Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
popular place to hang out year-round, it's typically buzzing with a mix
of walkers, runners, inline skaters, napping or lunching office workers,
homeless people, tourists, and various festivals. (It's the main location of
the annual Rose Festival, for instance, as well as a bunch of warm-
weather beer- and food-themed extravaganzas.) In 2012 the American
Planning Association called it one of the 10 Great Public Spaces, and it's
hard to argue with that.
Heading farther north along the waterfront, you'll come to an incongru-
ous white pillar sticking out of the ground. This is the Battleship
Oregon
Memorial, which commemorates a ship from the late 1800s known as
the “Bulldog of the U.S. Navy”; a time capsule in its base is due to be
opened in 2076.
Just across the park, at the foot of SW Pine St., is the sternwheeler
Port-
land.
The ship has been semiretired and is now home to the Oregon
Maritime Museum, a kid-friendly favorite among Portland's tourist
activities. It usually stays moored but recently has been taken out on oc-
casional summertime exhibition trips. The sternwheeler is the last
steam-powered tugboat built and operated in the US; a tour of the ship
is included as part of a visit to the Maritime Museum.
Farther along the waterfront, the wide, partly covered plaza that
stretches from beneath the Burnside Bridge is the site of Portland's
ever-expanding Saturday Market, a weekly outdoor arts and crafts and
food bonanza that involves a satisfying amount of street theater and,
naturally, elephant ears alongside its tie-dye clogs and vegan dream-
catchers. It runs every weekend (including Sundays, despite the name)
from March through December.
On the other side of the Burnside Bridge, at the foot of NW Couch St., is
the Japanese American Historical Plaza. During World War II, Japan-
ese Americans in the area were forced into internment camps; this plaza
is dedicated to their memories, and artwork in the memorial garden
portrays important moments from Japanese-American history.
Continue along the waterfront path until you come to the Steel Bridge.
Take the stairs up to the upper level (you can also stay on the lower level
and cross that way; it's equally interesting either way, but the views are
just slightly better from the top level). Opened in 1912, the Steel Bridge
was built for the Union Pacific Railroad, and in choosing which level to
take you've already discovered one of its unique characteristics: it has
