The Mount Hood Freeway is a partially completed but never to be finished freeway alignment of U.S. Route 26 and Interstate 80N (now Interstate 84), which would have run through southeast Portland, Oregon. Related projects would have continued the route through the neighboring suburb of Gresham, out to the city of Sandy.
The original plans for the freeway were presented by the Oregon State Highway Department as part of a 1955 report that proposed 14 new highways in the Portland metropolitan area. (Urban planner Robert Moses is often mistakenly credited with the original plan.)
The proposed route was to run parallel to the existing alignment of US 26 on Powell Boulevard, and would have required the destruction of several long-standing Portland neighborhoods and one percent of the Portland housing stock. Plans for the freeway triggered a revolt in Portland in the late 1960s and early 1970s, leading to its eventual cancellation. In addition, other proposed freeways in Portland were also scratched, including Interstate 505. Funds for the project (and other canceled freeways) were spent on other transportation projects, including the first section of the MAX Light Rail system.
When the freeway was canceled, a segment was already completed southeastwards from East Burnside Road and Southeast Powell Blvd in Gresham, continuing to Sandy, Oregon which remains in use today; an unusual divided sweeping turn is visible where an interchange with an unbuilt segment would have been.45°28′24″N 122°23′47″W / 45.47335°N 122.3964°W / 45.47335; -122.3964 (Mount Hood Freeway never-to-be-finished interchange)
Read more about Mount Hood Freeway: Alignment, Revolt and Aftermath, Remnants
Famous quotes containing the words mount, hood and/or freeway:
“On the 31st of August, 1846, I left Concord in Massachusetts for Bangor and the backwoods of Maine,... I proposed to make excursions to Mount Ktaadn, the second highest mountain in New England, about thirty miles distant, and to some of the lakes of the Penobscot, either alone or with such company as I might pick up there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is not linen you’re wearing out
But human creatures’ lives!
Stitch—stitch—stitch,
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A Shroud as well as a Shirt.”
—Thomas Hood (1799–1845)
“The landscape of the northern Sprawl woke confused memories of childhood for Case, dead grass tufting the cracks in a canted slab of freeway concrete. The train began to decelerate ten kilometers from the airport. Case watched the sun rise on the landscape of childhood, on broken slag and the rusting shells of refineries.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)