Become a Steward of our Treasured Terwilliger Parkway. Join us on October 27, 2018, for Portland Parks & Recreation’s annual citywide effort to remove invasive ivy. Show some love for your favorite Portland park! To register go to: http://weblink.donorperfect.com/volunteer_noivy_terwilligerparkway
A Metro steering committee has decided that a new Southwest Portland light rail line will travel out Barbur Blvd. from downtown Portland to Tigard and Tualatin. A planned station at SW Gibbs St. (below the tram) is intended to serve OHSU and other Marquam Hill institutions that are located several hundred feet up a steep hillside with Terwilliger Parkway lying in between. TriMet and Metro have proposed a “Marquam Hill Connection” to get people up the hillside from the SW Barbur MAX station to OHSU. Three of the proposals involve a combination of above-ground elevator towers and bridges and ramps, most of which would be located in Terwilliger Parkway and will necessitate the removal of many trees and significant alterations to the park. A fourth proposal is to build a pedestrian tunnel under the hillside with an underground elevator to bring people up to OHSU.
In our last newsletter, we announced receiving a Portland Parks Foundation grant to conduct a targeted social media campaign. The object of our campaign: to engage a new, younger, generation of volunteers to help preserve Terwilliger Parkway for the future. Looking to get the word out about Terwilliger Parkway, we hope to target audiences of younger adults.
One Saturday morning in July, Friends of Terwilliger(FOT) hosted a water/Gatorade table to engage with Parkway users. We wanted to know the who, what, and why stories behind people’s choice of Terwilliger Parkway as a place to exercise and enjoy day and night. We counted over 300 people exercising in the 4 hours we were there: half were runners and a third cyclists. Walkers, dogs with owners, strollers, and a skateboard were there too! Of the 300 active exercisers, we were able to engage with 200 asking them 3 questions:
We just learned that the Portland Parks Foundation has awarded Friends of Terwilliger a grant to fund our new social media campaign. Want to get involved?
Work continues to re-build the retaining rock wall leading to Eagle Point; part of Terwilliger Parkway. Eagle Point was first identified by Portland city founders as a key viewpoint in the late 1890s. A house was soon built here and stood for over 100 years. It was probably at this time that the retaining rock wall was built. Here’s a photo of the work taken October 30th.
