The Street Sign At The "Center" Of Troutdale

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Yesterday, the Brown Eyed Girl and myself did a little East County sightseeing. With nowhere to really go during these COVID-19 inflected times, its about all one can do really, but then, when you live in greater Portland, it's a fine thing to do indeed.

Yesterday, on our "Sunday drive", we went all the way out Division through Gresham to Troutdale Road, then into Troutdale itself. As many years as I've been a Portlander, the majority of my life by now, I'm a little abashed to say that while I know where just about everywhere is and can get there without a map, I am rather parochial as regards my beloved E 122nd Avenue and David-Douglas-landia. The wife thinks in broader terms than I, and is not only interested in as many things as I am, but more given to spontaneity. So we hung out in downtown Troutdale for a short while, and I ligged about taking snapshots.

I've got pictures to share over the next several missives, but I wanted to satiate my Address Nerd with this. The center of the Troutdale address grid is this intersection, right here

Troutdale, as with all but one of the other cities that hem Portland in on the east side, has an address grid of its own, and its origin point is where these two roads come together.

The east-west street is part of a storied historical road, and its somewhat gangly name tries to carry the whole of that reputation on its back. The whole of the official name of the street is Historical Columbia River Highway, and since it's divided in twain by the street that, in central Troutdale, divides the grid east from west, it comes in two complementary flavors: West Historical Columbia River Highway and East Historical Columbia River Highway. The necessity to include so much type on a street blade, even a fairly macho wooden one, necessitated a creative solution, as can be seen in the photo.

Buxton Road is the other baseline, running south from the city center and dividing Troutdale into east and west halves, and does not present a directional, similar to State Street in Salem. After this road leaves the center of town it does a small s-shaped jog and becomes South Troutdale Road, maintaining its baseline duties to the edge of town.

Troutdale's address grid is quite lopsided: the historic center of town is well into the north part of it and the town grew mostly southeast and southwest from there. Buxton Road does not extend north of Historic Columbia River Hwy; north of the main drag there's the railroad, then I-84, then the Troutdale Airport then, the Columbia River, all in less than a mile. The city is divided into binomial compass quadrants, however and the grid is considered to continue into that area; the streets, all of which lie north of the freeway, are prefixed NW west of the airport, and there are one or two streets just east of the airport which wear the NE directional in a NE quadrant that is an almost absurdly small sliver of land.

I have more pictures of a very picturesque little Oregon town on the edge of the Metro, positioned at the literal entry to the Columbia Gorge, Oregon and Washington's own Grand Canyon, which has a knowing sense of its own history and is charming as anything, and the will form the subject of further posts.