Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
27
LENTS: A TOWN CUT IN TWO
BOUNDARIES:
SE 92nd Ave., SE Holgate Blvd., SE 72nd Ave., SE Woodstock Blvd.
DISTANCE:
1.5 miles
DIFFICULTY:
Easy
PARKING:
Free street parking
PUBLIC TRANSIT:
MAX Green Line (SE Holgate Blvd. and Lents/SE Foster Stations);
you could also get here via the I-205 Multi-Use Path
The actual neighborhood of Lents—named after Oliver Perry Lent, a pioneer who ran
a 190-acre farm in the area in 1866—is fairly large (nearly 4 square miles), but its
downtown core is barely there. With all the boarded-up shopfronts and papered-over
windows, it has an almost ghost-town appeal. This is mainly because Lents got the
short end of the transit stick back when Portland was trying to figure out where the
I-205 freeway should go. (It had been planned for 39th Avenue, but folks in the more
powerful and moneyed Laurelhurst neighborhood wouldn't have it.) By running the
freeway along Southeast 95th Avenue, city leaders basically cut Lents in half, leaving
it more a traffic hub than anything else. Still, it's the center of one of the most diverse
parts of Portland, with a higher number of Latino, Asian, and Russian immigrants
than most other parts of town. Recently it has been named an Urban Renewal Area,
which allows the city to use property-tax funds for improvement projects. And the
weekly farmers' market here draws folks from much closer in, thanks to its ethnically
diverse makeup and resulting tendency to have things you can't find at other markets.
Things might be looking up for Lents … eventually.
Start the walk at the SE Holgate Blvd. MAX Station, on the Green Line.
From the station, cross Holgate and head right (east) until you reach SE
92nd Ave., where you'll enter Lents Park.
The park (like the neighborhood) is named for stonemason Oliver Lent,
who had a land claim here in the 1850s. (It was his son who laid out the
town plan in the 1890s; Portland annexed it in 1912.) Locals have been
gathering up land to use as park space since the 1940s, and the city es-
tablished an official plan for its layout in 1953. The park includes a good-
sized stadium ringed with trees, plus a couple of smaller softball fields,
two soccer fields, tennis courts, and footpaths linking them all. At the
