Parks
By 1960, use of the rail line along Johnson Creek had declined and passenger service was discontinued. By 1990 the City of Portland bought much of the corridor. Working with Metro, it created the Springwater Corridor Trail, a 21-mile (34 km) bicycle and pedestrian rail trail that follows the creek and extends from the Willamette River to Boring. It became part of the 40 Mile Loop, a hiking and biking trail that circles the Portland metropolitan area and intersects with similar trails.
Creekside parks include Johnson Creek Park, about 4.5 acres (18,000 m2) of natural areas and paths; the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden, along Crystal Springs Creek; Tideman Johnson Natural Area, about 7.2 acres (29,000 m2) of natural areas and paths; Leach Botanical Garden, about 16 acres (65,000 m2), a public garden dedicated to the study of botany and horticulture with an emphasis on plants of the Pacific Northwest; Beggars Tick Wildlife Refuge, a wetland of 20 acres (81,000 m2); Powell Butte Nature Park, about 608 acres (2.46 km2) on an extinct cinder cone volcano, including natural areas and hiking, biking, and equestrian trails; and Gresham's Main City Park, about 18 acres (73,000 m2) including sports fields, picnic areas, and trails.
In 2007 Metro bought two parcels of land totaling 102 acres (410,000 m2) for preservation adjacent to Johnson Creek on Clatsop Butte, south of Foster Road near Powell Butte and Portland's Pleasant Valley neighborhood. The purchases cost $10.9 million, drawing on bonds approved by a 2006 ballot measure. They were praised by conservationists but questioned by others who thought Metro had paid too much.
Read more about this topic: Johnson Creek (Willamette River)
Famous quotes containing the word parks:
“Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Towns are full of people, houses full of tenants, hotels full of guests, trains full of travelers, cafés full of customers, parks full of promenaders, consulting-rooms of famous doctors full of patients, theatres full of spectators, and beaches full of bathers. What previously was, in general, no problem, now begins to be an everyday one, namely, to find room.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)