Avoiding The Snarl

When I first moved to Portland 13 years ago, I was told to stay away from this area. People called it Felony Flats. A lot of the yards had pit bulls chained up in them, next to the carcasses of dead cars and appliances.  Oh how things change.  It’s still one of the more affordable neighborhoods in the city, but according to Portland Monthly the median home price is now $384,999. Felony Estates, more like.  It’s the area between SE 52nd and SE 82nd, north of Woodstock and south of Foster. (Cool fact: Foster Road was named for Philip Foster, who owned a trading post near Estacada in the late 1800s and was married to Mary Charlotte Pettygrove. Another cool fact: Foster Road was built on top of the northern fork of the Oregon Trail.) The centerpiece of the Mt. Scott Park neighborhood is… wait for it… Mt. Scott Park. It’s a quiet, family-friendly park (which is code for homeless people tend not to camp out in it and I can let my kids run loose there b...

Note: This is not the definitive history, but my version, which includes maybe a little heresy, a little mythology... Something like 45 years ago, the federal government decided to put a freeway into Portland and bought up a swath of old houses along the proposed route –– SE Division Street. Scrappy Portland citizens said “no fucking way” and managed to force the project to be abandoned, which left the government holding a crap ton of properties. The government decided to get rid of the properties and because governments are so good at turning a profit, they sold the houses for pennies on the dollar.  Where hippies once tread... The timing was perfect for hippies. San Francisco was getting pricey. So tons of them hitch hiked up north to a land where you could drive a VW bus 20 minutes in almost any direction and find yourself in a gloriously beautiful setting –– you could take a quick hike through misty woods, pluck a couple psychedelic mushrooms, and bliss out naked i...