in the Tualatin Mountains west of downtown Portland, Oregon, United States. Stretching for more than 8 miles (13 km) on hillsides overlooking the Willamette River, it is one of the country's largest urban forest reserves. The park, a major component of a regional system of parks and trails, covers more than 5,100 acres (2,064 ha) of mostly second-growth forest with a few patches of old growth. About 70 miles (110 km) of recreational trails, including the Wildwood Trail segment of the city's 40-Mile Loop system, crisscross the park. As early as the 1860s, civic leaders sought to create a natural preserve in the woods near Portland. Their efforts led to the creation of a municipal park commission that in 1903 hired the Olmsted Brothers landscape architectural firm to develop a plan for Portland's parks. Acquiring land through donations, transfers from Multnomah County, and delinquent tax foreclosures, the city eventually acted on a proposal by the City Club of Portland and combined parcels totaling about 4,000 acres (1,600 ha) to create the reserve. Formally dedicated in 1948, it ranks 19th in size among parks within U.S. cities, according to The Trust for Public Land.More than 112 bird species and 62 mammal species frequent the park and its wide variety of trees and shade-loving plants. About 40 inches (1,000 mm) of rain falls on the forest each year. Many small tributaries of the Willamette River flow northeast through the woods to pipes or culverts under U.S. Route 30 at the edge of the park. One of them, Balch Creek, has a resident trout population, and another, Miller Creek, supports sea-run species, including salmon. Threats to the park include overuse, urban traffic, encroaching development, invasive flora, and lack of maintenance money. Occasional serious crimes and more frequent minor crimes occur in the park.