Trail Gazing

This was in our local newspaper on Friday. It's an article about the Spring Water Corridor, which is just a couple of block from where we live. Ricky and I can be found on the trail just about every weekend, and often during the week. It's how we get to Sellwood and downtown Portland. Jacko goes too; he loves going to bike rides on the trail!

Trail gazing
The Springwater Corridor, our longest and most revealing park: an appreciation
Friday, June 08, 2007
GRANT BUTLER The Oregonian

The Springwater Corridor began life in 1903 as the Springwater Division Line, a commuter railway designed to take folks from downtown Portland to outlying communities such as Estacada and Eagle Creek, as well as to places including Cedarville and Cazadero, which have been relegated to the history books as they were incorporated into other towns.

At its peak in 1910, Portland's extensive system of commuter trains carried 16 million passengers a year on a web of more than 160 miles of rails. The line that became the corridor could take people out to Gresham in roughly the same time that it takes a MAX train today.

By the 1950s, the rail travel was petering out as roadways improved and the automobile became the preferred mode for getting around. By 1958, passenger service was dropped.

In 1990, plans for today's trail were hatched when the city of Portland acquired big portions of the corridor, with the rest being picked up by Metro in the years since. The first stretches of the Springwater Corridor opened in 1996, with the three-mile portion along the Willamette River opening in 2003. Last year the three bridges connecting the trail over McLoughlin closed the gap, making possible one continuous ride.

There are further hopes to pave the gravel portion of the trail -- which runs roughly two miles from Gresham to Boring -- and eventually to extend the trail to Estacada or even as far as Government Camp.

Love it, just not to death
Portland Bureau of Parks & Recreation and Metro, which jointly manage the Springwater Corridor, don't have firm numbers on how many people walk or ride it on any given day. Surveys like that require funding, senior planner Gregg Everhart points out, and that's money the agencies would rather spend on trail improvements and future acquisitions.

But when you spend several days on the trail, you notice plenty of anecdotal evidence of trends. On weekdays there are spikes in bicycle riders during peak commuting hours, when you can stand in one spot along the Willamette stretch and count 20 to 30 cyclists going by a minute. On weekends the action is steady all day long, though the highest usage areas are around Gresham's Main City Park and Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge.

All of that usage holds a danger, restoration ecologist Mart Hughes says. The wildlife areas are delicate, and when people get off the trail they can cause tremendous damage. "People don't understand the impact that a single footprint can have."

Staying on the trail, he says, is the price for keeping the wetlands pristine and the wildlife thriving. Really, there's so much to see from the trail that there's no reason to go off-road anyway.

What are you waiting for?
At this point, we've gotta ask what you're still doing reading this article. Put on your walking shoes or saddle up on your cycle: The Springwater Corridor is out there waiting. Tackle a mile or two here and there or take a day and ride the whole thing. You'll exercise your body. You'll feed your mind.

And if you get out there early enough, you just might spy one of those white-tailed deer, out foraging for a bit of breakfast before the next cyclist comes along.