Page:Report of the Park Board 1903.djvu/43



UPPER RIVER BLUFF PARKWAY (OR SELLWOOD PARKWAY).
A somewhat similar picturesque parkway can be laid out along the top of the bluff from the south end of Grand avenue to Sellwood, if land values have not already risen too high to prevent it, and if other difficulties can be overcome. The principal difficulty is that a new railroad company has acquired much of the land which will be needed for this parkway and indeed the laying out of the parkway will be impossible without the consent of this company. The construction of this railroad has badly damaged the bluff and its close proximity to the pleasure drive will detract somewhat from the value of the latter. This railroad, like that below the city east of the river, has greatly injured the views, where it has been run over the low meadows and flats between the bluff and the river south of Holgate street. From a little south of the last mentioned street, a considerable stretch of the crest of the bluff is occupied by Milwaukie avenue and an electric street railway. To secure a suitable arrangement, it would be necessary to move the avenue and street railway far enough back from the bluff to enable the pleasure drive to be laid out where the street now is. If the necessary land for the widening should be secured, the actual moving of the electric street railway and avenue might be postponed for many years. Another difficulty occurs at the new crematory which has been built so close to the bluff that there is no room for a pleasure drive. Unless the crematory can be moved, the drive would have to pass back of it. Here and again just south of the crematory the electric street railway occupies the crest of the bluff and would have to be moved back. From the last mentioned place to Sellwood, there are no physical difficulties, but most of the land is owned by the new railroad. It will be desirable to construct eventually a bridge across the river, which would afford a desirable connection between the southern hillside parkway and the Sellwood parkway at a point between the village of Fulton and the north end of Riverview cemetery. The elevation of the bridge could be established at a height sufficient to carry it over both the railroads and to render it unnecessary to open the draw for tug boats and ordinary river steamers. Such a bridge will doubtless ultimately become a public necessity without regard to the question of parkways, but it would be well in locating and designing it to keep in mind its possible use as a necessary connecting link in a system of parkways.

SELLWOOD PARK.
If the needed land can be obtained of the new railroad company now owning all the open tract north of Sellwood, a local park large