In December we discovered and shared here a trove of glass plate negatives taken by a photographer from the Department of Public Works who was out to document the giant gravel pit at NE 33rd and Fremont. Trees in the mid-ground are standing in water. A gravel road is inundated, but a plank walkway allows foot passage. Off behind through a curtain of brush is open water, an island in the distance, the far shore in the distance beyond that.
As to where this was taken? A look at the USGS Portland quadrangle map above, and the Hanson and Garrows Map of Portland, suggests it could have been at the far north end of NE 33rd known in that area as Sunderland Road , or north of Cully Boulevard, both places where small networks of temporary gravel roads wove around slough waters. Check out the map, with some new labels added for orientation and a few possible photo locations circled in red, just for fun.
During high water on the Columbia, all those channels and ponds and the wet meadows in between were submerged. Here are two more views of the general vicinity taken 25 years later that show us how the slope was settling after being filled with garbage and soil.
Photographed by the Public Works Department on November 21, , these views look uphill and downhill on 33rd from just below the top of the hill. Image A Judging by the sunlight and shadows—and what looks like an exodus from Grant High School—these photos were taken in the afternoon of that November day.
The uphill photo shows just how much the mid-slope has settled, with the curb and street surface buckling and the entire sidewalk heaving to the west. Nothing has been built on these vacant lots, probably because they were still settling. Look a bit farther up the hill and you can see two brand-new Ken Birkemeier houses at far left NE Fremont , perched on what had been the cutbank, and the bungalow to its east at the corner NE Fremont.
