Trolley Trail finally is on track
By Dana Tims, The Oregonian
Almost from the moment the last freight train rumbled along a rail line linking Oregon City with Portland in 1968, the calls began to convert the corridor into a pedestrian walkway.
This summer, 42 years later, construction will begin on the historic six-mile route fittingly dubbed the Trolley Trail.
When completed, in mid-2011, the $4.5million project will provide the last link in a 20-mile loop tying in the Springwater Corridor and Interstate 205 biking/hiking path.
"It's been a long time coming," said Thelma Haggenmiller, an Oak Lodge resident and leading voice of the advocacy group Friends of the Trolley Trail. "But I never thought for a minute that this day wouldn't arrive."
Support for a trail that now appears on every significant multiuse trail map in the metropolitan area has grown exponentially through the years. Gone are the days when Haggenmiller, seeing the topic pop up on one area agenda or another, burned the phone lines to mobilize her core boosters.
"I called them my troops," she said with a laugh, referring to the six other Trolley Trail die-hards who showed up anywhere, anytime the trail was being discussed. "We've been at this so long now that two of them have since died."
Any attrition, however, has been more than made up for by new supporters. Haggenmiller's Friends of the Trolley Trail e-mail list now numbers more than 300. Another 100 supporters don't have computers, but can rely on regular calls from Haggenmiller with updates.
In addition, key players at Metro, Clackamas County and the various citizens groups and special districts that serve the highly populated stretch between Milwaukie and Gladstone are now lined up solidly in support.
"All of us consider this a really critical linkage in metro-area transportation plans," said Carlotta Colette, whose Metro Council district includes the proposed trail. "The chance to complete something as special as this was far too important to even think about passing up."
Walking into the past
The route itself is steeped in history.
When the East Side Railway Co. began service in 1893 along the 16-mile stretch between Portland and Oregon City, it represented the nation's first interurban railway line.
In a key parallel development, the electricity that propelled the cars was generated by hydroelectric power at Willamette Falls. Overhead lines carried the rest of the electricity generated there into downtown Portland in what is regarded as the nation's first long-distance transmission of electrical energy.
Within two decades, the railway service had caught on, extending from Vancouver south to Eugene and Corvallis and from Gresham west to Forest Grove and McMinnville.
Before East Side Railway built its streetcar line, things couldn't have been more different. The area between Portland and Oregon City had few roads, none of them paved. Getting anywhere fast generally meant finding a boat and striking out on the Willamette for points up- or downriver.
Arrival of the streetcar, arguably, dictated how things developed from there. It's no coincidence, after all, that the communities of Milwaukie, Oak Grove and Jennings Lodge are all situated along what became the streetcar corridor.
Passenger service, because of the increasing post-World War II reliance on automobiles, ended in 1958. Freight service continued for just another decade.
Haggenmiller, who moved to Oak Grove in 1967, still remembers the huge piles of rail ties pulled up and stacked at the end of Southeast Concord Road in 1968 as the line was being decommissioned.
By the mid-1970s, much of the trail had become overgrown with weeds and brambles. Only two or three sections could even be walked.
"It was pretty clear that it was the end of an era," Haggenmiller said. "What a lot of people didn't know back then that it was also just the start of another."
Trail's end, and beginning
Trolley Trail advocates are quick to credit local-government support with getting the project this far. No one, however, claims much of anything has moved quickly.
It's going on a decade now, for example, since Metro purchased the right of way needed to build the trail. The money needed to buy the land had been approved six years before that, when the region's voters in 1995 approved a bond measure to buy new parks and open spaces.
Some of that delay resulted from local officials needing to turn to federal coffers for cash, said Michelle Healy, a senior planner with the North Clackamas Parks & Recreation District. Stringent federal regulations, calling for things such as archaeological and hazardous materials studies and wetlands-identification projects, added at least five years to the project's running time, she said.
Now-scrapped plans by Clackamas County to take advantage of Trolley Trail construction to run a new sewer line connecting Milwaukie's Kellogg Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant with the Tri-City Water Pollution Control Plant in Oregon City tacked on another two-year delay, she said.
The trail's master plan was completed in 2004. Project managers have spent the interim lining up four separate grants needed to help pay for construction.
Now the project is finally poised to move ahead, with a multiphase construction schedule. The idea is to avoid tearing up all of the six-mile line at once, only to have part of it remain that way if anything unexpected arises.
"By waiting until we had all the money in hand, we can still build it in one fell swoop," Healy said. "But we'll still do it in a prudent manner, one step at a time."
In the end, said Lynn Peterson, Clackamas County Commission chairwoman, the credit for moving the Trolley Trail from dreams to completion belongs to "the folks on the ground."
That is to say, Thelma Haggenmiller and her "troops."
Haggenmiller, for her part, is just happy to see the project finally take off.
"I dream about this trail," she said. "I wake up thinking about it. And long after I'm gone, it's still going to be a treasure for everyone to use."
— Dana Tims: 503-294-5918
Historic route
1891 — Oregon City and Southern Railway, a subsidiary of East Side Railway Co., purchases right of way and builds railroad from Oregon City to Portland.
1893 — Passenger service begins on what is the nation's first interurban railroad line.
1930 — After a number of mergers and takeovers, Portland General Electric is formed to assume the line's electric operations, including streetcars. Portland Traction Co. forms to operate the railways as a subsidiary of PGE.
1958 — Passenger service ends.
1962 — Portland Transit sells the interurban lines to Southern Pacific and Union Pacific railroads for freight operation.
1968 — Rail service is abandoned. Most rails and ties are removed.
2001 — Metro and North Clackamas Parks & Recreation District buy the right of way for a multiuse trail.
2010 — Trolley Trail construction scheduled to begin in August.
2011 -— Trail is expected to be completed by summer.
— Dana Tims, The Oregonian
Prev
Linear Mode
