Monday, June 17, 2024

Tugboat Halle Foss

Tugboat Halle Foss at Rainier, Oregon, in April 2006
Photo by Cliff West

My dad, Cliff West, photographed the Foss tugboat Halle Foss on the Columbia River at Rainier, Oregon, in April 2006. This tugboat was built in 1970 by Quality Shipyard Incorporated of Houma, Louisiana, as the Gulf Stream for Gulf Mississippi Marine Incorporated of Houston, Texas. In 1976, it was acquired by Defelice Marine Towing Company of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and renamed the Demarco XII. In 1979 it was purchased by the Knappton Towboat Company of Astoria, Oregon, and was renamed the Astoria. It retained its name when the Knappton Towboat Company became the Brix Maritime Company of Seattle, Washington, in 1988. In 1993 Brix was acquired by the Foss Maritime Company of Seattle, Washington, and the tugboat was renamed the Halle Foss. The Halle Foss is 86 feet long with a hull 27.9 feet wide and 9.4 feet deep. Rated at 2,000 horsepower, it is powered by two Caterpillar D398 12-cylinder diesel engines turning two cast steel fixed pitch propellers.

M/V Zhen Hua 1 with Port of Portland Crane

M/V Zhen Hua 1 with Port of Portland Crane on the Columbia River at Rainier, Oregon, on April 28, 2006
Photo by Cliff West

My dad, Cliff West, photographed the heavy load carrier M/V Zhen Hua 1 on the Columbia River at Rainier, Oregon, on April 28, 2006, carrying a new gantry crane bound for the Port of Portland.

M/V Zhen Hua 1 with Port of Portland Crane on the Columbia River at Rainier, Oregon, on April 28, 2006
Photo by Cliff West

This ship was originally built by the Nippon Kokan Tsurumi Works in Yokohama, Japan, in December 1976 as a K-Line bulk carrier called the Titan. In 1988 or 1989 it was sold to Crescent Shipping Ltd. and was renamed the Rudy G. In October 1991 it was sold to Andreas Ugland Car Carrier and renamed Rudi. In October 1993 it was purchased by Greece-based Global Ocean Carriers and renamed Global Adelaide. In December 1998 it was sold to Entrust Maritime Co. Ltd. and renamed Kyrenia. In 2000 it was rebuilt into the heavy load carrier Zhen Hua 1 for Shanghai Zhenhua Shipping Company. The Zhen Hua 1 is 233.6 meters long overall, with a beam of 32.24 meters and a draft of 9 meters. It has a gross tonnage of 29,300 tons and a deadweight tonnage of 72,399 tons.

M/V Zhen Hua 1 with Port of Portland Crane on the Columbia River at Rainier, Oregon, on April 28, 2006
Photo by Cliff West

On April 2, 2006, the Zhen Hua 1 arrived at the Port of Seattle carrying five gantry cranes built by Zhenhua Port Machinery Company Limited, which was founded in 1885 as Gongmao Shipyard. Four of the 1,200-ton cranes were unloaded at the Port of Seattle’s Terminal 18, with the fifth bound for the Port of Portland’s Terminal 6. The ship waited in Seattle’s Elliott Bay until the water levels of the Columbia River were low enough for the crane to clear the Lewis & Clark Bridge between Longview, Washington, and Rainier, Oregon. Because the 412-foot width of the crane exceeded the beam of the ship by 95 feet on the port side and 193 feet on the starboard side, the United States Coast Guard established a Safety Zone of a 100 yard radius around the ship. The maximum height of the crane aboard the ship would exceed 225 feet.

M/V Zhen Hua 1 with Port of Portland Crane on the Columbia River at Rainier, Oregon, on April 28, 2006
Photo by Cliff West

On April 27, 2006, the Zhen Hua 1 crossed the Columbia River bar at Astoria, Oregon, and passed under the Astoria-Megler Bridge at low water with a minus tide of one foot. The crane was measured at 192 feet high aboard the ballasted ship, and the clearance under the bridge was measured at 207 feet. The ship proceeded up the Columbia River to anchor for the night at Longview, Washington.

M/V Zhen Hua 1 with Port of Portland Crane on the Columbia River at Rainier, Oregon, on April 28, 2006
Photo by Cliff West

The next day, the Zhen Hua 1 was ballasted to a draft of 40 feet, the depth of the Columbia River shipping channel, leaving approximately two feet of freeboard. The clearance under the Lewis & Clark Bridge was measured at 195 feet. The ship passed under the bridge at half a knot with clearance of seven feet. A crewmember standing on top of the crane reportedly reached up and touched the bridge.

M/V Zhen Hua 1 with Port of Portland Crane on the Columbia River at Rainier, Oregon, on April 28, 2006
Photo by Cliff West

The gantry crane was bound for the container terminal at the Port of Portland’s Terminal 6 to replace a smaller crane. The new post-Panamax crane had a capacity of 60 long tons and a reach of 169 feet. It was the third of its class at Terminal 6, and cost $7.5 million.

News Helicopter over Rainier, Oregon, on April 28, 2006
Photo by Cliff West

The passage of this crane was a major local news event, with a news helicopter overhead that appears to be KATU’s Chopper 2.

Sunday, June 16, 2024

Hillsboro Civic Center

Hillsboro Civic Center in Hillsboro, Oregon, on April 24, 2006

The Hillsboro Civic Center at 150 East Main Street covers 6 acres over three city blocks with 168,436 square feet. The 6-story main structure is tied with Tualaty Community Hospital for the tallest building in the city. Designed by LRS Architects in 2002 and built to centralize city government functions under one roof, it includes government offices, retail space, public plazas and residential housing. Constructed from 2003-2005 by Skanska USA, it was the second LEED Gold certified city hall in the United States after Seattle’s and the seventh LEED Gold certified building in Oregon. 92% of its construction waste was recycled. It was also the first municipal building in Oregon to meet all its energy needs with renewable sources, including 18 solar panels, and is 42% more energy efficient than comparable buildings. The Hillsboro Civic Center won Best Public Project in the state of Oregon for 2005 from Northwest Construction magazine.

Along the east edge of the plaza are a series of five interpretive signs about the history, economy and culture of Hillsboro and Washington County called Foundations of Community. The signs are titled Roots of the Community, Abundant Resources, Evolving Connections, The Fruits of Labor, and Cultivating Community. I have paraphrased these signs to produce the following condensed history of the Hillsboro area.

Prehistoric camels, elephants, and giant beaver once lived in the area now known as Washington County until about 15,000 years ago, when dams from the ice age began breaking, releasing floodwaters from Lake Missoula in Montana at a rate ten times greater than the flow of all today’s rivers combined. These waters deposited topsoil from eastern Washington, leaving the hills and prairies of the Tualatin River basin with a rich alluvial soil. Cottonwood and ash forests along the streams provided homes for elk, deer, cougars, bears, foxes, woodpeckers, raccoons, beavers, hawks and eagles. The Tualatin River valley also became home to several family groups of Kalapuyas, including the Twality. The fertile land and plentiful water provided a variety of seasonal opportunities for gathering food, including fishing for steelhead in January, gathering berries in June, summer trading for salmon, collecting hazelnuts and caterpillars in July and August, and hunting for deer and elk and fishing for chinook and chum in the fall.

The Lewis and Clark expedition revealed the potential of the American West, as immigrants began arriving in the mid-1800s. The first were employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who were under British rule, and French-Canadian and American trappers and mountain men, who often brought with them Native American wives and families. Later, an evangelical movement brought missionaries. The first missionary was Jason Lee, who came in 1834 with a trapping party to establish a Methodist mission in Salem. In 1838, Francis Norbert Blanchet, a Roman Catholic priest, arrived at Fort Vancouver. More members of their congregations and others soon followed. Farmers and their families from the Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi River valleys began arriving in wagon trains. These first pioneers were mainly of European descent, including English, Scots, Irish, Dutch, German, Swedish and Swiss. As more Europeans arrived, the Native American population fell due to a lack of immunity to foreign diseases. Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and Hispanics from Mexico also began to arrive. Settlers cleared land, planted crops, and stored food for the winter. Grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and hops were produced and traded locally. To bring in the harvest, the settlers shared food, manpower, threshers and steam engines. They sometimes traded wheat for goods when they had no currency.

Fewer than 200 settlers lived south of the Columbia River in 1843, when a meeting at Champoeg formed the Tuality District, stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Willamette River and from the Yamhill River to the 54th parallel. Joseph Meek, a retired trapper and adventurer, encouraged the adoption of an American style of government. David Hill became one of the three provisional “governors” of the new district, and his small cabin served as a courthouse. Trails used by the Twality Indians had become the first roads, one east and west from the Willamette River towards the Coast Range and another north and south. Near the crossing of these roads, Hill and Isaiah Kelsey donated land to establish the townsite of Columbia, with a courthouse and a post office. In 1848, Joseph Meek traveled to Washington, DC, to argue for the Oregon Country to become a federal territory. After David Hill’s death in 1850, the town of Columbia was renamed Hillsborough in his honor. The spelling was later changed to Hillsboro. The Tuality District later became Washington County, with Hillsboro, as the county seat, becoming a center of government. The original plat for the city of Portland was filed in Hillsboro. Washington County was later broken up, with the current Washington, Multnomah, Columbia, and Clatsop counties being created from it.

In 1847, Henry Davis built one of the first flourmills, after hauling the grinding stones from the east coast, burying them in Eastern Oregon for the winter, then bringing them the rest of the way to Hillsboro the following spring. Oregon wheat was first sold to gold miners in California. By the 1850s, home canning equipment was available to seal cans of corn and peas. In 1851, the Portland and Valley Plank Road Company began construction of Canyon Road to link the Willamette and Columbia rivers with Hillsboro. In 1856, the Tualatin River Transportation & Navigation Company was chartered by the legislature to improve the Tualatin River and connect it to the Willamette River. The Tualatin River’s wide bends nearly formed loops that allowed boat passengers to get off to pick berries and then meet the boat as it came back around. In 1871, the first of three railroads connected Hillsboro to the rest of the Willamette Valley. By 1880, wheat from the Hillsboro area was being shipped to England and Europe.

By 1892, a water tower that doubled as the first electric power plant provided Hillsboro with both fire protection and street lighting. One of the oldest businesses in the area, the Hillsboro Argus printed its first issue on March 28, 1894, at its office across North Second Avenue from the courthouse. The community of Orenco was the company town for the Oregon Nursery Company from 1896 to 1927, shipping trees and roses worldwide. Before pasteurization, horse-drawn wagons brought milk from company farms to the Carnation condenser on South First Avenue, when the milk was condensed by heating, then sugar was added to kill bacteria. The first Oregon Electric interurban train arrived in Hillsboro on September 30, 1908. In 1920, B. E. Maling and H. W. Ray expanded the Hillsboro Canning Company to include a commercial canning and cold pack operation, the first quick-freezing of food products on the Pacific Coast. It was later sold to the Birds Eye Division of General Foods Corporation.

In 1998, Tri-Met’s MAX light rail restored interurban rail service to Hillsboro for the first time since the 1930’s, using the same right-of-way the Oregon Electric Railroad Company did in 1908. What began as an open field in 1928 is now the second busiest airport in Oregon and the site of the annual Hillsboro International Airshow. Hillsboro’s Fourth of July parade is the second largest in Oregon. Hillsboro’s biggest employers today include Intel, Fujitsu, Toshiba, and Epson. 

Sunday, June 2, 2024

Main Street Bridge in Hillsboro, Oregon

Main Street Bridge in Hillsboro, Oregon, on March 28, 2006

In 1917 the Oregon Electric Railway built a wooden trestle at this location over East Main Street at Southeast 18th Avenue in Hillsboro, Oregon, with a clearance height of only 10’-6”. After successor Burlington Northern abandoned freight service in the 1970s, the trestle was removed in 1977. This bridge was built in 1997 to carry the Blue Line of Tri-Met's MAX light rail to downtown Hillsboro. The 425-foot long, 34-foot wide post tension box girder bridge is suspended with six four-inch cables from a reinforced concrete tied arch designed to accommodate a future widening of Main Street to five lanes without a center support. The reinforced concrete arch is 78 feet tall with the ends connected underground using a post-tension tie beam.
The bridge was completed in September 1997, and the “golden spike” of the Westside light rail line was driven on the bridge in October 1997. Regular service on the line began on September 12, 1998.

Hillsboro McDonald's

McDonald's Restaurant in Hillsboro, Oregon, on March 28, 2006

This McDonald's restaurant in Hillsboro, Oregon, at 110 SE Baseline Street at the intersection with 1st Avenue featured a neon sign of the rare "Lightning” script logo that was used circa 1995.

Intel Ronler Acres Campus

Intel Ronler Acres Campus in Hillsboro, Oregon, on March 28, 2006

Intel's Ronler Acres Campus is located at 2501 NE Century Boulevard in Hillsboro, Oregon.

Intel Ronler Acres Campus in Hillsboro, Oregon, on March 28, 2006

This property was created as a housing development by Washington County in 1959. By the late 1980s it had just one house and duplex and no water or sewer service and was being used by nearby residents as a trash dump.

Intel Ronler Acres Campus in Hillsboro, Oregon, on March 28, 2006

Founded in California in 1968, Intel acquired its first Oregon property in Aloha in 1974 and began operating there in 1976.

Intel Ronler Acres Campus in Hillsboro, Oregon, on March 28, 2006

Intel acquired the 450-acre Ronler Acres property in 1994 and the first chip manufacturing factory opened here in 1996.

Monday, May 27, 2024

Beaverton City Hall

City Hall in Beaverton, Oregon, on February 27, 2006

Built in 1985, and also known as the Griffith Park Building, the City of Beaverton began leasing space in this 75,000 square foot building in 1986. Beaverton’s City Hall moved to the Beaverton Building in 2014 and the Beaverton Police Department moved to the new Beaverton Public Safety Center in 2020, but the Griffith Park Building continues to house the Beaverton Municipal Court and a few other city offices.

City Hall in Beaverton, Oregon, on February 27, 2006

Embedded in the concrete outside the main entrance is an installation briefly recounting Beaverton's history. Called "Writing the Future," it was installed in 1993 for Beaverton's centennial.

THE CITY OF BEAVERTON WAS INCORPORATED IN 1893 (POP 386)
CANYON ROAD WAS PAVED WITH PLANKS (1851)
A WOODEN ROAD FROM PORTLAND TO BEAVERTON
TRAINS CAME IN 1871, TO A RAILWAY STOP
WITH A STORE, A POST OFFICE, AND A SCHOOL.

RAILWAYS TURNED TO HIGHWAYS AND WAGONS INTO STATION WAGONS
FARM FIELDS BECAME BEAVERTON AIRPORT WHICH BECAME BEAVERTON MALL (1970)

BEAVERTON’S CENTENNIAL 1993 (POP 57290)
WRITING THE FUTURE

Note: Beaverton Mall was renamed Cedar Hills Crossing in 2002.

City Hall in Beaverton, Oregon, on February 27, 2006

Also outside the main entrance is an installation called "Sisters on the Globe" featuring the names of some of Beaverton's sister cities.

SISTERS ON THE GLOBE

City Hall in Beaverton, Oregon, on February 27, 2006

TROSSINGEN, GERMANY
CLUSES, FRANCE

City Hall in Beaverton, Oregon, on February 27, 2006

BIROBIDZHAN, RUSSIA

City Hall in Beaverton, Oregon, on February 27, 2006

GOTEMBA, JAPAN

City Hall in Beaverton, Oregon, on February 27, 2006

HSINCHU, TAIWAN, R.O.C.

City Hall in Beaverton, Oregon, on February 27, 2006

CHEON-AN, KOREA