PROTESTING PORTLAND'S FREEWAYS: HIGHWAY ENGINEERING AND
CITIZEN ACTIVISM IN THE INTERSTATE ERA
by
ELIOT HENRY FACKLER
A THESIS
Presented to the Department of History
and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Master of Arts
June 2009
"Protesting Portland's Freeways: Highway Engineering and Citizen Activism in the
Interstate Era," a thesis prepared by Eliot Henry Fackler in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the Master of Arts degree in the Department of History. This thesis has
been approved and accepted by:
11
Committee in Charge:
Accepted by:
Ellen Herman, Chair
Jeffrey Ostler
Matthew Dennis
Dean of the Graduate School
© 2009 Eliot Henry Fackler
111
IV
An Abstract of the Thesis of
Eliot Henry Fackler
in the Department of History
for the degree of
to be taken
Master of Arts
June 2009
Title: PROTESTING PORTLAND'S FREEWAYS: HIGHWAY ENGINEERING AND
CITIZEN ACTIVISM IN THE INTERSTATE ERA
Approved: ---------ht _
Ellen Herman
From its inception, the Oregon State Highway Department and Portland's
political leaders repeatedly failed to address the city's automobile traffic problems.
However, in 1955 the Highway Department published a comprehensive freeway plan that
anticipated new federal funding and initiated an era of unprecedented road construction in
the growing city. In the early 1960s, localized opposition to the city's Interstate system
failed to halt the completion of three major routes. Yet, politically savvy grassroots
activists and a new generation oflocalleaders used the provisions of the National
Environmental Policy Act and the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1973 to successfully stop
the construction of two freeways in the mid 1970s. Though favorable legislation and the
efforts oflocal politicians were instrumental in thwarting the Highway Department's
plans, this study will focus on the crucial role played by the citizens who waged an
ideological battle against recalcitrant highway engineers for Portland's future.
pressures resulting from globalization by engaging in subtle protests within in the
maquiladoras, opting to participate in the informal economy, and utilizing community
groups to facilitate social change.
v
CURRICULUM VITAE
NAME OF AUTHOR: Eliot Henry Fackler
PLACE OF BIRTH: Mansfield, Ohio
DATE OF BIRTH: February 6, 1982
GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED:
University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon
The College of Wooster, Wooster, Ohio
DEGREES AWARDED:
Master of Arts, History, 2009, University of Oregon
Bachelor of Arts, History, 2004, The College of Wooster
AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST:
United States History
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Teaching Assistant, Department ofHistory, University of Oregon, Eugene,
2007-2009
Student Advisor, Department of History, University of Oregon, Eugene,
2008
GRANTS, AWARDS AND HONORS:
Oregon Heritage Fellowship, Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, 2009
Graduate Teaching Fellowship, University of Oregon, 2007-2009
Ohio Environmental Fellowship, Ohio Environmental Council, 2004
Cum Laude, The College of Wooster, 2004
v
VI
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people who made this endeavor
both possible and worthwhile. My sincerest gratitude goes to my advisors Ellen Herman
and Jeff Ostler. Their challenging questions, gentle criticisms, and shrewd editing made
this thesis immeasurably better. I would like to thank Matt Dennis for providing both
formal and informal guidance these past two years. This Spring I have been lucky enough
to get to know Brian Ladd. Brian's scholarship, advice, and insights have helped me to
think about freeways and city streets in new and interesting ways. This project benefitted
from the financial assistance of the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, from the
work of the late Ernie Bonner, and from a wonderful conversation with Val Ballestrem.
Fellow graduate students at the University of Oregon have provided friendship and support.
I would particularly like to thank Matthew Kruer, Emily Gilkey, Carrie Adkins, Clinton
Sandvick, Feather Crawford-Freed, Becca Cherba, Luis Ruiz, Camille Walsh, and Chris
Cornelius. I am forever indebted to Jeff Roche and Tom Humphrey for their professional
advice and personal encouragement, and to Nick Chiorian, Brendan Callahan, and Tom
Stockdale for supplying the observations and questions that ultimately led me to this
project. I would also like to thank my parents, Holly Harman Fackler and Todd Fackler,
their respective spouses, and my siblings, Evan and Libby, for their support. Ann and Tom
Stockdale, two of the most wonderful people I have ever met, are owed a special thank you
for their love and encouragement. Finally, words cannot express how grateful I am to my
wife, Jen. Without her none of this would have been possible.
For Jen, my driving buddy
Vll
V111
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter
I. INTRODUCTION .
II. THE EMERGENT CITY: PLANNERS, HIGHWAY ENGINEERS, AND
PORTLAND BEFORE 1956 ..
Page
1
9
III. THE MOBILE CITY: FREEWAY CONSTRUCTION AND FAILED
OPPOSITION, 1955-1972 45
IV. THE LIVABLE CITY: FREEWAY REVOLTS IN PORTLAND, 1965-1978 78
V. CONCLUSION 111
VI. EPILOGUE: DISMANTLING HARBOR DRIVE 115
BIBLIOGRAPHY 118
IX
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page
1. 1946 vehicle trip "desire" patterns, Portland, Oregon . 44
2. Portland's proposed freeway system, 1955 49
3. 52nd Avenue and 96 th Avenue alignment alternatives for Interstate 205 77
4. Mount Hood Freeway alignment in relation to housing 84
1CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
In 1955 the Oregon State Highway Department published a report outlining the
proposed locations of 14 limited-access freeways that would slice through Portland's
century-old neighborhoods. The ISO-page document, entitled Freeway and Expressway
System, Portland Metropolitan Area, anticipated the passage of a new Federal-Aid
Highway Act that would fund the long-anticipated Interstate Highway System. The
following year, Oregon traffic engineers began building the state's portion of that system.
As they oversaw the design and construction of urban freeways over the next two
decades, highway engineers and planning officials in the local and state government met
resistance from citizens whose homes, businesses, and neighborhoods would be
destroyed by the interstates. By the mid 1970s, after a decade of widespread resistance
against planned freeways, neighborhood groups in southeast and northwest Portland
successfully halted the construction of two routes and ushered in a new era of citizen
participation in city planning.
Portland's anti-freeway movement is the story of two paradigm shifts that led to a
fundamental transformation of local planning practices and increased neighborhood
activism. The first was an ideological shift that resulted from the imposition of a massive
highway system onto an already existing cityscape. The destruction caused by urban
freeway building raised the ire of residents in the path of the bulldozers. Mounting
concerns about the ecological impacts of human consumption and automobile-centered
planning gave freeway protests an additional sense of urgency and encouraged the
support of local leaders. These environmental concerns had antecedents in earlier battles
to preserve wilderness areas, but only in the 1960s and 1970s did Portlanders - and
citizens across the country - become involved in efforts to actively reduce road
construction and automobile usage in order to protect the urban environment.
The second shift had far-reaching political consequences for Portland and
ultimately set it apart from other cities. Because state highway engineers were given
considerable funding and authority by the federal government, they dominated city
planning after 1956. As a result of this bureaucratic control, residents of American cities
found that they were effectively excluded from the decision-making process. As freeway
projects threatened to carve up San Francisco, Boston, New Orleans, and dozens of other
cities, protesters fought to save their neighborhoods and gain a measure of control over
transportation and land use planning. In their efforts to wrest control from the Oregon
Highway Department, Portlanders achieved a victory unique among the urban freeway
revolts: the institutionalization of a neighborhood planning organization. In creating the
Office of Neighborhood Associations (now called the Office of Neighborhood
Involvement) the city of Portland gave residents a say in local planning matters. This
move toward greater democratic participation remains the unique legacy of Portland's
anti-freeway movement.
Portland today is often called an "ecotopia" or a planner's paradise, and for good
reasons. Metro, the nation's only elected regional government, coordinates planning in
the surrounding region while the Office of Neighborhood Involvement (ONI) gives
2
3neighborhood groups a voice in local planning. No freeways have been built in the city
since the completion ofInterstate 205 in 1982, and city officials routinely reject plans for
new parking garages, street widening, and other projects that would accommodate
automobiles. At the heart of these planning principles is an "environmental imagination"
shared by many Oregonians and rooted in a reliance on and appreciation for the state's
diverse and verdant landscape. This environmental imagination has permeated state
politics for most of the past century.l It is no coincidence that many of the leaders and
citizens who eventually voiced concern over the social and environmental impacts of
freeways were natives who took pride in their state? Thus, when freeway protesters
coalesced in Portland in the 1960s, they urbanized Oregon's environmental imagination
and continued the debates about development that had been occurring for decades along
the riverbanks and shorelines, and in the expansive mountains, forests, and fields of the
Oregon countryside.
In addition to their desire to preserve the character of individual neighborhoods
and the city in general, the citizen activists who led Portland's anti-freeway campaigns
also demanded to be included in planning decisions. In one of the few accounts linking
1 See Richard W. Judd and Christopher S. Beach, Natural States: The Environmental Imagination in
Maine, Oregon, and the Nation (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 2003). Judd and Beach use the
term "environmental imagination" when referring to the popular imagery and ideals that inform the views
of the residents of Maine and Oregon. See also, William G. Robbins, Landscapes o/Conflict: The Oregon
Story, 1940-2000 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004). Both of these books trace the history of
environmentalism, resource use, and land use planning in Oregon. These two excellent monographs
examine the broader historical events and political discourses in which this history of Portland's freeways
is situated.
2 See Ernie Bonner, "PlanPdx.org: Interviews with Planning Participants," Portland State University,
http://www.pdx.edu/usp/planpdxorg-interviews-planning-participants. Specifically, see interviews with
Don Clark, Frank Frost, and Charlotte and Ogden Beeman.
4Portland's repudiation of freeways with the city's revolution in neighborhood
participation, historian Gregory Thompson emphasizes the importance of the political
elite in harnessing neighborhood activism to transform transportation and land use
planning.3 The watershed mayoral election of Neil Goldschmidt in 1972 and the
emergence of a Portland City Council and Multnomah County Commission comprised of
freeway critics certainly altered the ways in which the city would develop in the coming
years. However, as important as the political elites have been, neighborhood activists
were the crucial element in the reformulation of transportation and neighborhood
planning practices in Portland. Organized citizen groups were instrumental in bringing a
halt to the freeways, electing and influencing politicians, and reimagining the local
planning process. The paradigm shifts that marked Portland's emergence as an "ecotopia"
were not articulated by Goldschmidt or others so much as they were exemplified by the
groups that organized against freeways.
Citizens like architects Howard Glazer, Ed Wagner, George Sheldon, and Bob
Belcher, engineer Ogden Beeman, lawyer Charles Merten, and activists Betty Merten,
Albert and Kayda Clark, Charlotte Beeman, Mary Pedersen, Ron Buel, and Allison
Belcher articulated a vision oflivable neighborhoods that questioned highway engineers'
auto-centered planning. These activists represented The New Left. They were intellectual
elites - experts, academics, and insiders - who were, in the words of C. Wright Mills,
3 Gregory Thompson, "Taming the Neighborhood Revolution: Planners, Power Brokers, and the Birth of
Neotraditionalism in Portland, Oregon," Journal ofPlanning History, vol. 6, no. 3 (2007): 214-247.
5"agencies of historical change.,,4 Working from outside the system, they protested
freeways and created a sense of civil unrest that leaders could not ignore. Working from
within the system to create neighborhood plans, they gave Portland's decision makers the
opportunity to implement alternatives to the Highway Department's proposals. The
emergence of citizen activism ultimately proved to be the most important element in
halting urban interstates in Portland and replacing a doctrine of mobility with a more
ephemeral vision of livability.
The freeway revolts that developed in urban areas across the United States,
Western Europe, and Australia in the 1960s and 1970s all shared a basic rejection of
traffic engineers' doctrine of mobility. 5 As engineers worked to link suburbs with city
centers and accommodate the automobile traffic that clogged overburdened street
systems, they focused only on moving motor vehicles from points of origin to final
destinations. Those neighborhoods that would bear the burden of noisy, disruptive
freeways generally stood to benefit little from the improved mobility. Rather, local access
to churches, schools, and grocery stores was often inhibited by the presence of divided
highways. Ultimately, the areas that were rent asunder by urban freeways bore all of the
costs and none of the benefits of the doctrine of mobility. Anti-freeway protests sprang
from this obvious inequity and focused on preserving the livable character of the
4 C. Wright Mills, "Letter to the New Left" in New Left Review, No.5 (1960). This letter is also available
online at http://www.marxists.org/subjectlhumanismlmills-c-wright/letter-new-Ieft.htm.
5 Brian Ladd, Autophobia: Love and Hate in the Automotive Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2008), chapter 4. In his brilliant analysis of the pro-automobile and anti-automobile forces that have shaped
the debates over the motorcar in the western world, Brian Ladd provides a comprehensive summary of the
history and arguments surrounding freeway opposition in the United States, Europe, and Australia in the
1960s and '70s.
6threatened neighborhoods. In Portland, the desire to protect livable areas gave rise to 95
neighborhood associadons that would prevent unpopular construction projects in every
quarter of the city.
This study is divided into three substantive chapters. Chapter Two, The Emergent
City, traces the rise of the modem city planner and the highway engineer in the early
twentieth century. Both planning professionals and traffic engineers sought to reshape
cities, but with very different ends in mind. Urban planners like John Olmsted, Harland
Bartholomew, and Lewis Mumford hoped to create orderly social spaces. Their design
principles, though quite different, focused on human experiences in cities. Highway
engineers, on the other hand, were trained to build structures to accommodate
automobiles. Their plans generally did not extend beyond the simple goal of alleviating
traffic congestion and improving automobility.6 Many of the most famous planners in the
United States were hired by proactive organizations and government bodies in Portland to
develop comprehensive plans for the rapidly expanding river city. The city government's
failure to implement any plan meant that by the 1940s the powerful and pragmatic
Oregon Highway Department could begin outlining major highway plans with little
opposition from local leaders. The support of famed road builder Robert Moses lent
credence to the department's preliminary ideas. By the early 1950s, as suburban growth
and increasing automobile usage choked the city's roadways, every major political player
6 For a clear explanation of the conflicting ideologies of city planners and highway engineers, see Cliff
Ellis, "Professional Conflict over Urban Fonn: The Case of Urban Freeways, 1930 to 1970," in Planning
the Twentieth-Century American City, ed. Mary Corbin Sies and Christopher Silver (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1996),261-279.
in Portland welcomed traffic-centered planning, which asserted that "The highway
engineer in the proper and intelligent discharge of his function must promulgate a
transport system which will adequately serve existing as well as anticipated future
demands of vehicular traffic."? Automobile accommodation, then, became the primary
goal of local decision makers in the Interstate Era, the period of rapid federal freeway
construction following the 1956 federal highway bill.
Chapter Three, The Mobile City, examines the freeway construction and early
citizen protests that followed in the decade after the passage of the Federal-Aid Highway
Act of 1956. In the early years of interstate construction, the Oregon Highway
Department built Interstate 5 and Interstate 84 (then called Interstate 80 North) through
the vast rural expanses of the state. By the late 1950s, engineers began designing and
purchasing rights-of-way in Portland. Interstate 5 was completed first. The north-south
freeway became the primary highway in western Oregon, stretching from the California
border to the Columbia River. In the early 1960s, the inner-belt freeway, Interstate 405,
7
entered the planning stage. By the time construction commenced in 1968, the short urban
loop was already the most expensive 4.3 miles of road in the state. 1-405 was completed
in 1973 with little organized opposition. The third route, Interstate 205, proved to be the
most controversial freeway ever built in Portland. With several alignment changes and
major opposition delaying construction throughout the 1960s, the portion of the route
7 Oregon State Highway Department, Freeway and Express System, Portland Metropolitan Area, 1955
(Salem, OR: Oregon State Highway Department, 1955),2. Hereafter cited as Freeway and Expressway
System.
8planned for Multnomah County and Portland itself did not move into the construction
phase until the late 1970s.
Chapter Four, The Livable City, explores the origins and aftermath of Portland's
successful freeway revolts, which culminated in the creation of the Office of
Neighborhood Associations in 1974 and the cancellation of the Mount Hood Freeway and
Interstate 505 in 1976 and 1978, respectively. Because the freeway protesters articulated
a vision of a livable city, demanded greater citizen participation in local planning, and
elected sympathetic politicians to local office, the Rose City ultimately rejected the
freeway as a crucial component of the modern city.
In the end, the history of Portland's interstate highways and the protests
surrounding them, centers on two competing visions. Highway engineers and proponents
of automobile-centered lifestyles have sought to increase Americans' mobility while anti-
freeway activists, environmentalists, transit supporters, and many contemporary city
planners have worked to improve the livability of the modem metropolis. In the Rose
City, these visions came into conflict when freeways were planned through
neighborhoods. This history, then, begins with an examination of the planners and
engineers who would design and build the controversial urban interstates.
9CHAPTER II
THE EMERGENT CITY:
PLA1\Tl\TERS, HIGHWAY ENGINEERS, AND PORTLAND BEFORE 1956
"Apparently there is no basic difference between the objectives of the State Highway
Commission and the conclusions of our consultants .... It is our earnest recommendation
that design funds sufficient for a $20,000,000 construction program be allocated to the
Portland area."!
- Robert Moses, 1943
In 1943 the Portland Area Postwar Development Committee (PAPDC) hired New
York's eminent road builder Robert Moses to produce a plan to accommodate the city's
anticipated postwar population explosion. The committee paid Moses' $100,000 fee and
the planner arrived for a week in September. Moses and his team of engineers produced
Portland Improvement, an 87-page document that was completed in early November.
Portland Improvement called for extensive investment in highways and the creation of a
civic center and other public facilities. 2 PAPDC ostensibly adopted Moses'
recommendations, although most of the proposed road improvements had already been
planned by the proactive Oregon State Highway Commission.3 Moses himself
acknowledged this. "The state of Oregon has been exceptionally progressive in its
1 Robert Moses, Portland Improvement (New York: Madigan-Hyland, 1943), 13-14.
2 E. Kimbark MacColl, The Growth ofa City: Power and Politics in Portland, Oregon, J9J5 to J950
(Portland: The Georgian Press, 1979),587.
3 MacColl, The Growth ofa City, 589.
10
attitude toward urban traffic," he wrote.4 The report received public attention and
validated state highway engineers' efforts, but few major changes would result directly
from Portland Improvement. 5 In the years following the war, city leaders busied
themselves dealing with a major housing shortage and the return to a peace-time
economy. Highway construction projects, which Moses believed the state should finance,
remained in the planning stages until Congress passed the Federal Aid Highway Act of
1956. After the bill's passage, the vision of the Oregon Highway Commission and the
recommendations of Robert Moses could finally be realized.
Moses was the last in a series of notable urban planners brought to Portland by
various government and civic organizations in the first half of the twentieth century.
These men were called upon by local boosters to create comprehensive plans for the
rapidly-growing river city. A close examination ofthe proposals for Portland shows a
marked change in focus. From the 1904 Olmsted Plan to Moses' Portland Improvement,
urban planning became virtually synonymous with road building. The automobile had
transformed American cities as it went from being a luxury item for the wealthy to an
affordable and important form of transportation for the masses in a few short decades.
Planners came to realize that in order to promote economic growth or implement urban
revitalization projects they first needed to manage traffic.
4 Moses, Portland Improvement, 14.
5 One major exception would be the purchase of much of the land that would become Forest Park. See
MacColl, The Growth ofa City, 588.
11
By the time World War II ended, an auto-centered ideology dominated the
planning profession, a shift that reflected the now-nationwide automobility. Bureaucrats
at all levels of government increasingly viewed freeway construction as the only solution
to urban transportation problems. However, despite promoting road building projects,
city planning officials often lacked the ability to influence local politicians, largely
because the federal government began to give state highway engineers the authority and
funding to construct urban roads, thus excluding local planning commissions from the
decision-making process. In Portland, local leaders welcomed both the changes within
the planning profession and the shift toward traffic-focused development.
By the time Congress passed the 1956 highway bill, American cities had already
been influenced more by traffic engineers than planning professionals. Like other cities,
Portland toyed with comprehensive urban plans from the beginning of the century
through the 1930s.6 Ultimately the city rejected a number of proposals to integrate road
building with urban beautification or redevelopment projects. By the end of the Second
World War highway engineers at all levels of government had virtually dismissed the use
of road construction projects as part of larger social engineering schemes. This chapter
will examine the reasons for the dominance of auto-centered planning ideology in
Portland and the United States. It is significant that highway engineers played a greater
role than planners in shaping urban spaces during the Interstate Era. Comprehensive
6 Mark H. Rose, Interstate: Express Highway Politics, 1939-1989 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press, 1990),21 for a discussion of Cincinnati's somewhat similar planning history. Urban planners also
developed famous plans for cities like St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Newark, and Kansas City in the early twentieth
century.
12
plans often advocated the removal of "blighted" areas and the dispossession of
politically-marginalized groups. However, traffic-centered planning had equally
detrimental effects, though this fact came as a surprise to many engineers. Because road
builders operated under pretensions of apolitical expertise, they were often blind to the
social ramifications of their plans. This myopia would lead to frequent clashes between
state highway departments and urban residents across the United States in the 1960s and
1970s. In order, then, to explain the history of Portland's interstate highways and the
controversies that surrounded them, we must first examine the city's planning history, the
rise of the highway engineering profession, and the intersection of postwar urban
planning and traffic engineering practices and ideologies in the years before 1956.
Planning in Portland, 1900-1945
John Olmsted, the nephew of famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted,
was the first professional planner to tum a critical eye toward Portland. After a visit to the
Rose City in 1903 at the behest of the Board of Parks Commission chairman Thomas
Eliot, Olmsted released a report that called for a harmonious integration of buildings and
parks.7 He and other planners of the day hoped to craft pleasing public spaces where
citizens could easily escape the bustle of urban life. As part of the growing City Beautiful
Movement, Olmsted and his contemporaries developed human scale urban plans that
focused on the creation of wide boulevards and pastoral landscapes to encourage virtue
7 Carl Abbott, Portland: Planning, Politics, and Growth in a Twentieth Century City (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1983),59.
13
and civic-mindedness amid the sin and decay of the industrial city. The Olmsted plan was
praised, but increasing land values prevented the city from enacting any of his
suggestions.8
Like Olmsted, Edward Bennett's 1912 Greater Portland Plan was part of the City
Beautiful Movement. Bennett, however, paid more attention to the automobile. He called
for the creation of tree-lined urban highways, like William K. Vanderbilt's recently
completed Long Island Motor Parkway in New York, to shuttle automobile traffic from
the east side of the Willamette River to the downtown area on the west side. Bennett's
plan assumed that the metropolitan area would ultimately grow in population to two
million, but he never imagined that the majority of those two million people would drive
cars. Because the plan was premised on population growing by a factor often, supporters
were necessarily thinking long-term. The majority of residents, however, could not
support the expenditures required to make the Bennett Plan a reality, particularly in the
face of a sharp economic downturn in the years leading up to the First World War.9
In 1918, the city hired Charles Cheney, a planner whose focus was not on
beautification or social control but on designing organized, efficient cityscapes. 10 Cheney
was hired to study and devise solutions for the postwar housing crunch. He advocated the
adoption of zoning laws and encouraged the creation of a permanent city planning
8 Abbott, Portland, 60.
9 Abbott, Portland, 67.
10 Abbott, Portland, 71.
14
commission. I I The 1924 zoning ordinance, the culmination of Cheney's work in the city,
showed Portlanders that local government could effectively guide urban growth. By the
1920s, in large part because of Cheney, local leaders understood that comprehensive
planning was a crucial part of political decision-making. Still, Portland continued to grow
in a more-or-Iess ad hoc manner through the 1920s as the newly-formed Portland
Planning Commission tried to accommodate the now ubiquitous automobile on city
streets.12 By the end of the Roaring Twenties, according to historian E. Kimbark
MacColl, the automobile had transformed Portland: "Over 30 percent ofthe city's land
was now related to automobile uses and Oregonians spent nearly $100 million in 1928 on
automobile related expenses.,,13 Thus, future plans for the city would pay particular
attention to accommodating traffic.
The Portland Planning Commission hired St. Louis planner Harland Bartholomew
in 1931 to address the city's traffic congestion and declining waterfront area. 14
Bartholomew endorsed a 1927 street widening plan produced by the Planning
II MacColl, The Growth ofa City, 296; Abbott, Portland, 79. The Portland City Planning Commission was
created by the Portland City Council on December 26, 1918.
12 Abbott, Portland, 93. Annual vehicle registrations in Portland exploded during the 1920s according to
historian Carl Abbott. "Multnomah County registered fewer than 10,000 motor vehicles in 1916,36,000 in
1920, and over 90,000 at the time of the great crash." It should be noted that older forms of transportation
and street life did not quietly acquiesce to the automobile. Peter Norton's Fighting Traffic: The Dawn ofthe
Motor Age in the American City (Cambridge: The MIT Presss, 2008) provides a thorough account ofthe
movement to regulate street space for the motorcar.
13 MacColl, The Growth ofa City, 324.
14 Abbott, Portland, 103.
15
Commission and encouraged the construction of several Eastside arterial streets. 15 The
Bartholomew Plan was largely ignored by Portland officials for two reasons. First, as the
Great Depression worsened the local coffers dried up. Portland would have little money
to spend on street improvements until the end of World War II. Second, the plan lacked
the imagination and scale of many of Bartholomew's other works, notably the 1930 St.
Louis County Plan wherein he called for 42 miles of superhighways to link St. Louis to
its suburbs. 16 This plan along with other early projects had established Bartholomew as
an expert at integrating urban highway designs with comprehensive city plans. He
advocated using zoning, mass transit, and well-placed highways to reign in the sprawling
suburban growth of the 1920s and to revitalize blighted urban areas. Overall, though,
Bartholomew did not bring these principles to bear on his Portland plan. He did,
however, warn city and county officials that increased automobile use would extend
suburban boundaries to the point that public services, including mass transit, would be
unable to reach outlying residentsY Despite Bartholomew's limited recommendations,
Portland leaders recognized that the St. Louis planner was correct. Automobile traffic
was creating a serious problem, even in the lean years of the Depression. Congestion in
the central business district continued to worsen, and local officials worried that this
15 Abbott, Portland, 105.
16 Jeffrey Brown, "A Tale of Two Visions: Harland Bartholomew, Robert Moses, and the Development of
the American Freeway." Journal ofPlanning History, vol. 4, no. 3 (2005): 12.
17 MacColl, The Growth ofa City, 500.
16
problem along with population decentralization would harm the downtown core, further
undermining the city's tax base.
As the national economy limped along during the early years of the New Deal,
government officials, planners, and policy experts from Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and
Washington formed the Northwest Regional Council (NRC), an agency whose purpose
was to gather and disseminate data to policymakers. 18 Though it wielded no real
authority, the NRC aimed to coordinate urban and rural planning efforts and promote
economic growth in the entire region. In 1938, the Council hired literary critic and urban
theorist Lewis Mumford "to observe and critically appraise the growth and development
of the region.,,19 Mumford was, in many ways, a departure from the previous planners
who had visited Portland. He lacked the scientific expertise of men like Bartholomew,
Cheney, and Bennett. His credentials did not include training in engineering,
architecture, or policy. Rather, he was a prolific writer whose elegant style had landed
him ajob as the architectural critic for The New Yorker. However, like the other planners
who had visited the Rose City in the past 35 years, Mumford expressed a faith in
technological progress and rational expert planning?O And, like Bartholomew, he worried
that if American cities continued to grow haphazardly, they would face insurmountable
18 For infonnation on this organization, see Charles McKinley, Five Years ofPlanning in the Pacific
Northwest (Portland: Northwest Regional Council, 1939).
19 George Yantis, in his "Forward" to Lewis Mumford, Regional Planning in the Pacific Northwest: A
Memorandum (Portland: Northwest Regional Council, 1939).
20 For an insightful analysis of Mumford and his work, see John M. Jordan, Machine Age Ideology: Social
Engineering and American Liberalism, 1911-1939 (Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1994),
211-212,257-261.
17
logistical and social problems. To help solve these problems, Mumford advocated the
development of comprehensive regional plans. He was, therefore, hired by the NRC to
trumpet their cause.
Mumford arrived in Portland in July 1938 and traveled extensively through the
region before writing a memorandum, Regional Planning in the Pacific Northwest.
Rather than offering specific policy prescriptions the memorandum gave general
recommendations based on his regionalist philosophy. He encouraged leaders to think
about plans that would bring stability and prosperity to both rural and urban areas without
endangering the social fabric of either. Speaking of Portland specifically, Mumford
argued that state-level bureaucrats needed to coordinate with local planners to avoid
potentially disastrous urban problems. Singling out the highway commission, he wrote,
"highways and bridges which will have a drastic influence upon the distribution of
population, and the tax burdens of cities are planned right up to the city's limits - and
sometimes into them - without the faintest respect for the municipal problems involved,
still less without any attempt being made to bring the municipal authorities themselves
into the planning picture.,,21 This critique would be leveled by citizen activists and local
leaders 25 years later as the Interstate Highway System pushed into Portland and other
American cities.
In addition to his regionalist approach to planning, Mumford was concerned with
citizen participation in the political process. He believed that large cities could not
21 Mumford, Regional Planning in the Pacific Northwest, 17.
18
promote democracy and warned the NRC of Portland's apparent pretensions of becoming
a city of three million instead of 300,000.12 Rather, he encouraged satellite cities to grow
up around urban areas like Portland. These autonomous communities would contribute to
the regional economy while allowing citizens to be fully involved in civic life. Mumford
believed, according to planning historian Martha Bianco, "that the ideal urban population
should be small enough to allow for full democratic participation by all inhabitants.',23
Furthermore, smaller, independent communities would reduce the need for a mobile
populace by ensuring that necessary goods and services were close at hand. By increasing
accessibility and reducing mobility, Mumford hoped that his proposed pattern of
settlement would protect democracy and the natural environment as well.
Shortly before arriving in the Northwest, Mumford had finished The Culture of
Cities, a book in which he promoted regional planning as the key to slowing rapid urban
sprawl. In the book's introduction, he conflated the promotion of democracy with the
preservation of agricultural landscapes. "Instead of clinging to the sardonic funeral
towers of metropolitan finance," he wrote, "[humans should] march out to newly plowed
fields, to create fresh patterns of political action, to alter for human purposes the perverse
mechanisms of our economic regime, to conceive and to germinate fresh forms of human
culture." Mumford admonished Americans to see the relationship between sprawling
urban areas and the surrounding countryside, and to take action to prevent cities from
22 Martha J. Bianco, "Robert Moses and Lewis Mumford: competing paradigms of growth in Portland,
Oregon," Planning Perspectives, 16 (2001): 98.
23 Bianco, "Robert Moses and Lewis Mumford," 97.
19
swallowing the natural world and democracy as well?4 These strong sentiments were not
altogether unusual in this period. And, as we will see, echoes of Mumford's
dissatisfaction were heard on other fronts during the interwar years.
Like the plans before it, Lewis Mumford's regional plan was generally ignored by
policymakers, particularly with the onset of World War II. Wartime mobilization pushed
all thoughts of comprehensive development from the minds oflocalleaders. Workers
poured into the city to work at Kaiser Shipyards. The new population taxed an already
underfunded infrastructure. In response, the city council formed the Housing Authority of
Portland (HAP) in 1942 to deal with the crisis. HAP scrambled to find housing for the
thousands of newly-arrived workers. The city would have failed to meet all housing
needs if not for Edgar Kaiser's independent action. Kaiser secured federal funding for the
construction of cheap apartments on the Columbia floodplain. The Vanport housing
project addressed the crisis and gave the city a chance to catch up with the sudden
population explosion. Once again, and despite a stack of comprehensive plans gathering
dust in city hall, Portland continued to follow a tradition of ad hoc planning.
By 1943, The Portland Area Postwar Development Committee was planning for
the city's emergence from the war. William Bowes, the acting mayor and head of
PAPDC and the Planning Commission, made decisions about the city's future with the
business leaders and experts who comprised PAPDC. With the widespread publication of
Moses' Portland Improvement and Bowes' reliance on the Development Committee and
24 Lewis Mumford, The Culture a/Cities, (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1938) in The Sustainable Urban
Development Reader, ed. Stephen Wheeler and Timothy Beatley (New York: Routledge, 2004),19.
20
state-level experts to make planning decisions, the City Planning Commission, an
advisory body to the Portland City Council, found itself effectively excluded from the
decision-making process. According to historian Carl Abbott, "The Planning
Commission complained to the city council that most major construction projects in the
city were being submitted for its approval after their location was fixed. A few months
later it raised the same complaint with the State Highway Department.,,25 The Portland
Planning Commission existed in a sort of limbo, disconnected from the action and
lacking the mandate to do anything but give advice to willing listeners. The commission
would remain in a marginal role until well into the Interstate Era. As Portland emerged
from the war, urban planning would be directed by political leaders, the business elite,
and, increasingly, bureaucrats at the Bureau of Public Roads and the Oregon Highway
Department.
The Bureau of Public Roads and the Oregon Highway Department, 1893-1955
The Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) was the official road building agency of the
United States Government. Formed in 1893, the BPR, then known as the Office of Road
Inquiry (ORI), was initially charged with researching better road surfaces and improving
farm-to-market routes throughout the country?6 Not surprisingly, the ORI was housed
25 Abbott, Portland, 140.
26 Though I will call the agency the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) in this chapter, it actually went through
several relatively insignificant name changes between 1893 and 1949. The Office of Road Inquiry first
changed its name to the Office of Public Roads (OPR) in 1905, then to the Bureau of Public Roads in 1915.
Between 1939 and 1949 the BPR was moved from the Department of Agriculture to the Federal Works
Agency and its name was changed to the Public Roads Administration (PRA). In 1949, with the closing of
21
under the auspices of the Department of Agriculture, though it would become part of the
Department of the Commerce in 1949. Almost from the outset the ORI concerned itself
with using scientific engineering methods to devise better road surfaces. The organization
began to employ researchers with degrees in highway engineering, a field that grew
rapidly with the proliferation of the automobile.
During the 1910s, more citizens called for better roads across the nation.
Catalyzed by the efforts ofbicyc1e enthusiasts who formed The League of American
Wheelmen, the "Good Roads" movement was rapidly co-opted by the growing
contingent of American car owners and citizens who were fed up with the high rates
charged by the monopolistic railroad industry?? In response to the call for better roads,
state governments began to form highway departments. These new agencies
accomplished much in the prewar years, but it was not until the 1920s that a concerted
effort was made to build a comprehensive highway system across the United States.
Several factors had contributed to the increased impetus for road construction during the
second decade of the twentieth century. First, in 1914 Logan Page, the director of the
Bureau of Public Roads, stepped down from his position and assisted in the creation of
the Federal Works Agency, the PRA was moved to the Department of Commerce and renamed the Bureau
of Public Roads. In 1967 the BPR was folded into the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) as part of
the newly-created Department of Transportation. For a full account of each of these transformations see
Tom Lewis, Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life (New
York: Penguin, 1997). It should be noted that none of these name changes altered the goals of the agency
until the formation of the Department of Transportation at least theoretically reconfigured the road building
paradigm.
27 Stephen Goddard, Getting There: The Epic Struggle Between Road and Rail in the American Century
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), chapters 1 and 2. Goddard argues that the high rates, greed,
and increasing consolidation of rail lines eventually caused a public backlash against railroads that helped
fuel public sentiment for improved roads and encouraged government investment in automobile
transportation.
22
the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO). The AASHO, while not
a governmental body, unified highway engineers and bureaucrats from each state's
highway department. The organization developed road surface tests and supplied
highway design standards to state engineers. Second, after a century of debate about
whether the Federal Government should have a role in building roads, Congress passed
the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916. The law provided 50 percent federal funding for a
small portion of state roads for five years. Third, in addition to federal monies provided
by the 1916 Road Act, Oregon and other states enacted a gasoline tax to pay for road
improvements. Within a decade all 48 states had imposed a gas tax to fund construction.
In addition to better organization among state highway departments and the creation of
reliable funding mechanisms, the demand for roads also increased.
The automobile became much more affordable during the years surrounding
World War 1. The Ford Model T, for instance, cost $850 when it was released in 1908
and less than $300 by the early 1920s.28 Not surprisingly many more people were able to
purchase cars, and they increasingly demanded better driving surfaces. Finally, in 1919
President Woodrow Wilson appointed Thomas Harris MacDonald chief of the Bureau of
Public Roads. MacDonald proved to be a tour de force in Washington during his 34 years
at the helm of the BPR. He pushed for increased federal road funding and was a strong
advocate for a toll-free system of interstate highways.
28 Lewis, Divided Highways, 33.
23
MacDonald had attended Iowa State College, earning a degree in the new field of
highway engineering in 1904. As the head ofIowa's highway commission, his early
efforts were aimed at improving roads for farmers using horse-drawn carts. Road
conditions were often so bad that Iowans had trouble getting to railroad stations to ship
their products during any but the driest summer months. As automobile use increased,
motorists joined the farmers in their calls for improved roads. MacDonald successfully
lobbied the State ofIowa for more road building funds. Using Portland concrete and
brick, he constructed highways throughout the state. Within ten years, Iowa had the best
roads and the largest number of automobiles per capita in the nation, proving that
improved roads led to higher volumes of traffic.29 MacDonald's reputation as a no-
nonsense, politically savvy highway engineer made him an obvious candidate for the job
as chief of the BPR. During his first two years on the job, MacDonald worked with the
AASHO to establish road construction standards and to pass legislation that provided
more federal funding. His first piece of legislation, the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1921,
allocated $75 million for road construction and made MacDonald's Bureau of Public
Roads responsible for administering the funds to the states.30 With this system in place,
29 Lewis, Divided Highways, 10.
30 Richard O. Davies, The Age ofAsphalt: The Automobile, the Freeway, and the Condition ofMetropolitan
America (Philadelphia: 1.B. Lippincott Company, 1975), 10. See also Richard F. Weingroff, "The Federal
Highway Administration at 100," Public Roads, vol. 57, no. 2 (1993), United States Department of
Transportation-Federal Highway Administration, http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/faIl93/p93aul.htm (accessed
March 12,2009). In addition, see Richard F. Weingroff, "The Federal-State Partnership at Work," Public
Roads, vol. 60, no. 1 (1996), United States Department of Transportation-Federal Highway Administration,
http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/summer96/p96su7.htm (accessed March 12,2009).
24
MacDonald became the primary director of highway construction efforts in the United
States.
During the 1930s and 1940s the BPR continued to work closely with the AASHO
and construction, automobile, shipping, and oil interests to gain federal support for a
major highway construction project to improve America's primary road system. Even
though highway bureaucrats, private industry, and average Americans clamored for more
roads, federal investment in a massive network of interstate highways was by no means a
foregone conclusion. It took rising death tolls, revolutions in highway design and
construction practices, increased urban traffic congestion, a unique vision of the future of
American cities, and years of political wrangling to win popular approval for an
expenditure of the magnitude envisioned by highway engineers.
President Franklin Roosevelt met with Thomas MacDonald in 1937 to discuss
developing a major highway system. Roosevelt traced six lines across a map of the
continental United States - three running north and south, and three running east and
west. These lines represented a rudimentary interstate highway system. Though he
wanted to facilitate commerce between the nation's major urban centers, Roosevelt
mainly hoped that a huge road building project would provide jobs for a large number of
unemployed or underemployed Americans. MacDonald argued against paying for the
system with toll roads as Roosevelt had suggested, but he approved of the overall plan.3!
Unable to devise a satisfactory funding mechanism, the president dropped the idea and
31 Lewis, Divided Highways, 50.
--------------- --_ .. __ .._----
25
turned his attention to other matters. Despite this setback, the success of the limited-
access turnpikes being completed in Pennsylvania and New York during the early 1940s
encouraged highway engineers.
In 1941, Roosevelt appointed an Interregional Highway Committee to formulate a
means of paying for his proposed system of highways. Among those on the committee
were MacDonald and St. Louis planner Harland Bartholomew. MacDonald, the typical
highway engineer, advocated designing the system simply to accommodate traffic, while
Bartholomew hoped to integrate the highway construction with urban redevelopment
plans. The Interregional Committee presented their plan in a 1943 report that advocated
building a massive road network that would serve farm-to-market traffic as well as urban
commuters. The proposed system, they reasoned, could help reduce urban blight and
revitalize downtown business districts. However, when legislation was finally passed, the
broad goals of the Interregional Highway Committee were reduced to more general plans
of traffic mitigation?2
In late 1943, the AASHO drafted a new highway bill that went before the U.S.
House and Senate road committees. When the bill emerged as the Federal-Aid Highway
Act of 1944, there were a total of four road networks designated by the federal
government. The first three - including the primary road system (featuring the U.S.
numbered routes), the farm-market routes, and the urban highway network - were all
partially funded by the government. The newly-designated National System of Interstate
32 Rose, Interstate, 19-21.
26
Highways, planned by the Interregional Highway Committee, did not receive any
government funding, nor was it introduced in conjunction with any urban renewal
schemes. State highway departments would be in charge of allocating as much or little
money as they saw fit for this proposed freeway system.33 With no federal aid, the states
waited to begin construction.
Following Roosevelt's death and the end of World War II, President Harry
Truman faced the challenge of moving the United States to a peacetime economy and
aiding in the rebuilding of Europe. Truman prioritized building new housing for returning
veterans and devoting resources to Europe rather than constructing highways.34 When
Dwight Eisenhower took office in 1953, however, he picked up the plan for a new
highway system where Roosevelt had left off. The nation needed faster, safer roads and
Eisenhower envisioned a network of freeways similar to Germany's autobahn. In 1954,
Eisenhower instructed Vice President Richard Nixon to announce plans for the federal
government to provide funding for the proposed, but as yet nonexistent, Interstate
Highway System at the annual Governor's Conference at Lake George, New York. 35 In
his speech, Nixon outlined the dire state of American roadways, stressing the annual
death toll on American roads, the problem of traffic congestion, and the loss oftime and
money due to an inefficient transportation system. He concluded that "These penalties
33 Rose, Interstate, 25-26.
34 Goddard, Getting There, 173.
35 Goddard, Getting There, 184.
27
warrant the expenditure of billions to correct them.,,36After Nixon's speech to the
governors, each state fell in line with Eisenhower's plan to fund the estimated $50 billion
interstate highway project with gasoline and tire taxes that would pay off the note in
twenty years.3? Nearly two years later, and following months of political wrangling,
Congress passed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 and the Highway Revenue Act,
which funded the Interstate Highway System through an increased gasoline tax of three
cents per gallon.38 With a funding mechanism in place and a reduced price tag of $27
billion, construction could finally begin.
While the Bureau of Public Roads and the AASHO provided the capital and
coordination between state highway departments, it would be those individual state
agencies that actually designed and built the freeways. Thanks to 40 years of accumulated
power, Oregon's Highway Department was able to begin building its portion of the
interstate system as soon as funding became available. The department was formed in
1913 by the Oregon Legislative Assembly with the slogan "Get Oregon out of the Mud"
and the mandate of constructing rural farm-market roads. 39 Because the state's economy
36 Richard Nixon, "Address of Vice President Richard Nixon to the Governors Conference" (Lake George,
New York, July 12, 1954), United States Department of Transportation-Federal Highway Administration,
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/rw96m.htm (accessed April 1, 2008).
37 For the most comprehensive accounts of the political wrangling that occurred in the years leading up to
the passage of the 1956 Highway Act, see Rose, Interstate. See also Lewis, Divided Highways and
Goddard, Getting There.
38 United States Department of Transportation - Federal Highway Administration, "Financing Federal-Aid
Highways," http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/fifahiwy/fifahi05.htm (accessed 3/29/09).
39 Oregon Department of Transportation, "Business Services History Center," State of Oregon,
http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/CS/BSS/ historycenter.shtml (accessed February 27,2008).
28
was based heavily on timber and agriculture, Oregonians relied on roads and trails to
transport commodities to railroad stations or directly to local and regional markets. For
much of the year, however, frequent rain made western Oregon a quagmire, posing
significant challenges to those traveling with goods. With limited funds the Highway
Department set about building roads until the outbreak of the First World War.
In 1919 Oregon became the first state to institute a one-cent gasoline tax to pay
for road improvements. The tax soon became common practice in every state. The logic
was simple: the more a person drove, the more he or she would pay for the use of state
highways. Because the early drivers tended to be rural residents transporting
commodities, the Highway Department focused primarily on developing efficient ways
of moving traffic across the countryside. Increasingly, though, the agency's decision-
making body, the Oregon State Highway Commission, would allocate significant sums of
money for urban road improvement projects that linked Portland to the surrounding
countryside. As more people purchased automobiles, the rural highways that had been
designed to facilitate rural travel and commerce provided urbanites with a convenient
means of escaping the city and experiencing the state's natural beauty. This dual function
of highways as facilitators of both commercial and leisure activities led to early
opposition to road projects in the first decade after World War 1.
In the 1920s millions of Americans took to the newly paved cross-country
highways in sleek new GM automobiles or the inexpensive late Model T Fords. Middle
and upper class Americans were now not only mobile, but also financially stable enough
29
to take vacations from work.4o Some of the most popular destinations were National
Parks and coastal areas. In 1932 Oregon State Highway Engineer R.H. Baldock designed
a road along the northern Oregon Coast to facilitate such travel. However, Neahkahnie
Mountain was in his way. A part of The Northern Coast Range, the mountain was
shrouded in lore. Tillamook Indians had called it "home of the gods" and rumors of
Spanish treasure buried in the mountain existed for centuries. All of this mattered little to
Baldock, who planned to lay a straight ribbon of asphalt right across the base of the
mountain. Not surprisingly, the design involved dynamiting parts ofNeahkahnie into the
Pacific Ocean. The Oregon Parks Commission tried to persuade Baldock to rethink the
plan, but to no avail. In disgust, the entire commission resigned.41
The Oregon Highway Commission was equally reticent to change the route. After
being in existence for nineteen years, the Highway Commission had become singularly
focused on creating a safe, efficient network of highways throughout the state. Oregon
Governor Julius Meier worried over the resignation of the Parks Commission and the fate
ofNeahkahnie Mountain. Yet, his hands were tied. The State Parks Commission was
under the control of the Highway Department, and Chief Highway Commissioner Lesley
Scott opposed any expenditure on parkland. Governor Meier appointed a new Parks
Commission comprised of21-year-old Portland architect John Yeon and others who he
believed could convince Scott to rethink his position. Yeon tried in vain to persuade the
40 Paul Sutter, Driven Wild: How the Fight Against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness
Movement (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002), 39.
41 John Yeon, Interview by Marian Kolisch, December 14, 1982-January 10, 1983. Transcript: Portland,
Oregon, http://www.aaa.sLedu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/yeon82.htm (accessed February 28,
2008).
30
highway commissioner to use funds from the gasoline tax to set aside more parks and
redesign the Oregon Coast Highway. "Trees. All they're good for is birds," Scott told
Yeon. "I was here when it was all trees and mud and it was terrible." The money
controlled by the Highway Commission, he asserted, would go only toward road
building.42
Yeon himself was an advocate of highway construction. His father had financed
the Columbia River Highway, a narrow, windy road built through the scenic Columbia
River Gorge and offering sweeping views ofthe river. However, even before designing
the highway that would spell doom for Neahkahnie Mountain, the Highway Commission
had planned a new Columbia River Gorge Highway that would destroy several miles of
bottomland, the low-lying alluvial plain near the river's edge. The original Columbia
River Highway was now accommodating truck traffic as construction on the Bonneville
Dam began. And, though Yeon would make a strong case for the construction of
freeways in the coming years, his primary goal now was to preserve natural areas that the
Highway Commission seemed only too happy to pave over or blast into the sea. Knowing
that he was waging a losing battle in Oregon, Yeon decided to go around both Scott and
Baldock. He gathered several aerial photographs ofNeahkahnie Mountain and the
Columbia River Gorge, and arranged to meet with Thomas MacDonald in Washington,
D.C.
42 John Yeon, Interview by Marian Kolisch.
31
Yeon knew MacDonald's reputation and wondered if he could convince the
engineer to see the merits of preserving Oregon's natural beauty. When they met,
MacDonald enthusiastically looked through Yeon's photographs ofNeahkalmie
Mountain and the Columbia River Gorge and agreed to send his chief landscape architect,
Wilbur Simonson, to Oregon. After observing the Gorge and Neahkahnie himself,
Simonson met with the Oregon Highway Commission and Chief Engineer Baldock.
According to Yeon, Simonson "persuaded them to put in a very gradual curve through
the bottomlands [of the Columbia River Gorge] ... a straight gash across there would have
been a very angry scar." Similarly, at Neahkahnie Mountain, Simonson "persuaded them
to give up this straight line and modulate the alignment, so that the pinnacle and the
buttresses were not blasted into the sea." Victory belonged to Yeon, but the architect
understood that he had not changed the attitudes of the Highway Commission. "Scott, or
Baldock, wasn't very influenced by me at all," he concluded.43
Yeon's efforts illustrate some of the early criticisms of modern highways. While
Baldock focused on building straight, wide roads to shuttle traffic quickly across the
expanses of Oregon, Yeon and others saw value in the scenic beauty of the state. Road
building should not occur at the expense of the natural world, Yeon argued. This attitude
would be reflected in Lewis Mumford's memorandum to the Northwest Regional
Council. Likewise, the Wilderness Society, formed in 1935, sought to protect vast tracts
of land throughout the United States from the ravages of automobiles, roads, and
43 John Yean, Interview by Marian Kolisch.
32
commercial development. However, while Yeon wanted roads to be built around the
natural features of the landscape, the Wilderness Society tried to prevent roads from
being built at al1.44 Yeon's call for comprehensive road designs to preserve natural beauty
would eventually be echoed by freeway protesters who desired to protect their homes and
neighborhoods, but recognized a need for freeways. The Wilderness Society's more
critical argument that automobile use and highway projects should be severely curbed
because oftheir environmental consequences would also find voice in Portland's anti-
freeway battles of the early 1970s. Thus, the arguments over the place of roads in the
natural world set the tone for the urban freeway battles that were to come.
Before the outbreak of the Second World War, politicians and highway officials
at both the federal and state levels became aware of major deficiencies in the current road
system. During the 1930s, although Oregon and other states continued to build crucial
primary highways, the overall condition of American roads deteriorated. In addition, even
though less than one-quarter of Americans owned automobiles during the Depression,
almost 32,000 people were killed in car accidents each year.45 Despite the absence of
federal or state funds, engineers in state highway departments planned safer, controlled-
access freeways and experimented with asphalt and new concrete mixtures to replace the
44 Sutter, Driven Wild, 55, 96. Sutter shows that the formation of the Wilderness Society was not simply a
reaction to the loss of natural areas, though that was part of it. Nor was it the result of a growing
understanding of ecological systems, though that was part of it, too. The major reason Aldo Leopold,
Robert Sterling Yard, Benton McKaye, Bob Marshall, and others formed the Wilderness Society was as a
response to American consumer culture and the automobile.
45 Norman Bel Geddes, Magic Motorways (New York: Random House, 1940),2. Compare this with the
38,588 fatalities recorded in 2006 when the vast majority of America's now much larger population took to
the roads. Fatality Analysis Reporting System online, http://www.fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
(accessed April 8, 2008).
33
crumbling roads.46 In Oregon, R.H. Baldock tinkered with every aspect of highway
design. From a road's width and slope to its surface and subsurface composition, Baldock
tailored every feature to the speed his engineers thought was best for a particular
highway.47 These engineering developments were reported to the AASHO and then
replicated by highway departments in each state. This standardization, occasionally
overseen by the BPR, allowed traffic engineers to act with undisputed authority. They
could boast that they knew the latest science and were acting as part of a coordinated
effort to improve America's transportation system. It did not seem farfetched, then, to
envision the creation of a unified system of safe, efficient highways linking the nation as
never before.
Inspired by the design standards of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, John Yeon
prepared a 1938 study advocating the construction of limited access highways. Freeways
for Oregon cited the need for increased safety and efficiency on the state's highways.
Yeon saw problems with current Oregon highway zoning laws. He argued that the
limited-access status of the new grade-separated turnpikes needed to be worked into
statewide construction practices. "The development of cross-country highways was
undertaken for the primary purpose of providing fast routes between cities and between
remote sections of the state," he wrote. However, he continued, "the legal status of the
new thoroughfare road remained the same as for the former access roads. These new
46 LB. Holley. "Blacktop: How Asphalt Paving Came to the Urban United States," Technology and Culture,
vol. 44, no.4 (2003): 732-733.
47 John Hawkins and Ward Hawkins, "The Man Behind the Plans," Freedom o/the American Road
(Detroit: Ford Motor Company, 1956),27.
34
highways were legally like city streets constructed through open country. While their
alignment and surface underwent revolutionary changes their legal status was a survival
of the pre-motor era when there was no differentiation in rights of property owners along
a city street or country road.,,48 The new four-lane roads that had been built in and around
Portland in recent years featured these major zoning and construction flaws. Intersecting
routes crossed primary highways to create hazardous driving conditions. "It becomes
increasingly difficult to enter or cross the highway with two lanes of traffic streaming in
opposite directions," Yeon concluded.49 Future road construction in Oregon, he claimed,
needed to reflect the new limited-access highway designs that eliminated grade crossings
with overpasses and underpasses. 50 Despite support from the Highway Commission,
however, the relative lack of federal funds prevented the state from acting on Yeon's
suggestions.
Road construction stopped entirely during the Second World War. Even in the
early postwar years federal and state funds were diverted to housing projects and other
sorely needed civic and infrastructure improvements. Therefore, it was with great interest
that the Oregon Highway Commission followed the highway funding debates that raged
in both houses of Congress throughout 1955 and into 1956. In order to secure federal
monies and alleviate the state's traffic problems as quickly as possible, State Engineer
48 John Yean, Freeways for Oregon: The Advantages ofFreeways in Increasing Safety and Efficiency in
Highway Travel (Salem, OR: Oregon State Planning Board, 1938), 1.
49 Yean, Freeways for Oregon, 6.
50 Yean, Freewaysfor Oregon, 13.
35
Baldock submitted Freeway and Expressway System, Portland Metropolitan Area to the
Highway Commission in June 1955. The report examined "the need for arterial highways
in the Portland Metropolitan Area based on forecasts of traffic 20 years hence." To
address Portland's transportation needs, Baldock claimed, an expenditure of $371 million
would be necessary. A price tag of this magnitude, he knew, was beyond the spending
capacity of the city or the counties that comprised the metropolitan area. "It is my
personal opinion," Baldock wrote, "that, based upon equity, the State Highway
Commission should eventually assume approximately 75 per cent of the cost, meeting
this part ofthe cost in part with federal-aid funds and in part with state funds." 51 Though
he did not know how much of the Interstate Highway System the federal government
would finally pay for, Baldock understood that by designing a freeway system and
waiting for funding, the Oregon Highway Commission could get federal dollars to pay
for a large percentage of the cost.
Portland, like all cities, welcomed federal investment in freeway infrastructure as
hundreds of new cars clogged city streets each day. Earlier plans for the Rose City had
offered grand visions without a way to pay for them. Here was a plan that would solve
the traffic problem and give the city a huge influx of federal aid. Coordination with the
Housing Authority of Portland, taxpayer approval, and other roadblocks would be
nonexistent. Portlanders clamored for relief from traffic congestion and local leaders
welcomed the interstate system's promise to revolutionize travel and commerce. Urban
51 Letter from R.H. Baldock to the Oregon State Highway Commission, June 30, 1955 in the preface to
Freeway and Expressway System.
36
plmming in Portland would now be largely controlled by federal and state highway
engmeers.
Engineers, Planners, and the Politics of Mobility, 1939-1956
The planners from PAPDC, the Portland Plmming Commission, and other local
agencies that would ostensibly oversee the city's development in the Interstate Era sought
to make the city less congested and more easily navigable. To save the central business
district from the disinvestment caused by commercial and residential decentralization,
planners endorsed the construction of multi-lane arterial highways to provide suburban
residents with direct access to downtown areas. Increasingly, local bureaucrats saw road
building as a way to address a multitude of problems from traffic accommodation to
zoning, slum clearance, and economic development. For these reasons planning
professionals made road projects central to their development strategies. Thus, because
highway engineers, city planners, and politicians all agreed on the importance of new
roads and welcomed the influx of federal funds, rapid construction of the interstate
system was virtually guaranteed. The comprehensive plans that Portland's political elite
had rejected in the years before Moses' influential Portland Improvement had provided
alternatives to the auto-centered development that was to come. However, urban planners
came to embrace the potentially-transformative interstate project. Ultimately, the goals of
planners and highway engineers were not dissimilar. As the plans of industrial designer
Norman Bel Geddes will show, the differences between city planners and traffic-minded
37
engineers like Moses were only differences in scope of vision. The faith in freeways and
the liberating power of the automobile was the same.
In 1939, the New York World's Fair opened in Flushing Meadows, the former
site of the Corona Ash Dumps. Earlier in the year New York City Parks Commissioner
Robert Moses had cleared the dumping grounds to make way for the fair. The site was
fitting. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, the dump - then
referred to as "the valley of ashes" - was the location of the climactic scene where Daisy
Buchanan inadvertently hits and kills her husband's lover with Gatsby's car. This famous
depiction of automobile violence brought notoriety to the area. Now, erasing the memory
of Fitzgerald's bitter portrayal of twentieth-century decadence, the fair's most popular
attraction, Futurama, drew millions of visitors.
The General Motors Highways and Horizons exhibit at the well attended World's
Fair showed millions of Americans a future that featured sleek, bullet-shaped cars
traveling at high speeds across the country on smooth, safe limited-access freeways. At
the center of the exhibit was Futurama, an enormous model of the cities and highways of
1960 as envisioned by industrial engineer Norman Bel Geddes. Futurama became popular
for its faith in growth and progress while raising the level of public interest for a large-
scale freeway project. Like John Yeon in Oregon, Bel Geddes argued that current roads
were unsafe and inefficient. In his book Magic Motorways, a follow up to the Futurama
exhibit, he went one step further, writing, "The answer is not that there are too many cars,
but that the roads have not been designed to perform their function properly .... The real
trouble with American highways is the simple fact that they are not designed for the
38
traffic they bear.,,52 The exhibit received media attention and captured the imaginations
of Americans who had been driving on roads that had not been repaved, widened, or
otherwise improved in more than a decade.
Futurama also gave Americans their first glimpse of the revolutionizing potential
of superhighways. The exhibit featured sprawling, decentralized cities, vast factory
farms, and expansive freeways separating commercial, industrial, and residential areas. 53
Highway construction, in Bel Geddes' vision, would occur in tandem with urban
redevelopment projects. Tenements, dirty factories, and traffic congestion would become
obsolete.54 Decentralizing the city and improving the speed and convenience ofpersonal
transportation, Bel Geddes and other modem planners believed, could save the viability
of central business districts while allowing residents to live in garden suburbs or
magnificent high-rise apartments far from industry and commerce. The narrator of the
exhibit's official promotional film, "To New Horizons", extolled the virtues of these
cities of the future. "Here is an American city," his deep voice boomed as the camera
panned over the Futurama model, "re-planned around a highly developed modem traffic
system.... On all express city thoroughfares, the rights-of-way have been so routed as to
displace outmoded business sections and undesirable slum areas whenever possible. Man
52 Bel Geddes, Magic MOlorways, 11-12.
53 Bel Geddes, Magic Molorways, 6.
54 Lewis, Divided Highways, 45.
39
continually strives to replace the old with the new.,,55 Futurama appealed to fair visitors
and movie viewers because it imagined cities free of industrial blight, traffic congestion,
and inefficiency. Even more, it tapped into the American zeitgeist, equating mobility with
freedom. "Over space, man has begun to win victory," the film assured viewers. 56
The Highways and Horizons exhibit predicted many features of the freeways that
would be funded by the 1956 Highway Act. In the estimation of historian Tom Lewis, "It
was Bel Geddes' and General Motors' vision, not [Robert] Moses', that became the
reality of the Interstate Highway System.,,57 Moses' ideas, according to Lewis, lacked the
grand scale of Futurama and the proposed transcontinental freeway network. While Bel
Geddes did anticipate a system ofhigh-speed freeways linking the entire United States,
Lewis fails to acknowledge that Moses' plan for Portland featured similarly-constructed
urban freeways. 58 Both the master builder and the visionary designer strongly advocated
the limited-access highway designs that would distinguish the Interstate Highway
System. However, the scope of their road building plans differed greatly. Moses' freeway
designs focused on accommodating automobiles and decreasing travel time. He believed
that highways should be designed simply to mitigate traffic congestion. Plans that placed
freeway projects at the center of radical redevelopment efforts were "bunk" according to
55 Handy (Jam) Organization, "To New Horizons," 1940, Internet Archive,
http://www.archive.org/details/ToNewHor1940 (accessed March 24, 2009). Quotes appear at 18:45 and
19:27 in the 23:00 film (accessed March 24,2009).
56 Handy (Jam) Organization, "To New Horizons." Quote appears at 17:00.
57 Lewis, Divided Highways, 45.
58 Brown, "A Tale of Two Visions," 23.
40
Moses. 59 However, the successful road builder would eventually come under scrutiny for
his own alleged slum removal plans. Critics pointed out that his New York freeways were
generally built through the neighborhoods of African Americans and other politically-
marginalized groups.60 Whether racial prejudice or socioeconomic bias influenced
Moses' plans, it is certain that local road builders like Moses or Portland Commissioner
William Bowes, and a large number of America's highway engineers for the most part
ignored the social consequences of urban freeway projects until after the construction had
been completed.
Bel Geddes' vision of the transformative power of freeways did more to capture
the imaginations of World's Fair visitors than did the Moses-designed roadways over
which they had driven to arrive at the fairgrounds. Bel Geddes hoped that faster, safer
freeways would transform American cityscapes and reshape society. Like Harland
Bartholomew and other planners, he made it clear that he wanted to integrate freeways
with slum removal, restrictive zoning, and urban redevelopment efforts. The scope of his
vision far surpassed that of Moses and traffic-minded highway engineers. Yet, Lewis'
assumption that the Interstate Highway System was based on the ideas of Bel Geddes or
other mid-century planners rather than on the traffic-focused ideology of engineers
underestimates the role of the highway engineering profession and fails to analyze the
danger of their shortsightedness.
59 Brown, "A Tale of Two Visions," 23.
60 Brown, "A Tale of Two Visions," 23.
41
The Interstate Highway System was heavily promoted by BPR Chief Thomas
MacDonald and the engineers in his employ. State-level road builders from R.B. Baldock
in Oregon to James Shocknessy in Ohio worked to construct limited-access freeways and
expressways even before the passage of the 1956 highway bil1.61 They created working
examples of multi-lane freeways on which the post-1956 system would be based.
Because the Federal-Aid Highway Act called for oversight by the BPR, and because the
AASHO had spent years implementing professional construction standards for roadways,
highway departments designed and built most interstates on the basis of traffic volume
calculations. State and city highway engineers set up electronic counters to record daily
traffic volumes. In addition, they conducted origin-destination studies determining where
automobile trips generally began and ended within a given urban area. By integrating
these studies, engineers composed maps illustrating traffic desire lines (See Figure 1).62
The lines showed the most congested routes and suggested freeway locations for
alleviating that congestion. Highway departments, then, focused on the traffic service
aspects of freeway route design at the expense of the social effects of building through
neighborhoods.
While engineers responded to the political circumstances of interstate highway
legislation by privileging the drivers who paid for the roads, they asserted that they were
61 As a case in point, turnpikes in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were
under construction or completed by 1956.
62 The Origin-Destination Study conducted by the Oregon State Highway Department in 1946 was the basis
for highway design and construction in the 1950s and 1960s. The Portland Planning Commission updated
the study in 1956 by using traffic volume statistics and 1975 traffic projections. See Portland City Planning
Commission, Trafficways Plan: Vehicle Trip Desire Patterns (Portland: City of Portland , 1956).
42
merely using factual data to better serve an increasingly mobile citizenry.63 Hence,
patterns of traffic congestion became known on maps as "desire lines," and the new
freeways "served" motorists. This belief in using scientific knowledge for the supposed
benefit of society had long been a stated goal of engineers. Late nineteenth century
technological innovations, the rise of scientific management, and the broad application of
scientific principles during the Progressive Era had shaped the young profession.
According to historian John Jordan, early twentieth-century engineers and rational
reformers "wanted to escape political demagoguery and deadlock by invoking the method
of applied science, convinced that it would lead to logical consensus from which
purposeful action could proceed.,,64 Highway engineers held fast to this ideology because
it gave them legitimacy in the face of a seemingly corrupt and increasingly complex
urban society. The result was a growing profession that measured success in terms of
roads built, congestion alleviated, and travel time decreased. Despite these goals, the
traffic problems of metropolitan America continued to worsen until the 1956 highway act
gave engineers the green light to revolutionize urban transportation.
Highway engineers would reshape Portland in the wake ofthe Federal-Aid
Highway Act, and they would receive the support of the city's own planning agencies
and politicians despite their somewhat divergent goals. The consensus among the elite
63 Paul Barrett and Mark H. Rose, "Street Smarts: The Politics of Transportation Statistics in the American
City, 1900-1990," Journal o/Urban History, vol. 24, no. 3 (1999): 405-433. Barrett and Rose trace the use
of statistics in transportation planning beginning with the trolley car engineers who measured ridership in
order to increase profit margins and better serve customers. They continue with an analysis of highway
engineers and airport developers, both of whom relied heavily upon statistical data to inform their
decisions.
64 Jordan, Machine Age Ideology, 4.
43
and most citizens was that freeways were crucial for the city's continued development.
However, by the late 1960s citizen groups, local leaders, and a new breed of planning
professionals would make a concerted effort to halt urban interstate projects. Anti-
freeway movements throughout Portland eventually brought the heady years of
unrestrained highway construction to an end by the middle of the 1970s. In order to
understand how the consensus dissolved in Portland and elsewhere, we must examine not
only successful freeway revolts, but also other instances of large-scale and minor freeway
opposition that, despite their failures, signaled the weakening of support for urban
superhighways in the 1960s.
PLATE 2
1946 PATTERN ZONES A TO K
VEHICLE DRIVERS ONlY - MASS TRANSIT ~ OTHER PASSENCERS NOT INCLUDED
VEHICLE TRIP DESIRE PATTERNS
PORTLAND C I T1 PlANNiNG CONMrSSiON
U!.!.!:!l
,,~ UTEIlUl 8TATIOU
_ZOKE80~.DAAJU
~oo''' ...,,~~"\0,_10,00<11(>,000"P~
U.l~Y Y~lltOI.E IF\lP'
F(t r -=-'::':.:===-:'::::=:J!O(P~ (I 3000 8COO tQQ~
HB~UAAY 19S6
44
Figure 1. 1946 vehicle trip "desire" patterns, Portland, Oregon.65
65 Portland City Planning Commission, Trafficways Plan, plate 4.
45
CHAPTER III
THE MOBILE CITY:
FREEWAY CONSTRUCTION AND FAILED OPPOSITON, 1955-1972
"An adequate transportation system is essential to the economic health of any urban
community. A transportation plan which will be within the framework of predictable
quantities and patterns of travel must make use of all types of facilities - surface streets,
freeways and mass transit - but appropriate care must be exercised in the location, design
and building of such facilities to insure that there will be maximum benefits and
minimum disbenefits to the urban environment."]
- Portland-Vancouver Metropolitan Transportation Study, 1964
It did not take long for Portlanders to see the negative consequences of imposing
massive interstate highways on a functional cityscape. On June 23, 1961, the Portland
City Council and state road engineer Tom Edwards met with citizens concerned over
permanent street closures caused by the partly-finished Minnesota Freeway. The route, a
section ofInterstate 5, sliced through the city's Albina neighborhood. Fifty-one streets
had already been dead-ended to make way for the new depressed highway in the city's
only predominantly African American neighborhood. "I think it is unfortunate that this
has not come to our attention until at this late time," Howard Cherry, a member of the
Portland School Board stated. "I would like to be heard at a proper time with the council
1 Portland-Vancouver Metropolitan Transportation Study, Interim Report, 1-205 Location Social-Economic
Study (Salem: Bureau of Municipal Research, University of Oregon and Oregon Highway Commission,
1964), i.
46
and the highway commission." Likewise, Daniel McGoodwin of the American Institute
of Architects (AlA) implored the Highway Commission to "find a less damaging
solution." Reading from a statement prepared by the AlA, MeGoodwin argued that the
freeway "would create a great problem for the city and disrupt long established
neighborhood pattems."z
The criticisms made by a qualified architect like McGoodwin put City
Commissioner William Bowes on the defensive. "We have done everything you can
think of to make it as attractive as possible," he said, adding, "if you can call a freeway
attractive." The most incisive critique came from local architect Howard Glazer who
complained that the highway designers' failure to consult with residents was "an example
of what's happened before and will undoubtedly happen again." When presented with a
map showing the freeway skirting the edge of the neighborhood, Glazer pointed out that
the map "is a slice of the city and doesn't show adjacent territory." No matter how
carefully they were planned, urban interstates would reduce residents' ability to quickly
get groceries, visit friends, go to school, or attend church. At the meeting's conclusion,
state engineer Edwards assured those in attendance that "every attempt will be made to
solve these problems.',3 The freeway opened to traffic in December 1963.4 No changes
were made to the route.
2 "Minnesota Freeway Role Mulled At Road Hearing," The Oregonian, June 24, 1961.
3 "Minnesota Freeway Role Mulled At Road Hearing," Howard Glazer would become a prominent member
of the Northwest District Association during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He would help that
neighborhood group in its successful battle to halt the construction ofInterstate 505.
4 "East Bank, Minnesota Freeway Construction in High Gear," The Oregonian, November 7, 1963.
47
The Oregon Highway Commission, like highway departments across the nation
and the Bureau of Public Roads itself, justified the social costs of urban freeway
construction by claiming that the goals of traffic accommodation and congestion
mitigation were their primary concerns. 5 The neighborhoods through which the new
superhighways would be built were small sacrifices on the altar of efficiency. The
Highway Department's 1955 report, Freeway and Expressway System, reflected this
philosophy. The report was filled with charts showing local traffic volumes and maps
illustrating directional desire lines. It verified the need for new highways and offered
recommendations for the locations of those highways. The evidence was based on data
collected in the 1946 "Portland Metropolitan Area Traffic Survey: Origin-Destination
Study." Using information from the decade-old study and current traffic volume
statistics, the Highway Department's 1955 report provided a comprehensive assessment
of Portland's over-burdened street system and offered a solution that anticipated the
impending federal highway bill (See Figure 2),6
The passage of the Federal-Aid Highway Act in June 1956 provided funds to
each state highway department and charged state engineers with designing and
constructing the freeways. However, highway officials exhibited varying degrees of
5 Freeway and Expressway System, 12. The report states, "The freeway-expressway system developed in
this report has been designed to give motorists in these expanding areas and in the existing populated areas
within the city, easy access to the commercial and industrial areas and other important generators of traffic
in the Portland study area."
6 Freeway and Expressway System, 2.
48
autonomy. They were generally forced to interact and coordinate with local planners and
councils. Consequently, there were differences in how the interstates were constructed in
each American city. In some places, strong preservationist attitudes pervaded both the
citizenry and local government, making opposition to freeways strong and road projects
difficult to complete. In other cities, state highway officials worked closely with local
councils and urban planners to target specific "blighted" areas for demolition and
redevelopment. In still other locations, state engineers made essentially unilateral
decisions and intimidated any opposition with the threat of withdrawing highway funds.
In Oregon, state law mandated that highway commissioners hold public hearings and
consider the recommendations of local officials before finalizing routes. In Portland
itself, the Portland Development Commission, the Portland City Planning Commission,
the Multnomah County Commission, and the Portland-Vancouver Metropolitan
Transportation Study (PVMTS) all negotiated interstate highway route locations with the
Highway Department. Alternately motivated by traffic accommodation and urban
development goals, the local planning agencies sought to shape the city's future. State
law and the profusion of planning and decision-making bodies combined to make
highway building a collaborative effort in the Rose City. Yet, the collaboration had
limits. Citizen input about route locations were rarely given serious consideration. The
public hearings were held merely to comply with state law. And, because state engineers
wielded federal authority and funds, they could browbeat opponents in local government.
It would be the early 1970s before a new generation of sympathetic politicians and
environmentally conscious, politically-savvy activists would reshape transportation
49
policy and public participation in Portland. In the interim, the late 1950s and 1960s would
be a period marked by the persisten.t authority of highway engineers, isolated opposition
to interstate routes, and the first large-scale freeway resistance.
FIGURE II
STATE e. FEDERAL I-I I Gl-tWh'r
1955
j{
LEGENp
IHrER51At~ ~,',;n"
./
-::>->-\'
Figure 2. Portland's proposed freeway system, 1955.7
7 Freeway and Expressway System, 31. Interstate 405 is conspicuously missing from the map. The route
would not be planned until after the passage of the 1956 highway act.
50
Interstates 5 and 405: Local Support and Isolated Resistance, 1956-1963
In 1958, Portlanders voted to create an urban renewal agency dubbed the Portland
Development Commission (PDC). The city's postwar boom had slowed and residential
and industrial blight threatened property values. 8 Soon after its inception, the PDC
implemented large-scale urban renewal projects on the southwestern edge of downtown,
in the Albina nieghborhood, at Portland State College, and in the Lair Hill section of the
city.9 As interstate construction progressed, the PDC integrated their renewal plans in the
South Auditorium and Albina neighborhoods with the freeway plans. When the Highway
Commission proposed two route alternatives for the inner-belt, the PDC urged the City
Council to approve the plan favored by state engineers. 10 At every opportunity, the PDC
trumpeted the Oregon Highway Commission's projects, creating a powerful voice of
support within local government. This relationship also meant that freeway projects
would be more obviously connected with urban renewal plans that targeted low-income
and minority neighborhoods.
Under the direction of Lloyd Keefe, the Portland Planning Commission generally
supported the goals of the interstate program and the decisions of highway engineers and
8 Craig Wollner, John Provo, and Julie Schablisky, BriefHistory of Urban Renewal in Portland, Oregon,
Portland Development Commission, 5, http://www.pdc.us/pdf/about/urbanJenewal_history.pdf (accessed
April 11, 2009).
9 Wollner, Provo, and Schablisky, BriefHistory ofUrban Renewal in Portland, 6-11.
10 Portland Development Commission, Minutes ofthe Portland Development Commission, November 17,
1958, 4, http://www.pdc.us/commission-archive/1958/minuteslMinutes%20-%20Nov%2017%201958.pdf
(accessed April 10, 2009). Hereafter cited as Minutes ofthe Portland Development Commission. See also
Minutes ofthe Portland Development Commission, June 24, 1960,4; and March 12, 1962,4,
http://www.pdc.us/commission-archive/default.asp (accessed April 11,2009).
51
commissioners. However, unlike the Highway Department, the Planning Commission
had no control over highway funds. Thus, they were free from the financial constraints of
the federal government when they made recommendations, but unable to actually carry
out road building plans. During the early years of freeway construction, the Planning
Commission found itself outmaneuvered by the Highway Department when
disagreements arose.
Like the Planning Commission, the Portland-Vancouver Metropolitan
Transportation Study served in an advisory role. In 1959 PVMTS was created by the
Columbia Regional Association of Governments (CRAG), a newly-formed regional
planning agency, to analyze the traffic demands of the region. The study was chaired by
Portland City Commissioner William Bowes, a staunch advocate of freeways. Working
with local governments, the states of Oregon and Washington, and the Bureau of Public
Roads, PVMTS adopted the same methods for measuring the "transportation problem" as
state and federal highway engineers. The study's Technical Advisory Committee relied
primarily on origin-destination and traffic volume statistics when planning new
highways.ll It is unsurprising, then, that the reports released by PVMTS arrived at the
same conclusions for solving urban traffic problems as the BPR and state highway
departments. Though the study had a mass transit component, PVMTS dismissed the
importance of transit on economic grounds and focused instead on serving the region's
ever-increasing automobile traffic. Transit riders, the study concluded, were mostly
11 Portland-Vancouver Metropolitan Transportation Study, Volume I: Factual Data Report, (Salem:
Oregon State Highway Commission, 1963),2. Hereafter cited as PVMTS, Factual Data Report.
52
women (63 percent) and were generally not "professional people, proprietors, officials,
salesmen, and laborers." According to the study, many riders were '''captive' - that is, for
some reason or another they are forced to take the bUS.,,12 From an economic standpoint,
these demographic figures meant that transit was less important to the city than freeways.
"Even though mass transit in Portland is oriented towards the Central Business District
and schools," the Technical Advisory Committee asserted, "the Central Business District
is not as dependent upon mass transit as is Chicago, Pittsburgh, or Philadelphia." The
Study concluded that transit "is not as clearly identified with the worker as might be
expected." 13
During the early years of interstate highway construction, local agencies like the
Portland Development Commission, the City Planning Commission, and the Portland-
Vancouver Metropolitan Transportation Study encouraged the federal freeway project
and advanced an agenda that generally fell in line with the goals of the BPR and the
Oregon Highway Department. In addition, elected officials from the Portland City
Council to the Multnomah County Commission welcomed the massive investment in
local infrastructure. As interstate construction progressed, it appeared that everyone was
in favor of the progress represented by the superhighways. However, the first eight years
of road building would show that no matter how well-planned or carefully orchestrated
the project, there were bound to be dissonant voices.
12 PVMTS, Factual Data Report, 24-25.
13 PVMTS, Factual Data Report, 25.
53
In 1955, R.H. Baldock oversaw the construction of Portland's Banfield
Expressway and the Portland-Salem Expressway. Along with the already completed
Harbor Drive in downtown Portland, these new limited-access freeways were the first in
the state. The Banfield followed Sullivan's Gulch to the eastern edge of Portland near
Rocky Butte State Park, while the Portland-Salem Expressway linked the state capital
with its major urban center. The Highway Department followed up these
accomplishments with the publication of Freeway and Expressway System. In Baldock's
last year as State Highway Engineer, he had ushered in a new era of highway
construction for the city. After passage of the interstate highway legislation, the Highway
Department, with new Chief Engineer W.C. Williams, began work on the state's two
major federal freeways: Interstate 5 and Interstate 80 North (now 1-84). The Banfield,
when completed in 1958, would be integrated into 1-80N, meaning that the City of
Portland had already accommodated one major freeway in the transcontinental system. 14
Construction on Interstate 5 commenced in 1956 in southern Oregon near Myrtle Creek,
and the Portland-Salem Expressway was soon incorporated into 1_5. 15
The first two years of freeway construction in the state saw road engineers
making great progress on overall mileage while addressing frequent complaints from
rural landowners. The Federal-Aid Highway Act had mandated that state officials
conduct public hearings prior to construction. So, in cities and towns along the proposed
14 Oregon State Highway Department, Portland Freeway System, (Salem: Oregon State Highway
Commission, 1958),6.
15 Oregon Department ofTransportation, "Interstate 5," Oregon Department of Transportation,
http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/COMMlinterstate50_I5 .shtml (accessed April 15, 2008).
54
1-5 and I-80N routes, field engineers met with concerned residents to hear their objections
and occasionally to get local input on route specifics. 16 In late 1957, the Highway
Commission's Chief Counsel and the Right of Way Engineer along with several field
engineers found that their method of negotiating directly with property owners often
resulted in "dissatisfaction because of apparent iniquities in some settlements for similar
classes ofproperties.,,17 Roughly ten percent of property owners took the matter to court,
hoping either to hold on to their land or to get a better price for it. While many
Oregonians were successful in getting more money, they were all forced to sell. By 1961,
large portions of the rural freeways had been completed, and the Oregon Highway
Commission received national recognition from the Bureau of Public Roads for having
the highest percent of interstate mileage finished. 18
In Portland, the process of completing highway mileage was much more time
consuming than in the vast expanses of southern and eastern Oregon. Densely populated
neighborhoods, an already existing street system, and the need for frequent interchanges
16 Oregon State Highway Department, Minutes ofthe Oregon Highway Commission, vol. 41, 3 (Salem, OR:
State of Oregon, 1956),27249-27258. Hereafter cited as Minutes ofthe Oregon Highway Commission.
These pages record the meeting minutes of the public hearing conducted in Medford. This may have been
the fIrst public hearing under the provisions of the 1956 Highway Act conducted in Oregon. In regard to the
federal legislation, the meeting minutes state: "The Highway Commission proposes to fInance construction
of this freeway partially with Federal monies, and accordingly must comply with certain Federal
requirements. Including Section 116c of the 'Federal-aid Act of 1956,' which provides that: - 'Any state
Highway Department which submits plans for a village, either incorporated or unincorporated, shall certify
to the Commissioner of Public Roads that it has had public hearings, or had afforded like opportunity for
such hearings, and has considered the economic effects of such a location.... ' This hearing also was held to
satisfy the requirements of the State of Oregon, particularly those contained in ORS 373.015."
17 Oregon State Senate, Report ofLegislative Highway Interim Committee in Oregon, Senate Joint
Resolution No. 25 (Salem: State of Oregon, 1957), 13.
18 Minutes ofthe Oregon Highway Commission, vol. 44, 1 (1959): 31394. See also George Kramer,
"Interstate 50th Anniversary: The Story of Oregon's Interstates," 5, Oregon Department of Transportation,
http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/COMM/docs/Oregoll_Interstate_Background.pdf (accessed April 12, 2009).
55
made highway design, right-of-way acquisition, and construction long and arduous
undertakings. In 1958, the Highway Department's engineering division began designing
the Rose City's portion of Interstate 5. In the original plan outlined in Freeway and
Expressway System, I-5 would have hugged the west side of the Willamette - subsuming
Harbor Drive in the process - until the river curved westward at the northern edge of
downtown where the route would cross the Steel Bridge into Northeast Portland and
follow Interstate Avenue and U.S. 99 across the Columbia River to Vancouver,
Washington. In a 1958 report entitled The East Bank Freeway, state highway engineers
designed a new alignment wherein I-5 would cross to the east side of the Willamette on
the Marquam Bridge just north of Ross Island. They now deemed the Steel Bridge
crossing "entirely inadequate.,,19 The new configuration also had the highway running
parallel to Greeley Avenue in Northeast Portland rather than Interstate Avenue. This
route would plow through the western edge of the Arbor Lodge and Overlook
neighborhoods in northeast Portland. By the next year, however, the Interstate Avenue
alignment was shifted a few blocks east to Minnesota Avenue. This final route took the
freeway through Albina, Portland's only predominantly African American neighborhood.
As the state began purchasing homes in the neighborhood, Mayor Schrunk and
city relocation chief Joy O'Brien advocated providing assistance to displaced residents.
The PDC's urban renewal projects in Southwest Portland and Albina had begun to take
shape by 1959 and, although federal urban renewal funds could not be used to help
19 Oregon State Highway Department, The East Bank Freeway (Salem: Oregon State Highway
Commission, 1958),8-9.
56
residents displaced by freeways, the mayor sought a way to finance a relocation
assistance plan. Ultimately, city hall was unable to appropriate any funding. To make
matters worse, the Albina neighborhood began to crumble. The Urban Renewal Project,
the new freeway, the Lloyd Center, The Memorial Coliseum, and Emmanuel Hospital
would all be constructed during the 1960s. These projects displaced thousands of
residents and destroyed much of the old neighborhood.2°
For their part, highway engineers worried that because the East Bank Freeway
would dislocate hundreds of residents the project would face widespread opposition. In
late 1959, the Highway Commission established a right-of-way office in Northeast
Portland to acquire land and address local resistance to the recently-announced sections
ofInterstate 5.21 Over the next year, the state acquired rights-of-way in the Albina
neighborhood and other areas along the east bank of the Willamette. As route designs
were finalized in 1960 and 1961 the Highway Department held public hearings like the
one attended by Howard Cherry, Daniel McGoodwin, and Howard Glazer. These forums
gave citizens an opportunity to voice their opposition, but no power to actually influence
route designs. In 1960, several hundred residents living on Minnesota Avenue, a street
that would be largely destroyed by the impending freeway, formed the Minnesota
20 Portland Civil Rights Project, "Whiteness and Racism," Portland State University,
hrtp://whitestudiesblackstudies.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/psu-portland-civil-rights-project-documentary-
script-part-2/ (accessed April 13,2009). For a more limited perspective on dispossession caused by the East
Bank Freeway see Gene Klare, "Multimillion East Bank Freeway to Uproot Residences, Industry," The
Oregonian, February 13, 1959. See also "160 Families in Road Path," The Oregonian, February 20,1959,
Section III.
21 Minutes o/the Oregon Highway Commission, vol. 44, 2 (1959): 32036; vol. 44, 3 (1959): 32145-32146.
57
Property Owners Association to protest the state's plans. State Highway Engineer W.C.
Williams met twice with the group and, though no transcripts or minutes elucidate the
content of the meetings, Williams told The Oregon Journal that "the Minnesota Property
Owners Association dissolved apparently for lack of necessity for a common cause.,,22
Evidently, Williams and other highway officials were able to assure residents of fair
compensation for relocation and housing costs, and convince them ofthe benefits of the
new superhighway.
As construction proceeded on Interstate 5, the Highway Department finalized
design plans on a part of the freeway system not included in the 1955 report. Interstate
405, a ring of steel and concrete linking both sides of the Willamette, would provide easy
access to the business district. Initially proposed by Robert Moses in Portland
Improvement, the route was only officially designed by the Highway Department and
designated as part of the Interstate Highway System after the passage of the 1956
Highway Act.23 1-405, known locally as the Stadium Freeway, would be similar to the
other inner-belt freeways that encircled American cities. And, because it met 1-5 at two
interchanges, the Stadium Freeway was designed in conjunction with the East Bank
Freeway.
In January 1959, Fred Fowler, chief highway engineer for the City of Portland,
and Lloyd Keefe met with City Commissioner William Bowes and the Portland
22 Jim Running, "Minnesota Freeway Property Harmoniously Acquired," The Oregon Journal, July 24,
1961.
23 Moses, Portland Improvement, 87.
58
Development Commission to discuss the 1-405 alignments recently proposed by the
Highway Department. Fowler recommended the more expensive Clay-Market Route, a
depressed freeway that would skirt the edge of downtown and require the demolition of
several commercial buildings. The Highway Commission had already endorsed the
Foothills Route, a configuration that would follow the contours of the Southwest Hills
and displace more residences and churches than the alternative. "The Highway
Department," Keefe stated, "appears to have made their decision based on cost rather
than function." This jab at the highwaymen was, no doubt, meant to hurt. Highway
engineers claimed to be solely concerned with function. Money was political and,
therefore, beyond their interest. Keefe's anger may speak to the powerlessness felt by the
Planning Commission as they watched the city being rebuilt around them by forces
outside their sphere of influence. However, there was also some truth to the statement.
Commissioner Bowes, a longtime advocate of freeways, explained that the Federal
Government was finding the cost of the Interstate Highway System to be "25 to 30
percent more than estimated." With this in mind, Bowes asserted, the city would have to
show that the cost ofthe Clay-Market Route was similar to that of the Foothills
alignment. Bowes went on to point out that "cities all over the country are facing the
same problem. Although the route has to be approved at a public hearing and by the local
city government and Planning Commission if it can be shown that the route preferred by
the State Highway Department and Federal Government is comparable and is less costly,
all they would have to do is drop their plans if the City did not concur. The City would
59
then lose part of the funds provided in its five-year allocation.,,24 The prospect of losing
federal funding was appealing to no one, least of all city planners. In the end, the
Planning Commission bowed to the wishes of the Oregon Highway Department and a
public hearing was scheduled.
Finally, in June 1960, the Highway Commission held a public hearing to discuss
the finalized Foothills Route. With the alignment already decided upon, the hearing, like
the one for the East Bank Freeway, was scheduled mainly to fulfill legal responsibilities.
At the hearing Mark Schnitzer and David Robinson, local members of the Congregation
Shaarie Torah, an Orthodox Jewish congregation, requested that the Highway
Commission reexamine the route alternatives because the proposed alignment would
require the demolition of their recently constructed synagogue. Schnitzer explained that
no properties were available in the neighborhood for relocation and, because Orthodox
Jews walk to their synagogue on Sabbath, the current synagogue was of vital importance.
Highway Commission chairman M.K. McIver "thanked the delegation for bringing this
matter to the Commission's attention.,,25 A month after the public hearing the Foothills
Route was officially adopted. In August, Highway Department engineers announced that
"it would not be economically feasible to change the location of the highway.,,26 In the
24 Minutes a/the Portland Development Commission, January 13, 1959,4-5,
http://www.pdc.us/commission-archive/1959/minutes/Minutes%20-%20Jan%20 13%20 1959.pdf (accessed
April 10, 2009).
25 Minutes a/the Oregon Highway Commission, vol. 45 (1960): 32772.
26 Minutes a/the Oregon Highway Commission, vol. 45 (1960): 32803.
60
following months, the Highway Department reached a settlement with the Congregation
Shaarie Torah and a new synagogue was constructed two miles away.27
Construction on 1-405 finally began in earnest in early 1968 after four years of
ground-clearing and excavation to prepare for the most expensive 4.2 miles of Oregon's
road system.28 In Northwest Portland, construction of the Stadium Freeway planted seeds
of discontent. The Grace Lutheran Church parish was split down the middle by the
highway and pastor Llano Thelin became a vocal opponent ofthe freeway. Meanwhile,
the Highway Department designed 1-405 with a stub jutting out into the northwest
residential neighborhood so that it could easily connect the proposed Industrial Freeway
(Interstate 505) to the inner-belt. On the west side of the Willamette the growing
dissatisfaction would blossom into a full-fledged neighborhood revolution when plans for
the Industrial Freeway were finally announced. Meanwhile, on the River's east side, the
Highway Department would soon find that it had run out of goodwill. In the coming
years, the unbuilt Mount Hood Freeway would stir the ire of a motivated group of
activist-experts and become an emblem of Portland's freeway opposition and
environmental ethic. But first Interstate 205, the proposed outer-belt, would become the
most contentious freeway ever constructed in the state.
The early years of the Interstate Era in Portland reinforced the authority of the
Highway Department. The creation of the PDC and PVMTS bolstered local institutional
support for major freeways while broad public support for the projects drowned out the
27 Congregation Shaarie Torah: About. http://www.shaarietorah.org/about.html (accessed April 10, 2009).
28 Kramer, Interstate 50th Anniversary, 10.
61
isolated voices of opposition. For their part, the highway engineers and bureaucrats
shrugged off the dissenters who appeared at every public hearing. They understood that
people would always resist being displaced, but were sure that everyone, except perhaps
for idiosyncratic architects, could understand that roads were necessary for progress.
However, the opposition to Interstate 205 that soon developed in Lake Oswego,
Maywood Park, and elsewhere showed that even as symbols of progress freeways were
an unwelcome intrusion into neighborhoods. The Highway Department's years of
holding nominal public hearings, receiving broad support from local politicians and
bureaucrats, and quelling the first signs of protest were coming to an end. The 1-205
controversy would mark the beginning of organized opposition to freeways and a
questioning of the Highway Commission's authority. Yet, it was also a continued
affirmation of superhighways and the interstate project.
Interstate 205: Localized Opposition to a "Necessary Freeway," 1961-1972
In the 1960s, many Americans began questioning the alleged benefits of an
automobile-centered life. Ralph Nader's 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed exposed the
auto industry's failure to implement safety features in cars, while A.Q. Mowbray's Road
to Ruin (1969), Helen Leavitt's Superhighway - Superhoax (1970), and Kenneth
Schneider's Autokind vs. Mankind (1971) examined the demolition of homes, ecological
degradation, and the high economic costs associated with the interstate system. A
growing environmental awareness, catalyzed in part by the recent successes of wilderness
advocates and highly publicized crises like the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire and Santa
62
Barbara oil spill, made many people more aware of the planet's fragility and the need to
protect natural landscapes and livable cityscapes from destruction.
Simultaneously, many city dwellers embraced a new set of urban design
principles. In 1961, Jane Jacobs, an architectural magazine editor published The Death
and Life ofGreat American Cities. Jacobs had recently fought and helped defeat the
construction of a Robert Moses-planned road extension through Washington Square. Her
book criticized the primacy of automobiles in American life. More importantly, though,
she thrashed the incompetence of modern city planners. "Planners, including the
highwaymen with fabulous sums of money and enormous powers at their disposal, are at
a loss to make automobiles and cities compatible with one another," she wrote. "They do
not know what to do with automobiles in cities because they do not know how to plan for
workable and vital cities anyhow - with or without automobiles." Enraged at the plans of
men like Moses and the amount of authority given to state and federal highway
engineers, she continued: "The simple needs of automobiles are more easily understood
and satisfied than the complex needs of cities, and a growing number of planners and
designers have come to believe that if they can only solve the problems of traffic, they
will thereby have solved the major problem of cities. Cities have much more intricate
economic and social concerns than automobile traffic."29 Jacobs encouraged citizens to
think about what the cities of the future should look like and to question the tenets of
mid-century urban planning. Her rhetoric was increasingly echoed by citizens and
29 Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life o/Great American Cities (New York: Vintage, 1961) in The Sustainable
Urban Development Reader, ed. Wheeler and Beatley, 31.
63
planning professionals. It would signal the beginning of a nationwide shift in Americans'
understanding of metropolitan core areas from unitary centers that required suburban
access to a conglomeration of potentially-vital neighborhoods and sub-districts.30
As the decade progressed, anti-freeway activists organized at the local level to
protect not just their homes and neighborhoods but their entire cities by bringing highway
projects to a permanent halt. Transportation officials across the country were soon
confronted by angry urban residents who were prepared to initiate legal battles against
both state highway departments and the Bureau of Public Roads. Unlike the informal
opposition that road engineers had become accustomed to dealing with at public hearings
during the first decade of interstate construction, the protests that sprang up in New York,
Boston, New Orleans, San Francisco, and elsewhere were better organized and had
clearer goals.
When Oregon highway engineer Tom Edwards met with the Portland City
Council and frustrated citizens in June 1961, it was probably not the first time he had
heard such vehement criticism from the public. Historian Mark Rose has interviewed
many engineers involved in the interstate program during the 1950s and 1960s. He notes
that he was struck by the number of people "who, as late as 1987, were able to recall
distinctly that moment at which they first encountered opposition to highway
30 Carl Abbott, "Five Downtown Strategies: Policy Discourse and Downtown Planning Since 1945" in
Urban Public Policy: Historical Modes and Methods, ed. Martin V. Melosi (University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1993),7.
64
construction.,,31 For these men, it came as a surprise that people - motorists - would
reject the fast, safe freeways that had taken years to design and build. To the highway
engineer, whose only goal was to satisfy the needs and desires of a mobile populace, the
freeway revolts made little sense. However, the early instances of grumbling,
dissatisfaction, and opposition from people in the paths of freeways spoke to a general
desire to protect property that, for many, extended outward to encompass not just the
home, but entire streets, neighborhoods, and even cities. Although, the opposition may
have seemed strange, the highwaymen in Oregon had plenty of warning before they were
confronted by the first organized freeway opposition in Portland.
It is unsurprising that controversy surrounded the urban freeway routes. Highway
engineers were trying to accommodate four or six lane roads with 300 foot rights of way
and no intersections in cities that already had fully developed street networks. The
decision to build interstates through cities had been made during the Bureau of Public
Road's Congressional lobbying in the months leading up to the passage of the 1956
Federal-Aid Highway Act. To get the support of Congress members who represented
large cities, the BPR had guaranteed that the new freeway system would feature a major
urban component. Thus, the Bureau designed urban interstate routes, and state highway
officials enthusiastically carried out the plans. Neither the politicians nor the engineers
thought that residents would reject the revolutionary transportation system being built for
them.
31 Mark H. Rose and Bruce E. Seely, "Getting the Interstate System Built: Road Engineers and the
Implementation of Public Policy, 1955-1985," Journal a/Planning History, vol. 2, no. 1 (1990): 33.
65
From the outset, as we have seen, residents in affected neighborhoods voiced
opposition to freeways. Yet, the majority of these early dissenters did not dispute the
necessity of freeways, but merely that they should be built elsewhere. And, though the
phrase NIMBY ("Not in my backyard") was not coined until the 1980s, it accurately
describes the complaints of these early freeway opponents. By characterizing their
position as one of concern for their neighborhoods and not a broader rejection of cars and
highways, residents ensured that they would not be perceived as Luddites. However, their
pleas for route alignment changes generally did not sway engineers or policymakers.
Moving a route might save a neighborhood, but only at the expense of another one.
Officials knew that every neighborhood would resist being uprooted. But, they were also
certain that far more people would benefit from a road than would be harmed by it. Thus,
highway routes were rarely reconsidered.
Anti-freeway sentiment in Portland existed at this NIMBY level during the early
years of interstate construction. Few people questioned the need to alleviate traffic
congestion, and there was certainly no widespread opposition to automobile use in
general. In fact, the Portland-Vancouver Metropolitan Transportation Study pointed out
in 1963 that mass transit use was still declining as more automobiles clogged the region's
roads.32 So, with Interstate 5 nearing completion and 1-405 well under way, the Oregon
Highway Commission turned its attention to the next major project, a partial loop around
eastern Portland that would cross the Columbia River and link up with Vancouver's east
32 PVMTS, Volume I: Factual Data Report, 20, 23.
66
side freeway. This route, now called Interstate 205, had figured prominently in the 1955
Freeway and Expressway System report. According to the report, however, there would
be two north-south limited-access highways traversing the neighborhoods of eastern
Multnomah County. The first, the Laurelhurst Freeway, would originate at a point on
Interstate 5 near Tualatin, pass along the southern edge of Lake Oswego and tum north
following 40th Avenue through Portland. The second route, dubbed the Cascade Freeway,
would begin in Oregon City on the banks of the Willamette and head north through
Portland along 82ud Avenue.33 The Bureau of Public Roads, however, would support the
construction of only one outer-belt loop around the city. In late 1961, the Highway
Department began planning an alignment for the single route.
By December, the Highway Department had released the locations of the five
possible route alignments being considered for the section of the freeway originating at I-
S and going through Lake Oswego. Each of the proposed routes would bisect the city and
school district. The Lake Oswego School Board opposed the plan from the outset.
Assistant highway engineer Tom Edwards, now familiar with local freeway opposition,
admitted, "No one wants to be dispossessed by a freeway. Few homeowners, with
considerable investment in their property want a freeway running past their front doors."
However, he continued, "Our responsibility is not only to the immediate area affected by
a freeway, but also to a number of other factors, not the least of which is practical
33 Freeway and Expressway System, 80, 86.
67
economics.,,34 By April 1963, however, the Highway Department had to admit defeat in
Lake Oswego. Resident petitions led the local council to adopt a resolution barring
highway construction "anywhere within a distance of several miles of this city.,,35
Spurred on by the Oswegans, citizens of the Laurelhurst neighborhood actively
campaigned against the freeway. In early 1962 Laurelhurst residents agreed to petition
the Portland City Council to formally oppose the route if it were to be built within their
h I d· . 36sc 00 Istnct.
Over the next year, the Portland-Vancouver Metropolitan Transportation Study
conducted research on possible route alignments for Interstate 205.37 On June 11, 1964,
after three exhaustive studies analyzing desire lines, daily traffic volumes, costs, and
economic effects, the PVMTS Technical Advisory Committee recommended an
alignment that would originate at a point on Interstate 5 several miles north of Lake
Oswego. The route would head east before curving northward following 52nd Avenue in
eastern Portland.38 There was, however, dissention among the local planning agencies.
Portland Planning Commission Director, Lloyd Keefe, a member ofPVMTS, supported
34 William Sanderson, "Lake Oswego School Board Opposes Road Dividing District," The Oregonian,
December 22, 1961.
35 R.I. Edward Reid, "Oppose Freeway," The Oregon Journal, April 3, 1963.
36 "Laurelhurst, Shattuck Citizens Weigh Proposed Freeway Effects," The Oregonian, January 19, 1962.
37 The PVMTS studies include Volume 1: Factual Data Report (1963), Interim Report 1-205 Location
(1964), and Interim Report 1-205 Location: Social-Economic Study (1964), all published by the Oregon
Highway Commission with the latter prepared by the University of Oregon Bureau of Municipal Research
and Services.
38 Don Holm,"52nd Avenue Freeway Route Recommended," The Oregonian, June 11, 1964.
68
the route while the Multnomah County Planning Commission opposed it, citing their
desire for a 96th Avenue route that would allow for the development of Government
Island on the Columbia River as a recreation area.39
Meanwhile, the announcement of the 52nd Avenue route impelled citizens of
Milwaukie and Oak Grove to formally oppose the route. Likewise, on June 18 the Lake
Oswego Citizens Freeway Committee, Inc. continued their official opposition to any
route planned in the vicinity ofthe community. "The highway department has stated
repeatedly that it will not cram a freeway down our throats," a member of the committee
reminded highway commissioners.4o Over the next several weeks more opposition groups
began to form throughout Portland's East Side. Led by the "militant" Oswegans,
associations in potentially affected neighborhoods like Laurelhurst, Alameda,
Hollywood, Rose City, Glencoe, Woodstock, Milwaukie, and Oak Grove were joined by
the Clackamas County communities Molalla and Mulino, neither of which were located
near the proposed interstate.41 Representatives from each of the groups met on July 6 and
outlined a unified position. Temporary Chairman Alfred Lauber explained, "We are
battling bad planning. This is not a good place to build a freeway." Similarly, Glencoe
Community Council chairman Lynn Kirby asserted, "We are fighting for our homes.
[This group is] not anti-freeway.,,42
39 "Proposed Freeway Route Said Favored," The Oregonian, June 11, 1964.
40 "Freeway Route Sent to State for Fonnal OK," The Oregonian, June 18, 1964.
41 "Glencoe Organizes Freeway Opposition," The Oregonian, July 7, 1964.
42 "Glencoe Organizes Freeway Opposition," The Oregonian, July 7, 1964.
69
By July the Highway Department had settled on a route that would skirt the
border of Lake Oswego, a fact that did not diminish opposition from the community.43
Simultaneously, the Multnomah County Commissioners reinforced their support of an
east side alignment following 96th Avenue rather than 52nd. This new plan satisfied the
. majority of groups opposed to the interstate. However, residents of the Parkrose and
Maywood Park neighborhoods ofPortland announced their resistance to the route, which
would now bisect both school districts. 44
On August 27, freeway opponents converged on Salem to attend a Highway
Commission meeting. The Citizens Freeway Committee, now an umbrella organization
for all of the groups opposed to the 52nd Avenue alignment, came face-to-face with the
96th Avenue Committee, a coalition of residents from Maywood Park, Parkrose, and other
neighborhoods that would be affected by the easterly configuration. At the meeting, the
96th Avenue Committee expressed support for the 52nd Avenue proposal. Committee
spokesman C.M. McCoy stated, "We don't feel the 96th Avenue route should be rammed
down our throats.,,45 In an effort to assert the legitimacy of his group's resistance,
McCoy's statement employed almost the exact phraseology used by the Citizens Freeway
Committee two months earlier. Now, with no sense of irony, both groups were arguing
43 "New Freeway Plan Said 'Acceptable To State," The Oregonian, July 11, 1964.
44 "Parkrose Group Declares Opposition To Freeway Anywhere Within School District Area." The
Oregonian, July 15, 1964.
45 "Antifreeway Forces Attend State Highway Meeting to Protest New Route," The Oregonian, August 28,
1964.
70
that the freeway they so adamantly opposed in their own neighborhoods should be forced
on people living two or three miles away (See Figure 3).
It is unsurprising that neither group questioned the need for the proposed
interstate. Federal highway funds represented a huge government investment in the local
infrastructure and most people seemed to think that congestion relief on the East Side was
necessary. An editorial in The Oregonian reminded readers that traffic volumes were
projected to increase exponentially over the next 20 years, and that the PVMTS Technical
Advisory Committee was "a professional body composed of traffic engineers, urban
planners and administrators." Their recommendations should be heeded because they
would "move traffic with maximum efficiency and minimum disruption of property and
social values.,,46 As each of the proposed routes faced increasing resistance, the
newspaper's editorial staff again argued that "Unless we can, fairly soon, stop talking and
start digging there will be no 1-205, and if we are to credit [the Technical Advisory
Committee's] startling forecasts of vehicular traffic by 1975, this would be a disaster for
the entire Portland metropolitan area.,,47 As the controversy over the route alignment
heated up in July, the Western Section of the Institute of Traffic Engineers held their
annual meeting in Portland. Though the highwaymen in attendance did not discuss the
local battle over Interstate 205, one panel at the conference asserted that the interstates
46 Editorial, "Freeway Route," The Oregonian, June 11, 1964.
47 Editorial, "Let's Start Hearings," The Oregonian, July 1, 1964.
71
saved drivers both time and money. In short, they were "a working girl's best friend,"
according to the engineers.48
With the Multnomah County Commissioners and the Citizens Freeway
Committee advocating the 96th Avenue alignment, and PVMTS and the 96th Avenue
Committee supporting the 52nd Avenue route, the Highway Commission deliberated in
December 1964. Realizing that Lake Oswego was not going to withdraw its opposition
unless the route was significantly altered, state engineers proposed a configuration for 1-
205 that would make the Mount Hood Freeway the southern section ofI-205.49 The
Mount Hood was a proposed east-west route that would be constructed between Division
Street and Powell Boulevard in Southeast Portland. It would connect suburban Gresham
to the near east side of Portland. This alignment would eliminate the portion of the route
that would have passed near Lake Oswego and it would make the Mount Hood Freeway a
part of the interstate system, thereby qualifying it for 92 percent federal funding. The
Portland City Council, however, rejected the plan in a 4-1 vote in April 1965, citing the
dispossession of residents living along 96th Avenue as the reason. 50 The Portland
Planning Commission, directed by PVMTS member Lloyd Keefe, had recently
recommended the 52nd Avenue route to the City Council. Likewise, city commissioner
William Bowes a PVMTS coordinating committee member, supported the initial 1-205
route. Influenced by the prominent bureaucrats, the Council recommended the adoption
48 "Freeways Win Praise," The Oregonian, July 15, 1964.
49 William Sanderson, "Interstate 205 Faces Scrutiny," The Oregonian, December 6, 1964.
50 "City Council Kills 96th Avenue Freeway Plan," The Oregonian, April 8, 1965.
72
of the 52nd Avenue alignment. The Citizens Freeway Committee, however, had done
enough to convince the Highway Department to abandon that route altogether. With the
City of Portland now opposed to the 96th Avenue route, the local freeway opponents had
created an impasse. To make matters worse, the Bureau of Public Roads also rejected the
Mount Hood-96th Avenue configuration, and refused to make the Mount Hood Freeway
part of the interstate system. 51
The Highway Department continued working to find the path of least resistance
for the embattled 1-205. In July engineers proposed a route through West Linn, Oregon
City, and Gladstone that would then tum north and follow the 96th Avenue route through
Portland.52 By November the Highway Commission approved the freeway. Meanwhile,
the threat of losing federal dollars encouraged the Portland City Council to reconsider its
opposition despite the City Planning Commission's assertion that "the 52nd_4ih route
would fit the urban fabric better than other possibilities for a north south freeway between
Mt. Tabor and the Willamette River.,,53 In March 1966, with the Oregon Highway
Department, the Portland City Council, and the Multnomah County Commission all in
support of the route, the Bureau of Public Roads gave official approval. 54
51 Stan Federman, "State switches to West Linn-96th Route For 1-205. City Okays Mt. Hood Road Plan,"
The Oregonian, August 11, 1965.
52 Oregon State Highway Division, Draft Environmental Impact Statement: administrative action for
Interstate 205 (Salem: Oregon State Highway Division, 1972),2.1.
53 Robert Olmos, "State Picks Route for Controversial 1-205," The Oregonian, 20 November 1965;
Portland City Planning Commission, Interstate 205 Freeway (Portland: Portland City Planning
Commission, 1965), 34.
54 Draft Environmental Impact Statement: administrative action for Interstate 205,2.1.
73
The Maywood Park Steering Committee continued to oppose 1-205, however.55
Neighborhood leaders recalled that Highway Department officials had said they would
never force a freeway through a city.56 The Steering Committee, therefore, recommended
that the neighborhood incorporate in order to stop the freeway. In a close election in
August 1967, Maywood Park became the newest municipality in Oregon. The
community of 1,200 was now the last vestige of opposition to Portland's eastern bypass.
In May 1968, local leaders filed a complaint with the Multnomah County Circuit
Court against the Highway Commission. The complaint charged that transportation
officials had not consulted with the city's management or held public hearings when
acquiring rights of way for the new interstate. 57 The following April, Circuit Judge Dean
Bryson ruled that the Highway Commission had acted in accordance with state laws.
Bryson claimed that the legislature did not intend for small groups of citizens like those
in Maywood Park to halt major projects. "Today the wheelbound public has also acquired
an interest through investment of millions of dollars in public throughways," he stated.
Highway Department chief counsel George Rhode agreed: "If 150 persons were allowed
to hold up a major freeway it could kill future highway development in the state.,,58 The
worth of freeways, Bryson and Rhode implied, must not be measured by their effects on
55 "Maywood Park Plans to Battle Encroachment By New Freeway," The Oregonian, November 20, 1965.
56 Editorial, "New City," The Oregonian, August 4, 1967.
57 Phil Cogswell, "Maywood Park Begins Lawsuit To Bar Freeway Construction," The Oregonian, May 10,
1967.
58 "Judge Supports State In 1-205 Route Case," The Oregonian, April 24, 1969.
74
places like Maywood Park, but by their ability to increase overall mobility. The court
ruling was a blow to local residents. However, it carne only months before Congress
passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Until the passage ofNEPA, the
federal government and the State of Oregon provided no mechanism for systematically
calculating the environmental impacts of road construction projects. The new legislation
forced transportation engineers to look not merely at how federal highway projects
affected traffic mobility, but at how they affected the natural and built environments over
which they were being constructed. Now environmental impact statements (EIS) would
be required before work could begin on any government projects "significantly affecting
the quality of the human environment."s9
In 1970, the Oregon Transportation Commission pushed the route of I-205 closer
to Rocky Butte Park, thereby avoiding most of Maywood Park. 60 Residents, however,
continued to wage a legal battle against the Department of Transportation (DOT). Now,
however, there was a distinctly environmental tone to the arguments made by Maywood
Park mayor Werner Zeller. "They're [the DOT] also going to be taking down 70 and 80-
year old trees," Zeller explained in late 1970. He noted the noise pollution the highway
would cause and demanded that highway engineers address his constituents' concerns.
59 U.S. Congress, National Environmental Policy Act of1969. (Pub. L. 91-190, 42 U.S.C. 4321-4347,
January 1, 1970 sec. 102, c).
60 The Oregon Highway Department was expanded into the Oregon Department of Transportation in 1969.
The Highway Commission was then renamed the Transportation Commission. The body would henceforth
be responsible for developing various modes of transportation, rather than merely facilitating automobiles.
On the route alteration see "Maywood park Remains Unhappy, Even though 1-205 Rerouting Saved Most
Of City," The Oregonian, 12 November 1970.
75
Soon, it became apparent to Zeller that the rerouting ofthe freeway was done primarily to
accommodate more lanes of traffic.6 I The proposed eight lane highway would slice off
the western edge of Maywood Park. Zeller and his fellow citizens continued to fight. In
1972, they lost an appeal in Portland's U.S District Court just a few months before the
publication of the Draft Environmental Statement. Judge Alfred Goodwin claimed that
the Highway Division had taken every necessary step to ensure that the route would have
minimal environmental impact.62 The battle for Maywood Park was over. What had
started as a campaign to alter the freeway route became a quixotic quest by residents and
their mayor to protect the natural character of the surrounding area and completely halt
the freeway. In the end, 32 homes would be demolished in the small city.
The long, bitter revolt against Interstate 205 showed that the pro-freeway forces in
Oregon could be challenged if protesters were willing to organize, form coalitions, and
take legal action. The early years ofthe protests against Interstate 205, however,
reinforced the authority ofthe engineers. Neither the Citizens Freeway Committee nor
the 96th Avenue Committee went so far as to call for the cancellation of the freeway.
Rather, they appealed their cases to the route engineers with the hope that construction
would go forward as long as it was not in their backyards. The persistent efforts of
Maywood Park residents to preserve their neighborhood coincided with the proliferation
of anti-freeway movements in cities across the United States. Taking a cue from some of
these other revolts, residents used legal action to try to get an injunction against the
6J "Maywood Park Group Fights Highway plan," The Oregonian, April 29, 1971.
62 "City of Maywood Park continues freeway fight," The Oregonian, May 12, 1972.
76
project. The small community also cited environmental concerns in their quest to protect
their borders. These efforts were ultimately unsuccessful for the very practical reason that
by the time Judge Goodwin ruled against the city, part of the route had already been built
through West Linn and Clackamas County. In the end, the two possible alignments
contributed to the long battles that delayed the route by a decade. However, the existence
of these two seriously-considered route alternatives divided the opposition and weakened
the strength of Portland's first freeway revolt. In the coming years, residents in Portland's
southeast and northwest areas would benefit from the efforts of Maywood Park. County
Commissioner Mel Gordon, inspired by Maywood Park's tenacity, would vehemently
oppose the Mount Hood Freeway. Even in failure, the protesters' efforts helped shift the
balance of power away from the highway engineers.
MAP 12
SECTION INDEX
....._--~( - ,
Figure 3. 52nd Avenue and 96th Avenue alignment alternatives for Interstate 205.63
63 PVMTS, Interim Report, 1-205 Location: Social-Economic Study, 28.
77
78
CHAPTER IV
THE LIVABLE CITY:
FREEWAY REVOLTS IN PORTLAND, 1965-1978
"So freeways, by their very nature (their size, their adaptability to truck traffic, their high-
speed volume design), are, in a very important way, inherently destructive of the
landscape through which they pass, be it urban or rural. And most unfortunately, this
inherently deficient tool, the freeway, has been the sole property of American highway
engineers."I
- Ron Buel, 1972
In 1972 Ron Buel, executive assistant to Portland City Commissioner Neil
Goldschmidt, approached Multnomah County Commissioner Don Clark at a public
forum on the proposed Mount Hood Freeway. The County Planning Commission had
approved the route in the late 1960s, but Clark was a new member who opposed the
project. Buel urged Clark to take action against the freeway. "Well, what the hell's the
matter with the City? Why isn't Neil doing something about that?" Clark asked. Buel
explained that Goldschmidt didn't have the political support to actively oppose the
controversial route. Clark left the meeting encouraged, yet frustrated at the council's lack
of action.2
1 Ronald Buel, Dead End: The Automobile in Mass Transportation (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
Inc., 1972),77.
2 Don Clark Interview with Ernie Bonner, February 2000.Transcript: Portland, Oregon,
http://www.pdx.edulusp/planpdxorg-interview-don-clark (accessed February 26, 2009). See also, Gregory
79
This brief exchange between Buel and Clark exemplifies the new political
relationships that transformed Portland in the early 1970s. Buel, who in 1973 would
become chief of staff to Portland's newly elected mayor, Neil Goldschmidt, was also a
member of the local organization Sustainable Transportation Options for People (STOP)
and the author of Dead End, a scathing critique of the effects of the automobile on
American cities. His dual role as a bureaucrat and activist allowed him to influence the
local response to unpopular freeways through grassroots efforts and more formal
channels. He was characteristic of the other citizen activists who emerged in the 1970s.
Similarly Clark represented a new cohort of local politicians concerned with preserving
the region's natural beauty.3 It is unsurprising that citizens like Buel began to oppose
freeways at the same time that this new generation of politicians surfaced. Portlanders
elected Don Clark and others precisely because of these shared beliefs, which included a
desire to preserve natural spaces and local neighborhoods.
Planning historian Gregory Thompson has argued that this new era in Portland's
political history was marked by compromises resulting from the efforts of the local
political elite to institute transportation plans that both neighborhood groups and highway
L. Thompson, "How Portland's Power Brokers Accommodated the Anti-Highway Movement in the Early
1970s: The Decision to Build Light Rail," Business and Economic History Online, vol. 3 (2005): 7,
http://www.thebhc.org/publications/BEHonline/2005/thompson.pdf (accessed February 24, 2009).
3 For fust-hand accounts of the transformation of the Multnomah County planning Commission from a
body comprised of freeway supporters to one largely opposed, see Don Clark Interview and Dennis
Buchanan Interview with Ernie Bonner, June 2001, http://www.pdx.edulusp/planpdxorg-interview-dennis-
buchanan (accessed April 3, 2009).
80
officials would accept.4 Thompson has concluded that local input informed the decisions
of Portland's leaders, creating "a true synthesis ofinterests."s His analysis of the
relationship between Portland's political leadership and neighborhood groups illuminates
the cooperative approach to urban planning that became the city's hallmark. While he is
correct to emphasize the ways that politicians and bureaucrats reshaped transportation
policy in Portland during the 1970s, Thompson ultimately underestimates the role of the
freeway opponents and neighborhood groups who provided the impetus for these
sweeping changes. He relies on the theories of political scientist James Dunn, who has
argued that the "anti-auto vanguard" fails to see the "mass preference for personal
mobility" and seeks to use large-scale planning to halt suburban sprawl and reduce the
influence of the automobile.6 Dunn himself asserts that Portland's move away from
freeway building and toward a reinvestment in mass transit is an aberration in urban
planning. Thompson has tried to reconcile Portland's repudiation of freeways with
Dunn's theory that the "anti-auto vanguard" can never develop transportation policies
acceptable to the majority of people. Thompson claims, much as Paul G. Lewis does, that
it was Portland's political elite who harnessed the "neighborhood revolution" (i.e. the
anti-auto vanguard) to overcome mass preferences and implement decisions in
4 Thompson, "Taming the Neighborhood Revolution, 215.
5 Thompson, "Taming the Neighborhood Revolution," 241.
6 Thompson, "Taming the Neighborhood Revolution," 216.
81
conjunction with the leaders oflarge-scale planning agencies (TRI-MET, PVMTS, the
Highway Department, etc.).7
What Thompson and Lewis underemphasize, and Dunn fails to see, however, is
that although citizen activists were only a vocal minority in Portland, they helped
institutionalize the city's neighborhood organizations and influenced the "silent majority"
to embrace neighborhood-scale planning, which, by its very nature, emphasized livability
and undermined large-scale plans to enhance mobility. While many activists did call for a
rethinking of auto-centered transportation planning, others merely wanted to regain
control oflocal development. The success of the anti-freeway activists and the
subsequent adoption of neighborhood planning actually allowed mass preferences to be
heard, but in such a way as to promote NIMBYism and undermine the supposedly
universal preference for personal mobility. In the end, as the efforts to halt the Mount
Hood Freeway and Interstate 505 will show, neighborhood groups were the crucial
component of successful freeway revolts. In addition, their demand for broad citizen
participation in city planning has prevented further freeway construction in Oregon's
"ecotopia."
By the late 1960s, Portlanders living in areas that would be affected by interstate
highways understood that decision-making had been ceded to state highway engineers
7 See Thompson, "Taming the Neighborhood Revolution," 241; James A. Dunn, Jr. Driving Forces: The
Automobile, Its Enemies, and the Politics ofMobility (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press,
1998) 156-158; and Paul G. Lewis, Shaping Suburbia: How Political Institutions Organize Urban
Development (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996). Dunn discusses Lewis' take on Portland in
his summary of why Portland is not a good model for normal transportation politics.
82
and like-minded members of PVMTS and the Portland Development Commission to the
detriment of urban neighborhoods. Local activists, therefore, used the ballot and public
forums to support sympathetic politicians while they also initiated legal action and
employed their own technical expertise to force the Oregon Transportation Commission
to alter construction plans. Similarly, the success of several nationwide anti-freeway
movements that were largely led by citizen activists influenced the passage of a new
Federal-Aid Highway Act that gave more decision-making authority to local residents.
Unlike the isolated voices of dissent and splintered resistance that marked
freeway opposition during the early years of interstate construction, the two freeway
revolts that reshaped Portland in the 1970s featured the four key components identified
by transportation historian Raymond Mohl as crucial to successful anti-freeway efforts.
These components include determined neighborhood activism featuring both committed
leaders and broad coalitions that can transcend racial, ethnic, class, and geographic
boundaries; support from several local politicians and media outlets; a strong history of
urban planning within the metropolitan area; and, perhaps most importantly, legal action.8
The efforts to halt the Mount Hood Freeway and Interstate 505 both featured these key
elements, though in varying degrees.
The Mount Hood controversy was spear-headed by young, environmentally
conscious residents of southeast Portland. Their success was contingent on the support of
new county commissioners, city council members, and Mayor Neil Goldschmidt.
8 Raymond A. Mohl, "Stop the Road: Freeway Revolts in American Cities," Journal ofUrban History, vol.
30, no. 5 (2004): 675-676.
83
Likewise, the political atmosphere created by Oregon Governor Tom McCall over eight
years helped make a freeway cancellation within the realm of possibility. Portland's
planning history over the first half of the twentieth century, as we have seen, could be
described as ad hoc at best. Yet, the city's tradition of bringing in some of the best known
planners speaks to the importance civic boosters placed on creating a productive and
livable city. Finally, the legal action taken by the Southeast Legal Defense Fund
postponed the Mount Hood Freeway, and gave freeway opponents in city hall and at the
Multnomah County Commission the opening they needed to withdraw support for the
route.
The Interstate 505 freeway revolt was also catalyzed by young professionals
living in the affected area. These residents became intimately involved in the local
planning process. They benefitted from the support of local leaders, though not as much
as the protesters in southeast Portland. Like the Mount Hood Freeway revolt, the efforts
to stop I-50S culminated in legal action brought by the neighborhood group. Unlike the
Mount Hood, however, Interstate 505 was cancelled with little fanfare and almost as an
afterthought in the wake of the Mount Hood controversy. Nevertheless, the efforts to halt
I-50S did bring sweeping changes to the river city. Thanks to tenacious residents, Mayor
Goldschmidt formalized Portland's neighborhood associations, giving these small social
units the power to implement and carry out their own neighborhood plans.
From the Mount Hood Freeway protests, the city's transportation policies
changed dramatically. From the Interstate 505 revolt, the city's formal planning structure
84
was revolutionized. These anti-freeway movements brought the Interstate Era to a close
and ended highway engineers' hegemony over local planning.
'1<-\"' '\ '
Value of Houses
Figure 4. Mount Hood Freeway alignment in relation to southeast Portland housing.9
9 Portland City Planning Commission, Mount Hood Freeway (Portland: Portland City Planning
Commission, 1965), 18. To save money routes were aligned through lower income neighborhoods when
possible to cut down on rights-of-way costs.
85
The Mount Hood Freeway: Activism and the "No-Build" Option, 1965-1976
The Mount Hood Freeway has occupied a special place in the minds of auto
critics and planners in Portland since its cancellation in 1976. In a 2005 article in
Willamette Week, an alternative weekly newspaper published by Ron Buel, columnist
Bob Young wrote, "If there was one event that has defined Portland in the last 25 years, it
was the killing of the Mount Hood Freeway - a six-mile, eight-lane asphalt behemoth
that would have vaulted across the river from Johns Landing to 1-205." The article asserts
that the Mount Hood Freeway was an integral part of Robert Moses' 1943 Portland
Improvement plan, and that grassroots activists in the affected area of Southeast Portland
fought the freeway, but "lacked the muscle" to defeat the Oregon Highway Division, the
Portland City Council, the Multnomah County Commission, and the freeway's other
supporters. Salvation came in the form of Neil Goldschmidt, a young, idealistic attorney
who ran for city council on an anti-freeway platform, and ultimately harnessed the
neighborhood revolution and revived mass transit when he became Portland's mayor in
1973.10
The Mount Hood Freeway controversy is generally seen as a central event in
Portland's transformation into an "ecotopia." Certainly the cancellation of the route was a
major triumph for neighborhood activists and the city's young political elite. The federal
funds that would have gone toward building the road were ultimately used to develop
light rail. However, the generally accepted narrative creates an overly simple dichotomy
between the highway engineers who supposedly followed Moses' recommendations and
IO Bob Young, "Highway To Hell," Willamette Week, March 9,2005.
86
the embattled citizens who were saved by Goldschmidt's political wrangling. There is a
kernel oftruth to this narrative. Local leaders like Goldschmidt along with County
Commissioners Mel Gordon and Don Clark did fight on behalf of citizen activists against
recalcitrant highway commissioners. However, the Mount Hood Freeway did not
originate in Moses' 1943 plan. Rather, an expressway on Portland's east side had already
been discussed by highway officials, and the actual design was only integrated into
official highway plans in the 1955 Freeway and Expressway System report. l1 Engineers
designed the route not on Moses' recommendations, but based on traffic patterns, desire
lines, and population growth estimations. Because it would serve projected traffic needs,
many Portlanders supported the Mount Hood Freeway. The cancellation of the route,
then, did not represent a triumph of "the people" over highway engineers. Rather, it was a
victory for a small, but growing group of anti-freeway activists and a compromise among
the political elite. The Mount Hood Freeway revolt is significant in Portland's history
because it marked the moment when environmentally conscious neighborhood activists
and a new group of politicians seized control of local planning. Scholarly treatment of the
controversy has emphasized the importance of the political compromises that brought
about a shift in transportation policy. I contend that these compromises, while important
to the freeway cancellation efforts, were entirely facilitated by the activists and citizen-
experts who worked both from within and without the formal power structure.
11 Freeway and Expressway System, 60.
87
The Mount Hood Freeway remained in the early planning stages until the
controversy surrounding Interstate 205 reached a critical juncture in August 1965. In an
attempt to devise a route that would skirt Portland's resistant southern suburbs, the
highway commission wanted to make the Mount Hood Freeway the southern leg of the
planned outer belt. They hoped that the route might also be approved as part of the
Interstate Highway System by the Bureau of Public Roads. 12 When the BPR rejected the
route alignment and refused to give the Mount Hood interstate status, it was still planned
to be a federal primary highway. Although not qualified to receive 92 percent funding
from the Highway Trust Fund, the route would still be largely subsidized by the federal
government. The Portland City Council approved the proposed Division Street-Powell
Boulevard alignment for the Mount Hood in August amid intense opposition by residents
in its path (See Figure 4).13 At the meeting in which the council approved the route, 300
residents filled the chamber to protest the decision. Among the protesters was architect
Howard Glazer who once again voiced his disapproval of city planning practices. "We
simply can't let the automobile dominate every public decision to the exclusion of all
other community values," he argued.
Over the next three years, the Oregon Highway Commission wrangled with the
citizens of Maywood Park, completed large sections of the expensive 1-405, and
12 Stan Federman, "State switches to West Linn_96th Route For 1-205. City Okays Mt. Hood Road Plan,"
The Oregonian, August 11, 1965.
13 "Angry SE Portland Residents Crowd Council Hearing To Oppose Mt. Hood Freeway," The Oregonian,
August 11, 1965; see also Portland City Planning Commission, Mount Hood Freeway (Portland: Portland
City Planning Commission, 1965).
88
continued planning the Mount Hood Freeway. On January 24, 1969 the Federal Highway
Administration reversed their earlier decision and officially made the Mount Hood part of
the interstate system. Multnomah County's portion ofl-80N, the Banfield Expressway,
which followed Sullivan's Gulch through Northeast Portland, was deemed inadequate by
the FHWA. Highway officials agreed to allow the Mount Hood Freeway to replace the
Banfield as the primary route ofl-80N through the city. A portion ofl-205 would link the
Mount Hood with the rest of Interstate 80. This new alignment would be designated as
the official route. 14 The plan was met with early approval. However, as state highway
engineers began assessing the necessary rights-of-way, Barlow Grade School and several
churches were found to be in the freeway's path. Supporters of the school filed a petition
in August to halt construction while church congregations like those at St. Mark's
Lutheran resigned themselves to relocating to a different neighborhood. IS "The people of
Southeast Portland should have a voice in the future schooling of our children. As
residents we cannot sit back and wait," former Barlow PTA president Kayda Clark told
The Oregonian. "We are not fighting a freeway, we are trying to keep a school," she
added. 16 Once again, local freeway protesters emphasized that they did notoppose
freeways or automobiles. They merely wanted to gain a measure of control over local
plarming.
14 "Mt. Hood Freeway Wins Federal Nod," The Oregonian, January 26, 1969.
15 "Churches, School Assess Relocation Trouble," The Oregonian, July 10, 1969; "School Supporters File
petitions Protesting Highway," The Oregonian, August 14, 1969.
16 "School Supporters File petitions Protesting Highway," The Oregonian, August 14, 1969.
89
Clark, her husband Albert, and other local opponents of the Mount Hood Freeway
were heavily criticized for being "a verbal minority." Kayda Clark disagreed: "Instead,
we say it is a well organized minority who are forcing their will upon the majority of
working people in this area in their efforts to push through this freeway."I? Whether or
not freeway opponents represented the majority of citizens was debatable. The Highway
Division argued that the motoring public demanded easier access to downtown from the
east side of the Willamette River. Nevertheless, more opposition to the Mount Hood
emerged.
In late 1969 southeast Portland resident Betty Merten and other area women
began a campaign to reduce automobile use in the city. As Merten remembers, "It was
one of those gorgeous sunny Indian summer days that we sometimes get here, except a
thick brownish-yellow smog hung in the air. We couldn't see the west hills from the east
side, and nobody could see Mt. Hood.,,18 The realization that air pollution posed a
genuine threat encouraged Merten to successfully campaign against the proposed 13-
story Meier & Frank parking garage in downtown. 19 Over the next year, Merten and her
husband Charles, a lawyer, became involved in opposing the Mount Hood Freeway. In
1971, they helped form Sensible Transportation Options for People (STOP) to promote
17 "School Supporters File petitions Protesting Highway," The Oregonian, August 14, 1969.
18 Betty Merten, Interview by Ernie Bonner, December 9,2001. Transcript: Portland, Oregon,
http://www.pdx.edu/usp/planpdxorg-interview-betty-merten (accessed February 26, 2009).
19 The parking garage was to be built where Pioneer Courthouse Square is located.
90
mass transit and halt the proposed freeway. Among the other founders were Albert and
Kayda Clark, Ron Buel, and local architect Ed Wagner.
The controversy over the Mount Hood Freeway became a full-fledged revolt
when STOP members argued not just for the route's cancellation, but for a complete
rethinking of transportation policy. Wagner and Betty Merten became vocal advocates for
reviving Portland's defunct trolley car system. STOP also worked with the recently-
formed Tri-County Metropolitan Transit District of Oregon (Tri-Met) to promote the
newly-revived bus line and a proposed light rail system. These efforts to revitalize mass
transit came just as PVMTS released its 1990 Transportation Plan: interim report. The
report, like other PVMTS publications, predicted further decline of transit ridership and
outlined 54 new highway projects to be completed within the next 20 years.2°
STOP did little to influence PVMTS or Highway Division engineers. The
organization, Betty Merten explains, was formed mainly "to create a sense of great
grassroots opposition to the freeway. Again, there were never many people there, but we
could pack a punch."Zl It was a savvy move. STOP published a newsletter to disseminate
information about the negative impacts of the freeway and vocalized their opposition to
create a sense of neighborhood outrage. Local leaders noticed. Meanwhile, Charles
Merten formed the Southeast Legal Defense Fund and prepared to take the Oregon
Department of Transportation to court over the freeway.
20 Portland-Vancouver Metropolitan Transportation Study, 1990 Transportation Plan: interim report
(Salem: Oregon State Highway Division, 1971).
21 Betty Merten, Interview by Ernie Bonner.
91
As neighborhood activists engaged in grassroots protests, the local political
atmosphere in Portland shifted dramatically. Lloyd Anderson, an urban planner by
training, filled William Bowes' seat on the City Council after Bowes' death in 1969.
Then, following Earl Stanley's death, Connie McCready was appointed to the council in
March 1970. Finally, Neil Goldschmidt was elected to the council in November 1970.22
Goldschmidt, a Eugene native and University of Oregon graduate, had recently begun a
career as a legal-aid lawyer after having participated in the 1964 Freedom Summer voter
registration campaign in Mississippi and attending law school at Berkeley. The energetic
Goldschmidt advocated citizen participation and supported the city's freeway opponents.
However, in December 1971 when STOP members asked the council to withdraw
support for the Mount Hood, Goldschmidt was opposed by pro-freeway commissioner
Frank Ivancie. Ultimately, he was unable to get a majority vote against the freeway?3
In 1972 the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) completed
the preliminary EIS mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act. The report
recommended bus lanes, park and ride stations, and bike lanes on the Mount Hood
Freeway?4 During the next phase of research for the final EIS, SOM staffers established
an office in Southeast Portland and gathered citizen recommendations for the route. At
22 For a detailed analysis of the political changes occurring in Portland during the early 1970s, see Abbott,
Portland: Planning, Politics, and Growth.
23 Val Ballestrem, '''In the Shadow of a Concrete Forest': Transportation Politics in Portland, Oregon,
and the Revolt Against the Mount Hood Freeway, 1955-1976" (MA Thesis, Portland State University,
2009), 54-55.
24 Miles Green, "Mt. Hood Freeway proposals tossed into hands of public," The Oregonian, March 12,
1972.
92
the same time, the Highway Division continued to acquire rights-of-way between
Division Street and Powell Boulevard.25
Rights-of-way acquisitions were halted, however, with Charles Merten's lawsuit
in Federal District Court against the Oregon Department of Transportation. With Albert
and Kayda Clark as plaintiffs, Merten claimed that the route for the Mount Hood
Freeway had been chosen illegally, and that the 1969 public hearing for the freeway had
been conducted improperly. The Highway Division requested the authority to purchase
properties in hardship cases three times as the case was being reviewed in 1973. Each
time Judge James Burns granted permission. Nevertheless, Burns sided with the plaintiffs
in his ruling in early 1974. The Transportation Commission would have to conduct new
public hearings if it wanted to proceed with the route,z6
Adding insult to injury, the Multnomah County Commission withdrew support for
the Mount Hood in late February, much to the chagrin of State Transportation Director
George Baldwin who stated, "We further remind the commissioners that it was they,
along with the City of Portland, who requested the Highway Division to pursue the Mt.
Hood Freeway project just four years ago.,,27 The commission however, was comprised
of entirely different people than it had been four years earlier. New commissioners Mel
25 Frank Frost, Interview by Ernie Bonner, October 28, 1999. Transcript: Portland, Oregon,
http://www.pdx.edu/usp/planpdxorg-interview-frank-frost (accessed April 4, 2009).
26 "Mass transit plan favored," The Oregonian, February 22, 1974. For the Highway Division's requests to
purchase rights-of-way, see "Road agency asks authority to buy homes," The Oregonian, May 18, 1973;
"State asking to buy more corridor land," The Oregonian, July 6, 1973; "Freeway land purchases OKd,"
The Oregonian, December 8, 1973.
27 "Route support withdrawal vexing," The Oregonian, February 22, 1974.
93
Gordon and Don Clark supported the freeway protesters. Gordon lived near Maywood
Park and was sympathetic to the plight of the militant residents. He was a strong advocate
for mass transit and citizen participation in Tri-Met transit planning. Similarly, Clark was
an environmentalist and opponent of all freeways. The commission's decision was
followed in July by the Portland City Council's official withdrawal of support. By this
time the popular Neil Goldschmidt had left City Council and was serving as Mayor of
Portland. Goldschmidt and Oregon Governor Tom McCall sought to capitalize on the
recently enacted Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1973, which allowed states to keep the
funds for cancelled freeways and use them for other transportation projects.28
Commissioner Mel Gordon provided the last major bit of assistance to the
freeway opponents. Transportation Commission Chairman Glenn Jackson had been
called a "highway czar" and "Portland's Robert Moses." He had a reputation much like
Oregon's other notable road builder, R.H. Baldock. Though Jackson supported the
demolition of Harbor Drive, this fact was generally ignored by highway critics. Freeway
protesters and political insiders no doubt wondered if he would try to fight for the Mount
Hood Freeway. However, despite Don Clark's desire to kill I-205, Mel Gordon brokered
a deal whereby the outer belt would be completed with adjustments to accommodate light
rail. Jackson, the pragmatist, agreed to the modifications, accepted the Mount Hood
cancellation, and turned his attention toward completing Interstate 205.29
28 Richard Colby, "Mt. Hood Freeway loses support of City Council," The Oregonian, July 26, 1974.
29 Dennis Buchanan, Interview by Ernie Bonner; David Hupp, Interview by Ernie Bonner.
94
In November 1974, during his last two months in office, Governor McCall wrote
to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Claude Brinegar seeking permission to transfer
highway funds from the Mount Hood project. "The Portland Metropolitan Area
desperately needs an efficient and effective system of public transportation," he argued.3o
Upon learning of McCall's letter to Brinegar, City Commissioner Frank Ivancie called
the governor's actions "hasty." Likewise, Portland Chamber of Commerce member Keith
Gowing stated, "It's very unfortunate the governor thought he had to do this. The people
can best express what they should have. They have to live with it.,,3! In a statement,
McCall conceded what Ivancie and Gowing already knew: "It is quite likely that a
referendum would go in favor of the project." He claimed he did not want to thwart the
democratic process, but that "the evidence at hand indicat[ed] quite strongly that the
project should not go forward.,,32
The pro-freeway editorial board at The Oregonian railed against McCall and
Goldschmidt's failure to bring the Mount Hood Freeway project to a vote before
Portlanders. The decision had been made with "no citizen input," they claimed?3
Subsequent editorials groused at Goldschmidt's declaration that even in the face of a
freeway initiative, the City of Portland could only act in an advisory capacity. The
30 Tom McCall, letter to Claude S. Brinegar, 26 November 1974. Oregon Historical Society, Vertical File:
Portland-Freeways-East Side (proposed).
31 Wayne Thompson, "McCall to seek transfer of funds to mass transit," The Oregonian, November 27,
1974.
32 "Letters ask switch of freeway funds," The Oregonian, November 27, 1974.
33 "No Citizen input," The Oregonian, February 8, 1975.
9S
ultimate decision, he asserted, remained with the Federal Highway Administration and
the Oregon Department of Transportation.34 Ultimately, Keith Gowing and others formed
the Committee to Build the Mt. Hood Freeway-Transitway.35 They fought unsuccessfully
to get an initiative on the ballot.36
With the official cancellation of the route by the Federal Highway Administration
in 1976, the Goldschmidt administration developed plans to build light rail and disburse
the estimated $110 million that would be transferred from the freeway. By the time the
funds were allocated, the pool of highway transfer money for the Mount Hood Freeway
had grown to almost $300 million.3? In the early 1980s, the transfer dollars were used to
pay for the Metropolitan Area Express (MAX) light rail line. 38 Encouraged by STOP
members Ed Wagner, Betty Merten, and Elsa Coleman in the citizen advisory section of
the city's 1990 regional transportation plan, the development of light rail represented the
true victory of southeast Portland's anti-freeway activists.39 Henceforth, transportation
planning in the Rose City would feature a strong mass transit component. The first such
case involved, ironically, the embattled 1-205.
34 "People speak for city," The Oregonian, May 21, 1975.
35 "Group fights for freeway," The Oregonian, July 3, 1975.
36 "Judge removes chance to vote on Hood freeway," The Oregonian, September 20, 1975.
37 Michael Alesko, "$22 Million Allocation Drains Hood Road Fund," The Oregonian, March 1, 1980.
38 Ballestrem, 100.
39 Betty Merten, Interview by Ernie Bonner.
96
Interstate 205: An Addendum
With U.S. District Court Judge Alfred Goodwin's 1972 ruling rejecting an
injunction against Interstate 205 and the completion of the final environmental impact
statement in 1976, the Transportation Commission no doubt believed that construction on
the last 10 miles ofI-205 would commence without further delays. However, the pro-
freeway Multnomah County Commission had, by this time, been transformed with the
addition of freeway opponents Mel Gordon, Don Clark, and Dennis Buchanan. Clark, a
Portland native and fervent environmentalist, wanted to withdraw support for the route as
they had done with the Mount Hood Freeway months earlier. Gordon, however, worried
about the political repercussions. Instead of opposing the route, Gordon entered into
negotiations with Glenn Jackson and the State Highway Division. The highwaymen
feared losing the County Commission's support in light of the Mount Hood Freeway
controversy, so they agreed to eliminate two interchanges and provide room for bus lanes
and a light rail line to be added to the freeway. According to County Commission
transportation planner David Hupp, "In the end, 1-205 was built because Mel Gordon
couldn't counter the fact that the freeway was so far along in construction. But Gordon
did exact the listed concessions from the state, and the Multnomah County portion of the
freeway was redesigned to incorporate those changes. ,,40
During the decade-long struggle over Interstate 205, NIMBY protests, particularly
in Maywood Park, delayed the route long enough so that it was still largely unconstructed
when a new group of politicians came to power in Portland and Multnomah County. The
40 David Hupp, Interview by Ernie Bonner.. See also, Dennis Buchanan, Interview by Ernie Bonner.
97
County Commission capitalized on the successful cancellation of the Mount Hood
Freeway by only agreeing to support 1-205 if the structural designs facilitated buses and
rail. Ultimately, the unsuccessful freeway revolt over the outer-belt succeeded in stopping
the route long enough for public opinion and local political power to shift in favor of
freeway opponents and transit advocates. Thus, the Mount Hood Freeway revolt's legacy
began with the redesign ofI-205. Portland's other successful anti-freeway movement
would yield an even greater legacy: neighborhood participation in the local planning
process.
Interstate 505: Neighborhood Participation and Urban Planning, 1969-1978
In late 1969, residents of Portland's Northwest District became aware of plans
initiated in 1968 by the State Highway Commission to build a 1.3 mile interstate spur
through the neighborhood. Initially dubbed the Industrial Freeway, the route -later
known as Interstate 505 - would displace several businesses and residents. The
Northwest District was comprised of a growing population of young professionals and
lower middle-class families who took advantage of affordable housing and proximity to
downtown Portland. A slew of commercial businesses permeated the neighborhood while
heavy industry occupied the District's eastern border along the Willamette River. Traffic
engineers sought an efficient means of funneling the traffic generated by industries and
the central business district through the neighborhood. The answer devised by the
Highway Commission came in the form of a small interstate route that would bypass the
98
Northwest District and guide traffic directly on or off of 1-405, which partially abutted
the neighborhood.
The Northwest District Association (NWDA), an unofficial planning body
comprised of district residents, formed in November 1969 at the end of a decade that had
seen significant progress on Portland's interstate system. Like the Mount Hood Freeway
protests in Southeast Portland, the NWDA's efforts to halt highway projects began with a
group of young, energetic citizens. According to Ogden Beeman, an engineer and
important figure in the NWDA, "In the mid to late '60s, the nucleus of the neighborhood
was just barely beginning. There were only a few professionals when we lived there ....
We started finding each other.,,41 Two major projects raised the ire of Beeman and the
other young professionals living in the neighborhood and ultimately encouraged the
formation of the Northwest District Association. First, Interstate 405 was completed.
Then, the City of Portland announced plans to expand Good Samaritan Hospital.
Interstate 405 had not been popular with Northwest Portland residents. Llano
Thelin, pastor of Emmanuel Lutheran Church on 19th Street, had actively opposed 1-405,
which split his parish down the middle. Beeman and fellow Northwest resident John
Perry also appealed to City Council when plans were announced to widen streets
throughout the district to make surface street travel easier. The project required sidewalks
to be narrowed along major streets in the neighborhood. Perry argued that too many Elm
trees would be destroyed by removing the tree lawns along these streets. Beeman
41 Charlotte and Ogden Beeman, Interview by Ernie Bonner, December 29, 1999. Transcript: Portland,
Oregon, http://www.pdx.edu/usp/interview_beemans.html (accessed April 20, 2008).
99
separately extolled the virtues of sidewalks and walkable neighborhoods. "We have a
great place here where people can live and walk downtown, and we can't make it more
difficult," he told the Counci1.42 City traffic engineer, Don Bergstrom, replied, "The
Council should know that we did a study up there, and we found that the sidewalks were
occupied about 12, 14 percent of the time. The street lanes were occupied about 85
percent, therefore it makes sense to narrow one and widen the street.,,43 Beeman and
Perry's pleas to prevent the street widening project lost in a 5-0 Council vote. It quickly
became apparent to Northwest residents that not only were they working separately - and
in vain - toward common goals, but that they were facing a City Council that clearly
valued expert opinions over the experiences of local citizens.
In November 1969, Good Samaritan Hospital, located in Northwest Portland,
announced a massive expansion project as part of an urban renewal plan created by the
Portland Development Commission. The plan called for the razing of sixteen blocks to
expand the hospital, much as the PDC had done in Albina with Emmanuel Hospital
nearly a decade earlier.44 Good Samaritan called a meeting at Chapman School in the
Northwest District to explain the plans to interested citizens. Several residents convened
at the school to voice their outrage. Llano Thelin was tapped to chair the meeting. In
42 Charlotte and Ogden Beeman, Interview by Ernie Bonner.
43 Charlotte and Ogden Beeman, Interview by Ernie Bonner.
44 Mary Pedersen, Interview by Ernie Bonner, December 15, 1999. Transcript: Sedona, Arizona,
http://www.pdx.edu/usp/interviewJblackett.html(accessed April 20, 2008). See also, Bradshaw Hovey,
"Making the Portland Way of Planning: The Structural Power of Language," Journal ofPlanning History,
vol. 2, no. 2 (2003): 142.
100
attendance were Beeman, local architects Howard Glazer and George Sheldon, grocery
store owner George Drougas, and other local residents and business owners. After
hearing the details of Good Samaritan's proposed expansion, the neighbors, many having
just met for the first time, formed the Northwest District Development Association
(NWDDA) to promote a resident-approved plan for the neighborhood, rather than the one
forced on them by the City ofPortland.45
Meanwhile, in southeast Portland the Mount Hood Freeway revolt had begun in
earnest. Thirty-year-old attorney Neil Goldschmidt capitalized on residents' growing
dissatisfaction with the city and state's planning policies in his campaign for a seat on
City Council in 1970. His idealism and support of neighborhood participation in local
government made Goldschmidt a popular candidate among the city's citizen groups. He
won an easy victory and brought an activist sensibility tempered by the Civil Rights
Movement to Portland politics.
The NWDDA dropped the word "Development" from its title as the 1970 election
campaign drew near because, as Ogden Beeman remembers, "People kept thinking,
'Development.. .. You guys are part of the enemy."'46 Despite the name change, NWDA
members recognized through the experiences of Thelin, Beeman, and others that in order
to institute a neighborhood plan that did not feature the words "urban renewal" - a term
everyone now understood to mean the demolition of affordable housing and the
45 Charlotte and Ogden Beeman, Interview by Ernie Bonner.
46 Charlotte and Ogden Beeman, Interview by Ernie Bonner.
101
systematic removal of many of the features that made the neighborhood livable - they
would have to work closely with "the enemy." The support of City Council was crucial to
the NWDA's success. One councilman, Lloyd Anderson, had thus far been receptive to
requests for a comprehensive neighborhood plan. The other four council members,
however, had been dismissive of the NWDA. Charlotte Beeman, Ogden's wife, realized
that Goldschmidt would certainly gain a Council seat in the 1970 election. She decided to
back the efforts of local contractor Tom Walsh, an NWDA member. In the November
election Goldschmidt won while Walsh lost, allowing pro-freeway incumbent Frank
Ivancie, to retain his seat. Despite Walsh's loss, the NWDA took heart with the popular
Goldschmidt now on the Portland City Council.
In early 1971, plans for the 1-505 freeway were finalized and the NWDA found
itself fighting two major battles: one against Good Samaritan and one against the
interstate.47 Uniting the hospital expansion battle and the freeway protest was the fact that
both represented efforts by state and local authorities to transform Northwest Portland
without input from residents. The announcement of the Interstate 505 project at the
beginning of the year and the hospital's failure to address citizen concerns put a damper
on the hopeful feelings the neighbors felt about Goldschmidt's presence on Council. To
preserve the character of their neighborhood, the NWDA approached City Council in
February with recommendations for developing a multiple-use highway corridor that
47 See Oregon State Highway Division, Interstate 505 Final Environmental Impact Statement (Salem:
Oregon State Department of Transportation, 1977),2. The report, entitled Multiple Use and Joint
Development o/the 1-405,1-505 Freeway Corridor first focused public attention on the 1-505 project and
led to the fonnation of the Willamette Heights Neighborhood Association.
102
would feature green spaces, a depressed route, and pedestrian walkways. After several
months of inaction by local government it became apparent that these proposals were
being largely ignored.
On September 17, 1971 The Northwest District Association, the Willamette
Heights Neighborhood Association, and the Oregon Environmental Council filed suit
against the Oregon Transportation Commission in Federal District Court. The NWDA
and the Willamette Heights Neighborhood Association had recently withdrawn support
for the proposed Interstate 505, and now called for a complete halt to all work on both I-
505 and the nearly completed Interstate 405.48 On December 3, the Court ruled that the
Highway Department could complete I-405, as it had "met all procedural requirements."49
Work on Interstate 505, however, would have to stop until the Highway Division
conducted the necessary environmental impact statement in accordance with the National
Environmental Policy Act,50 "We got everything we could possibly ask for," NWDA
president George Sheldon told The Oregonian. "[Judge] Goodwin has a specified
timetable to the highway people, and essentially is telling them they must consider the
desires of a neighborhood group." The court ruling marked a change in the I-505 freeway
controversy. Prior to the decision, the NWDA had been successful only in bringing the
48 Oregon State Highway Division, Interstate 505 Final EIS, 3. The environmental impact statement
provides a chronology of the events leading up to the publication of the EIS in 1974. See also, "Foes sue to
Halt NW Portland freeway," The Oregonian, September 18, 1971; "Impact statement ordered for 1-505
freeway corridor," The Oregonian, December 4, 1971.
49 Oregon State Highway Division, Interstate 505 Final EIS, 3.
50 Oregon State Highway Division, Interstate 505 Final EIS, 3-4.
103
plight of district residents to the attention of the City Council. After the ruling, the
NWDA and the City Council were able to force the Transportation Commission to
investigate alternative options.
In the meantime, several NWDA members had been picketing in front of the
hospital. The Good Samaritan board of directors began to take stock of the situation and
decided to reach out to angry community members. Dr. Spence Meighan, head of medical
education at Good Samaritan, hired Northwest resident and Reed College Political
Science professor Mary Pedersen to serve as an independent consultant in charge of
advising the hospital on ways to develop better communication with the neighborhood. 51
Pedersen quickly became involved in the NWDA and neighborhood relations with the
hospital soon improved.
By 1972 the hospital and the NWDA had found common ground. Without the
money to buy up houses for the proposed expansion, Good Samaritan's vice president of
development, Claire Siddall, suggested closing an adjacent street and building the new
hospital wing there. When asked what the NWDA's position on this idea would be,
Pedersen smiled, "You know, there's a lot of people around here who don't want the
traffic going up Marshall Street because it tends to go into the neighborhood.... I think
you could get a street closure and the neighborhood would support that.,,52 By September
the hospital and the NWDA approached City Council with the proposal to close Marshall
51 Mary Pedersen, Interview by Ernie Bonner.
52 Mary Pedersen, Interview by Ernie Bonner.
104
Street. With the support of Goldschmidt, Lloyd Anderson, and even Frank Ivancie the
City Council agreed to the closure.53 By that time, Pedersen's contract with Good
Samaritan had expired and she was hired as the executive director of the NWDA where
she worked on drafting the citizens' environmental impact statement in conjunction with
the EIS being conducted by the private engineering consultants Cornell, Howland, Hayes,
and Merryfield-Hill (CH2M-Hill) at the behest of the Highway Commission.54
CH2M-Hill began preparing the environmental impact statement in August 1972.
The EIS estimated the social, economic, and environmental effects of the proposed
Interstate 505 corridor and several alternative routes. Pedersen, working closely with
CH2M-Hill, recorded the technical details of each proposed route and met with
Northwest residents, gauging citizen reactions to each alternative. The residents came out
in opposition of the original Upshur Street route as did local business owners, leaving the
industrial interests to make a decision on the remaining routes. 55 Heavy industry in
northwest Portland favored the Upshur route, citing the fact that its adoption would
require the displacement of the fewest businesses in the northwest industrial corridor.56
As the engineers gathered data for each route alternative, Pedersen and the
NWDA worked alongside them. It soon became apparent that the neighborhood activists
in northwest Portland were becoming integral participants in local decision-making,
53 Mary Pedersen, Interview by Ernie Bonner.
54 Minutes a/the Oregon Highway Commission, vol. 57, 36416.
55 Mary Pedersen, Interview by Ernie Bonner.
56 Paul Pintarich, "Impasse over 1-505 routing persists; final hearing Nov. 29," The Oregonian, October 31,
1973.
105
deftly navigating the political waters with the goal of developing a comprehensive plan
for the Northwest District. From the early days ofthe NWDA when Ogden Beeman was
a fixture at City Council meetings to the publication of the draft environmental impact
statement, the NWDA had pushed one over-arching issue: neighborhood participation in
urban planning. The Interstate 505 freeway revolt, though focused on preserving the
integrity of northwest Portland, was now becoming the vehicle through which the
Northwest District Association would prove the viability of neighborhood organizations.
Rather than advocate "Alternative A," the no-build option, NWDA members supported
the "Long Yeon" route that would shuttle traffic into the industrial area and away from
residences and retail busine~ses, helping to alleviate downtown congestion while still
saving homes. In this way the NWDA proved it was aware of larger urban traffic issues
and not concerned only with northwest Portland.
As the neighborhood association became more involved in city planning,
industrialists in the Northwest District became the outsiders. Feeling increasingly
marginalized, they resorted to guerilla tactics to prevent the adoption of the "Long Yeon"
corridor. In November 1973, the I-50S Committee of the Concerned, an organization
supporting the interests of industrialists and businessmen in the Northwest District,
released the results of a survey aimed at resurrecting the initial Upshur Street route that
would displace more citizens than any of the alternatives. The survey asked residents
living along the Upshur corridor if they would move if provided with relocation benefits.
Furious at the survey, state highway officials called it "untimely and disruptive,"
claiming that it confused the choices that would be discussed in the upcoming freeway
106
route hearings. Ed Storms, the new president of the NWDA stated, "It's a crummy thing
to do. This is solely for their own interest and not that of the community. The people feel
the Upshur route is a distinct threat."S7
The effort to discredit the NWDA and undermine the decision-making process
illustrates the desperate situation northwest industrialists felt they were in. It was in the
best interest of the industries in the Northwest District to have a freeway connection
located in the neighborhood, but the business owners wanted to ensure that not only did
highway construction proceed apace but that it did not require area industries to move or
shutdown. Unfortunately for the industrialists, Neil Goldschmidt had been elected mayor
of Portland in 1972 and the Portland Planning Commission was now being chaired by a
progressive urban planner from Cleveland named Ernie Bonner. As local government
began to embrace a planning ideology that emphasized livability over transportation
efficiency, the industrialists had resorted to underhanded tactics. The efficiency-minded
Highway Division, with the politically-savvy Glenn Jackson at the helm, recognized that
for any highway projects to be completed, the state needed to work with local leaders
and, increasingly, with neighborhood groups who wielded the authority of the National
Environmental Policy Act.
By the end of 1973 the Portland City Council had decided to support the "Short
Yeon" route for I-50S. This route, similar to the "Long Yeon" path favored by the
NWDA, would displace fewer residents than many of the alternatives and cost less than
57 Paul Pintarich, "Unofficial poll on freeway relocation upsets officials," The Oregonian, November 15,
1973.
107
the "Long Yeon. "58 However, upon the recommendation of the Highway Commission,
the Council switched support to the "Long Yeon" in 1974. The stated reason for the
switch was that the "Long Yeon" route was more favorable to residents and railroad
interests in the district, and when the federal government made additional money
available for interstate projects the highway commission wanted to seize it. However, the
Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1973 provided another reason to switch to the more
expensive "Long Yeon": transfer funds. Because of the widespread dissatisfaction with
urban interstates, Congress decided to allow funds that had been earmarked for specific
projects to be transferred to other highway plans or entirely different forms of
transportation. Realizing that the city could still use the federal funds even if the project
was not completed, the highway commission may have suggested amending the route to
the more expensive one even as it looked as though more construction delays were
imminent.
In 1974 Mayor Goldschmidt decided to explore the possibility of
institutionalizing the neighborhood associations. The NWDA leadership had proven to be
organized, reasonable, and better equipped to plan their neighborhood than highway
engineers. Goldschmidt appointed Ogden Beeman to head a committee to determine the
viability of making the neighborhood groups official planning organizations.59 Upon the
58 BI Noles, "Council OKs 'short Yeon' I-50S path, The Oregonian, February 1, 1974. See also, Oregon
Department of Transportation, Minutes o/the Oregon Transportation Commission, vol. 1 (Salem, OR:
Oregon Department of Transportation, 1974),339. The "Short Yeon" route was estimated at a cost of $47
million while the "Long Yeon" was projected to cost nearly $80 million.
59 Charlotte and Ogden Beeman, Interview by Ernie Bonner.
108
committee's recommendation, the Office ofNeighborhood Associations (ONA) was
established later that year, creating an official body to take the planning
recommendations of the neighborhoods to the City Council. Mary Pedersen left the
NWDA to become the first coordinator of the ONA where she remained until 1978.60
By 1978 the political landscape of Portland was markedly changed from that ofa
decade earlier. Neighborhood associations now largely controlled urban planning
decisions as part of a relationship between residents and politicians that to this day
remains unique among American cities. After four years of shepherding the fledgling
ONA, Pedersen left Portland. Months later, the City Council voted to cancel the 1-505
project. For four years the "Long Yeon" route proposal had gathered dust as the Highway
Division struggled to complete several contested miles ofI-205. On November 30,
council members voted 4-1 to cancel the proj ect, freeing up $100 million to fix roads and
develop a light rail system. In a decision that councilman Ivancie called "shortsighted,"
the 1-505 freeway controversy ended with an affirmation that the residents of northwest
Portland knew how best to preserve their neighborhood.61
The successful 1-505 freeway revolt brought about the creation of the ONA (now
called the Office of Neighborhood Involvement). The neighborhood groups that
comprised the ONA were soon required to develop comprehensive plans in conjunction
with the City Council. Within a few years of the ONA's formation, 95 neighborhood
60 Mary Pedersen, Interview by Ernie Bonner.
61 Steve Jenning, "City Council kills proposal for Portland highway link," The Oregonian, December 1,
1978.
109
organizations existed in Portland. Each organization fostered public participation and
acted as a liaison between citizens and the council. Based on the success of Portland's
Model Cities program and on similar institutionalized citizen participation organizations
in Fort Worth and San Diego, the city made a major commitment to citizen involvement
in planning.62 James Dunn's assertion that automobile opponents like those who protested
the Mount Hood Freeway and Interstate 505 ignored the mass preference for cars and
highways clearly does not hold up in Portland. The anti-freeway campaigns that
developed in Portland did lead to alternative transportation planning, but they also led to
the creation of a system that promoted citizen participation in local decision-making.
Since the completion of Interstate 205, no limited-access freeway has been constructed in
the city, parking garages have been continually rejected in and around downtown, and
mass transit has grown. The masses have sought to reduce the need for personal mobility
in order to promote the viability and livability of urban neighborhoods.
Interestingly, Portland's freeway revolts show that the way neighborhood
participation was institutionalized actually shaped the preferences that have emerged
since 1974. While the city's neighborhoods and suburbs like Lake Oswego battled with
each other over the proposed location ofI-205 in the mid 1960s, the eventual
determination of an alignment was already a foregone conclusion in the minds of every
major actor. The fact that there were two route alternatives virtually ensured that freeway
opponents in the path of each proposal would work at cross purposes. Several years later,
62 Mary Pedersen, Neighborhood Organization in Portland Oregon, First Annual Report (Portland: Office
of Neighborhood Associations, 1974),2,
http://www.portlandonline.com/oni/index.cfm?c=38588&a=81715. (accessed April 29, 2009).
110
the Mount Hood and Interstate 505 freeway plans were met with unified neighborhood
resistance. Citizens raised environmental concerns and argued for neighborhood
participation in planning. Unlike their predecessors, the residents of southeast and
northwest Portland rejected the traffic accommodation orthodoxy that had pervaded
transportation planning for years. The dismissal of this prevailing ideology shaped
Portland planning and the fonn that neighborhood participation would take. No longer
would large-scale plans be so easily foisted upon the residents of the city.
When the ONA was formed, it was assumed that citizens would participate in
local planning through their neighborhood organizations. They would vote not as
individuals and not as members of one large metropolitan area (though they were both),
but as part of a small unit centered around the neighborhood, the city block, the sidewalk.
They would have the option of developing plans that featured street widening and
freeway construction, or they could choose to preserve their neighborhoods. The ONA
was conceived of both as an interface with City Council and as a broad coalition. Since
fonning under the umbrella office, the 95 neighborhoods have each pursued their own
interests, but they have also, for the most part, promoted the interests of the other
neighborhood associations as well. In this way, the NIMBY attitudes that shaped the 1-
205 controversy have been both extended to each neighborhood and modified to an
ideology more closely approximating "not in our backyards.
111
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION
The emergence of the highway engineering profession in the pre-interstate years
was met with enthusiasm by the nation's increasingly mobile citizenry. Americans
demanded better roads and improved mobility as the car became affordable to the masses.
Early road-building efforts in Oregon focused on improving farm-market roads, yet
conflict erupted as John Yeon fought to preserve Neahkahnie Mountain and the Columbia
River Gorge from zealous highwaymen. Postwar urban growth and the Federal-Aid
Highway Act of 1956 shifted the early debates over landscape preservation from a rural
setting to an urban one.
The Interstate Era saw the Oregon Highway Department turn its attention to
Portland for the first time. With the Bureau of Public Roads and the Highway Trust Fund
behind them, transportation engineers designed a massive system of urban freeways.
From the outset, residents and business owners in the path of the new concrete and steel
roadways opposed the alignments, but few people articulated disapproval of an urban
freeway system. The construction ofInterstates 5 and 405 faced only isolated opposition,
while Interstate 205 catalyzed Portland's first organized freeway protests. Yet, the
neighborhood groups that formed to resist the eastside bypass worked at cross purposes
until an alignment was finalized. The residents of Maywood Park continued to fight the
freeway until legal action proved unfruitful. 1-205 was ultimately built, but the Oregon
112
Highway Division was forced to acquiesce to the demands of the Multnomah County
Commission and accommodate mass transit.
By the early 1970s, the Southeast Legal Defense Fund and the Northwest District
Association had initiated lawsuits against the Oregon Transportation Commission to halt
the Mount Hood Freeway and Interstate 505. The success of the lawsuits and the support
of newly-elected local officials turned the tide against the highwaymen. In the end, both
routes were cancelled and Portland's freeway system remained comprised ofInterstates
5, 205, 405, and 84.
The National Environmental Policy Act and the Federal-Aid Highway Act of
1973 were instrumental tools in Portlanders' efforts to stop the Mount Hood Freeway and
I-50S. The environmental impact statements mandated by NEPA postponed construction
and gave citizens the opportunity to design route alternatives, while the highway act
allowed cities to keep federal funds by transferring them from unpopular federal projects
to more accepted alternatives. These pieces of legislation were implemented largely
because of the freeway revolts that developed in more than 30 cities across the United
States. Coming late enough in the era of anti-highway protests, the Mount Hood and 1-
505 controversies benefitted from the labors of citizen activists in other cities.
Until the successful anti-freeway protests of the 1970s, Portland was a typical
river city. After the victory of the Mount Hood Freeway revolt and the neighborhood
revolution led by Northwest District residents, the city became something more.
Portland's recent history, shaped largely by highway engineers, the PDC, and business
interests, was merely that: history. The creation of the Office of Neighborhood
113
Associations, the repudiation of freeways, and the revival of mass transit remade the city
as an environmentally-friendly metropolis. Yet, the story of interstate highway
construction in the Rose City illuminates the scope of the changes that neighborhood
activism cultivated.
Ultimately, the cancellations of the Mount Hood and I-50S freeways have
overshadowed the stories of the routes that were successfully built through city
neighborhoods. The chief legacy of the two triumphant freeway revolts has been the
production of a myth that casts Portland as an eco-city, and a bastion of participatory
democracy, neighborhood involvement, and transit-oriented planning. This study does
not propose to contradict the myth that has such resonance among planners and lovers of
cities. Rather, I have intended to provide a gentle reminder that, for a time, Portland
embraced the freeway. It took the efforts of neighborhood groups to stop not just road
construction, but an entire ideology centered on accommodating cars. Damage had been
done, however. The built freeways - Interstate 5, Interstate 205, and Interstate 405 -
uprooted residents, and destroyed homes, churches, schools, and neighborhoods. And
today the city's freeways carry more traffic than ever before. From Wilsonville to the
Columbia and downtown to Gresham, autos choke the interstates. Yet, it has been well-
documented that freeways, rather than alleviating congestion, encourage more driving. 1
Portland's neighborhood councils and political leadership have rejected additional
highways in the 30 years since the Mount Hood and I-50S were cancelled. Driving past
the ghost ramp on the Marquam Bridge where the Mount Hood Freeway would have
I Ladd, Autophobia, 121-122.
114
connected with 1-5, being shuttled via a small freeway stub from 1-405 to the Northwest
District, or looking across the river from Tom McCall Waterfront Park to the tangled
mess of the East Bank Freeway, one can only wonder how much worse the traffic
problem would be were it not for the freeway revolts.
In the end, the legacy of Portland's freeway protests extends even beyond the
preservation of urban neighborhoods and the rejection of auto-centered planning. The
Office of Neighborhood Involvement provides a forum for direct citizen participation in
an age when political corruption, the marginalization of poor and minority groups, and
disinvestment continue to subvert urban democracy in too many American cities.
115
CHAPTER VI
EPILOGUE:
DISMANTLING HARBOR DRIVE
Though not a part of the Interstate Highway System, Harbor Drive was a major
freeway in the Rose City. Constructed in 1942, it was the first limited-access freeway in
the state. The route followed the west bank of the Willamette River between Clay aI'd
Market Streets to the south and the Steel Bridge to the north. It bordered downtown and,
with six lanes of streaming traffic, it effectively cut people off from the waterfront.
Because U.S. 99 West was aligned with Harbor Drive, the freeway was part of the state's
primary north-south highway, and a heavily-travelled thoroughfare in the years before the
interstate system.
The decision to dismantle Harbor Drive was made at the behest of citizens and
Portland Bureau of Planning staffers in 1968. Somewhat surprisingly, Glenn Jackson, a
15 year veteran of Interstate highway construction, supported the decision. 1 The removal
marked a major ideological victory for freeway opponents in Portland and across the
nation. The short route was the first completed freeway to be demolished in the United
States. However, because it was a street-level highway, Harbor Drive did not receive the
same degree of notoriety as the later decisions to eliminate the elevated Embarcadero
1 Jackson was appointed to the Oregon Highway Commission on May 4, 1959. His tenure on the
commission saw the construction ofInterstate 5, Interstate 405, and Interstate 205, along with the
demolition of Harbor Drive and the cancellation of the Mount Hood Freeway and Interstate 505. For
Jackson's confirmation, see Oregon State Highway Department, Minutes a/the Oregon Highway
Commission, vol. 44,1 (Salem, OR: State of Oregon, 1959),31516.
116
Freeway in San Francisco or West Side Highway in New York. Still, Harbor Drive
provided proof that Portland's leaders had become committed to preserving public spaces
and developing a pedestrian scale city.
In 1968 the Highway Department proposed the widening of Harbor Drive to
accommodate future traffic needs. With Interstate 205 and the Mount Hood Freeway in
the planning stages and Interstate 405 near completion, no action was taken to put the
proposed improvements into motion. In 1969 architect Bob Belcher and his wife Allison,
and Mount Hood Freeway critic and architect Jim Howell formed Riverfront for People,
an organization dedicated to stopping the plans to expand Harbor Drive.2 The fledgling
organization's opposition to the road expansion project was supported by Governor Tom
McCall, a former television journalist with Portland's KGW-TV and a staunch advocate
of environmental protection. McCall informed Highway Commission Chairman Jackson
that he supported the creation of a waterfront park in downtown Portland. Jackson
acquiesced to the governor and hired the planning agency DeLeuw-Cather to conduct a
downtown traffic study. He also agreed to allow the Portland Planning Bureau to use
DeLeuw-Cather's resources as they developed the 1972 Downtown Plan. With Interstate
405 and the Fremont Bridge finally completed in 1973, Jackson and the other highway
commissioners gave the go-ahead to demolish Harbor Drive. Over the next year,
development on Portland's waterfront park began.
2 Ernie Bonner, "Planpdx.org: Riverfront for People," Portland State University,
http://www.pdx.edu/usp/planpdxorg-riverfront-people (accessed April 8, 2009).
117
The actual decision to remove Harbor Drive was made by the Highway Division
and the Portland City Council in the midst of the Mount Hood and I-50S battles in 1971.
Although it was not part of the interstate system, the Harbor Drive project benefitted
from the anti-freeway activism that coalesced in northwest and southeast Portland. The
citizens who formed Riverfront for People became part of a larger protest movement
stretching to the Northwest District, the southeast neighborhoods, Maywood Park, and
Lake Oswego. The movement extended beyond Portland, to Eugene, and beyond Oregon
to Boston's Jamaica Plan neighborhood, to New Orleans where two young lawyers killed
a Robert Moses plan, to New York where Jane Jacobs had fought Moses on his own turf,
and to San Francisco, the site of the first anti-freeway movement. The movements,
though not formally connected, were all reactions to the destruction of landscapes and
cityscapes and to the engineering ideology that looked upon people as drivers rather than
neighbors.
The efforts to halt Harbor Drive succeeded quickly. By 1971, the activists
possessed both the political and technical expertise to challenge pro-freeway opposition
and they rode a wave of anti-freeway sentiment that Tom McCall was only too happy to
indulge. They held public demonstrations and picnics, waged a media campaign in The
Oregonian, and participated on a citizens' committee as part of the Harbor Drive Task
Force. The Belchers and other Portlanders capitalized on the anti-freeway sentiments that
had, by now, emerged in nearly every major American city.
118
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