The bridges

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

If I was a real man, I'd go out and take all my own photographs of these bad boys. But I'm not, so I'm just yoinking other people's pictures, because I think it's time to try to convey the love and horror that they inspire.

Starting from the south and working north, and dealing only with bridges that have at least one terminus within the formal boundaries of Portland City Limits (that way I don't have to even try to cope with that unnamed railroad bridge south of Elk Rock Island).

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The Sellwood Bridge is said to be one of the most structurally unsound bridges in Oregon, and the worst place to be in the event of an earthquake. That's saying a lot.

It also has a great deal of charm, despite having distressingly low railings and being a nightmare to bicycle across.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The Ross Island Bridge crosses over the northernmost tip of a collection of islands that have been joined with landfill dredged in the pursuit of mining gravel to form a single large island with an enormous lagoon in the middle that almost nobody in Portland is aware of. Ross Island Sand and Gravel donated most of Ross Island to the Portland parks department in 2006 (I think) but the only way to get to it is by boat.



The Ross Island Bridge sports the most dangerous bus stop in Portland, which can only be accessed by darting across one of two uncontrolled and heavily trafficked two-lane ramps at your choice of blind curve. It at one time had a third, even less safe option, which was to take stairs down to a passageway under the bridge. The passage reeked of bum urine and fear and was typically populated by leering vagrants, so after an uncertain number of complaints the city erected a barbed-wire-topped chain-link fence to prevent people from using it.

[Oysters Rockefeller]

This is the first time I've been impressed by bridges.

I think this means I'm getting old.

The "rails" on the sellwood are more like speedbumps.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I should probably at this point note that I am only covering the bridges that cross one of the two major rivers, because there is no way in hell I would ever be able to identify and locate all the little goddamn bridges that cross the Slough or the undefined marshes or what have you. I will talk about the Slough some other time, though, because it really deserves its own thread.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This is the first time I've been impressed by bridges.

I think this means I'm getting old.

The "rails" on the sellwood are more like speedbumps.

The Sellwood bridge is one of those bridges where you get nervous about losing your balance, because if you trip you'll just go right over.

Portland has a lot of missing people, and if you go into the river it's unlikely that your body will ever be found.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The Marqham bridge is one of my two personally most-feared bridges. I can't describe the utter terror of driving this bridge, especially southbound. This bridge is so heinously designed (presumably by the same madman who designed the nightmarish 32nd avenue to Columbia BLVD interchange) that even if you are coming up on it northbound (by far the less immediately threatening direction) you may or may not be accidentally swept up into it, going somewhere you absolutely not only don't want to be, but also have no comprehension of how to escape.

The entrances and exits are 100% counterintuitive, and most of the accidents that take place on that bridge are the direct result of people desperately attempting to change lanes as they pass under last-minute signage informing them that they are inadvertently on their way to Lake Oswego, or to where they just came from but further upstream.

If you fail to identify and take the correct lane coming off the Marqham, you are fucked forever. It's the navigational equivalent to marking all read. Just give up and let it happen, because to try to change the course of your new destiny will probably be fatal.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh, and one last note on the Marqham (also spelled Marquam by unPortlandian revisionists): it at one point had one of the most gloriously creepy ghost ramps in Portland, but I think it has recently been demolished. When I was a kid, the only thing between the unwary motorist and this off-ramp to plummeting death was a flimsy, poorly visible chain-link fence.

[EK WAFFLR]

Holy shit. I'm amazed. And slightly unnerved.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The Hawthorne bridge may be the most-photographed bridge in Portland. It's nowhere near as picturesque as the St. John's bridge, (we'll come to that one later) but it leads directly from the popular Hawthorne district to downtown, and the city backdrop is particularly popular for tourism rags.

It looks quaint and innocuous, but it actually has a well-deserved reputation for being the most vicious bridge in the city. For many decades it had no sidewalks, very low, flimsy railings (which don't actually appear to be much improved, despite years of construction work to make it safer) and the steel grate driving surface was unusually slippery in wet conditions, which led to many cars simply sliding off the roadway into the water below. There were rumors for years that this was because the grating had been accidentally installed upside-down, but the City protects its own and it wasn't until the chief engineer for the construction of the bridge died that the mistake was officially acknowledged and rectified. The bridge was shut down for two years as the grating was finally removed and replaced right-side-up.

One of the most poignant stories I remember from my childhood was of a man and his wife who had just gone to dinner for their wedding anniversary, and were on their way to the opera. As each had come directly from work, they were driving separate cars. He arrived at the opera and waited for her, but she never came; following him in the rain, her car had simply drifted off the bridge, and was never recovered.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

A brief interlude to talk about what lives in the Willamette river. Although rainy-season sewage overflow does taint the water for part of the year (the ongoing sewer project is meant to correct that problem) many fish thrive in the river. Among them is the Columbia sturgeon. These fish can live to over 100 years old, and if they get lucky and nothing eats them while they're small enough to be eaten, reach over 20 feet long and nearly a ton in weight.

They live so deep in the water that although there are hundreds of thousands of these behemoths in the lower Columbia and Willamette rivers, the large ones are almost never seen. It's just a little factoid about what lives below the bridges.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Holy shit. I'm amazed. And slightly unnerved.

They are unnerving. Each of these bridges has a personality, and everyone here has a favorite.

We have a relationship with the bridges. You have to.

[EK WAFFLR]

Holy shit. I'm amazed. And slightly unnerved.

They are unnerving. Each of these bridges has a personality, and everyone here has a favorite.

We have a relationship with the bridges. You have to.

I understand completely. They seem like bridges you want to befriend. Or else.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Holy shit. I'm amazed. And slightly unnerved.

They are unnerving. Each of these bridges has a personality, and everyone here has a favorite.

We have a relationship with the bridges. You have to.

I understand completely. They seem like bridges you want to befriend. Or else.

Exactly.

They need your love. They require it.

[Don Coyote]

ok. never coming to portland again. birdges don't me, and your bridges seem hungry.