Mount Tabor (Oregon) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Mount Tabor is the name of a dormant volcanic cinder cone

Volcanic cone

Volcanic cones are among the simplest volcanic formations. They are built by ejecta from a volcanic vent, piling up around the vent in the shape of a cone with a central crater. Volcanic cones are of different types, depending upon the nature and size of the fragments ejected during the eruption...

, the city park

Park

A park is a protected area, in its natural or semi-natural state, or planted, and set aside for human recreation and enjoyment, or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. It may consist of rocks, soil, water, flora and fauna and grass areas. Many parks are legally protected by...

on the volcano, and the neighborhood of Southeast Portland

Portland, Oregon

Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

that surrounds it, all in Oregon

Oregon

Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...

. The name refers to Mount Tabor, Israel. It was named by Plympton Kelly, son of Oregon City

Oregon City, Oregon

Oregon City was the first city in the United States west of the Rocky Mountains to be incorporated. It is the county seat of Clackamas County, Oregon...

pioneer resident Clinton Kelly

Clinton Kelly (minister)

Reverend Clinton Kelly was an early pioneer of what became the U.S. state of Oregon.Kelly was born on June 15, 1808, in Pulaski County, Kentucky, the son of Samuel and Nancy Kelly....

Cinder cone

The peak of Mount Tabor is 636 feet (193.9 m) in elevation;
about two-thirds of this is prominence since the surrounding land is about 200 feet (61 m) elevation.
The 196-acre (0.79-km²) Mount Tabor Park does not appear to have ever been formally ordained by the City as a park. According to archival records, an ordinance declaring Williams Park, named for a prominent citizen, was stopped by neighborhood activists wanting the historic name, Mt. Tabor Park, to be retained. No other ordinance appears to have been enacted to date. The entire park, including the Central Maintenance Yard, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. The nomination was forwarded by a community effort spearheaded and funded by the Mt. Tabor Neighborhood Association. Mt. Tabor Park is known for its reservoirs, three of which were accepted to the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

in January 2004. The reservoirs' nomination was also a community effort spearheaded by the Friends of the Reservoirs and funded by donations. The park was designed, along with other Portland parks, by Emanuel Tillman Mische, a highly pedigreed horticulturist and long-time landscape designer for the famed Olmsted Brothers

Olmsted Brothers

The Olmsted Brothers company was an influential landscape design firm in the United States, formed in 1898 by stepbrothers John Charles Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. .-History:...

landscape firm. John Charles Olmsted, stepson and nephew, of the famed Frederick Law Olmsted, visited Portland in 1903 to help design the site for the Lewis and Clark World Exposition, on the request of Rev. Thomas Lamb Eliot

Thomas Lamb Eliot

Reverend Thomas Lamb Eliot was an Oregon pioneer, minister of one of the first churches on the west coast of the U.S., president of the Portland Children's Home, president of the Oregon Humane Society, a director of the Art Association, and director of the Library Association.Thomas Lamb Eliot was...

, minister of the First Unitarian Church and relative of Charles Eliot, the son of the president of Harvard University and acclaimed landscape architect and partner in the Olmsted landscape firm in Brookline, Massachusetts. Rev. Eliot arranged for Olmsted to visit Seattle for park planning, too, in order to help make the long trip financially feasible. While John Charles Olmsted was in Portland, Rev. Eliot and other park supporters took him on a tour throughout the city so that he could create a grand plan of parks. Mt. Tabor Park was the largest Portland park until 1947 when Forest Park

Forest Park (Portland)

Forest Park is a public municipal park in the Tualatin Mountains west of downtown Portland, Oregon, United States. Stretching for more than on hillsides overlooking the Willamette River, it is one of the country's largest urban forest reserves...

was created. The land making up the Mt. Tabor volcanic butte was identified for a park in the 1880s due to its ideal elevation for a water distribution system. City fathers formed a water committee and created a municipal water system piping water some 25 miles from the Bull Run River watershed, separate and west of Mt. Hood, to Mt. Tabor reservoirs and across the Willamette River to City Park reservoirs (now Washington Park) in 1894. The Bull Run watershed was among the first federal lands to be set aside in the Forest Reserve Act of 1891 and enacted by president Benjamin Harrison.

The Mount Tabor reservoir

Reservoir

A reservoir , artificial lake or dam is used to store water.Reservoirs may be created in river valleys by the construction of a dam or may be built by excavation in the ground or by conventional construction techniques such as brickwork or cast concrete.The term reservoir may also be used to...

s were built during the period of 1894 and 1911, along with reservoirs in Washington Park. The reservoirs and their gatehouse

Gatehouse (waterworks)

A gatehouse, gate house, or valve house for a dam is a structure housing sluice gates, valves, or pumps . Many gatehouses are strictly utilitarian, but especially in the nineteenth century, some were very elaborate....

s are artistically constructed, incorporating extensive reinforced concrete, designed to look like stonework

Artificial stone

Artificial stone is a name for various kinds of synthetic stone products used from the 18th century onward. They have been used in building construction, civil engineering work, and industrial uses such as grindstones....

, by two early patented techniques by noted engineer Ernest L. Ransome

Ernest L. Ransome

Ernest Leslie Ransome was an English-born engineer, architect, and early innovator in reinforced concrete building techniques. Ransome devised the most sophisticated concrete structures in the United States at the time....

and wrought-iron fencing and lampposts designed by noted architect William M. Whidden

William M. Whidden

William Marcy Whidden was a founding member of Whidden & Lewis, a prominent architectural firm in Portland, Oregon, United States.-Early life:...

. There were initially four above-ground reservoirs, numbered 1, 2, 5, and 6. (Reservoirs 3 and 4 are at Washington Park, and Reservoir 7 is a small underground reservoir near Mount Tabor's summit.) Reservoir 2, on the corner of SE 60th and Division, was decommissioned in the 1980s, and the property was sold to a private developer. Its gatehouse remains, and is used as a private residence. Reservoir 6 is the largest, with two 37 million gallon chambers; it also contains a fountain, which was unused for many years, however it was reactivated in early 2007.

The park features a statue of The Oregonian

The Oregonian

The Oregonian is the major daily newspaper in Portland, Oregon, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the U.S. west coast, founded as a weekly by Thomas J. Dryer on December 4, 1850...

editor Harvey W. Scott

Harvey W. Scott

Harvey Whitefield Scott was an American pioneer, newspaper editor, and historian.Scott was born in on a farm in Illinois and migrated to Oregon with his family in 1852, settling in Yamhill County. He and his family moved near Olympia, Washington in 1853. At age 18, he fought in the American Indian...

. The larger-than-life statue was sculpted by Gutzon Borglum

Gutzon Borglum

Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum was an American artist and sculptor famous for creating the monumental presidents' heads at Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, the famous carving on Stone Mountain near Atlanta, as well as other public works of art.- Background :The son of Mormon Danish immigrants, Gutzon...

, notable for sculptures on Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore near Keystone, South Dakota, in the United States...

. The bronze statue was dedicated on July 22, 1933, with approximately 3000 in attendance, 23 years after Scott died. Oregon governor Julius Meier

Julius Meier

Julius L. Meier was an American businessman and politician in the state of Oregon. The son of the Meier & Frank department store founder, he would become a lawyer before entering the family business in Portland...

was chairman of the event, and Chester Harvey Rowell

Chester Harvey Rowell

Chester Harvey Rowell was an early leader of the progressive movement in California.Born in Bloomington, Illinois, he earned a degree from the University of Michigan in 1888. He studied three years in Europe, including terms at the Universities of Halle, Berlin, Paris and Rome...

gave a speech.

Reservoir problems

These reservoirs, according to Portland's NBC affiliate KGW

KGW

KGW is an NBC affiliate television station serving the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area. The station broadcasts its digital signal on VHF channel 8, from its transmitter in Portland. It also produces segments and serves as the Portland bureau for Northwest Cable News , which is also owned by...

, are not filtered. This came to light June 30, 2008 when KGW reported two people were caught skinny dipping

Skinny dipping

Nude swimming, colloquially called skinny dipping, is a term used to describe swimming naked.-Etymology:The term skinny dip, first recorded in English in the 1950s, includes the somewhat archaic word skinny, known since 1573, meaning "having to do with skin", as it exposed the naked...

in one of the offline reservoirs the night of June 29. Reservoir officials say it's fortunate this particular reservoir was offline at the time, because draining and refilling it would have cost tens of thousands of dollars. Creating covers for the reservoirs has been proposed in the past but would cost the city about $500 million.
Mount Tabor Park also features a Depression-era

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

sculpture by Gutzon Borglum

Gutzon Borglum

(of Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore near Keystone, South Dakota, in the United States...

fame) representing Harvey W. Scott

Harvey W. Scott

, an early editor of The Oregonian
The Oregonian
The Oregonian is the major daily newspaper in Portland, Oregon, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the U.S. west coast, founded as a weekly by Thomas J. Dryer on December 4, 1850...

. The uncovered reservoirs were again in the news in early December 2009 when an E. coli outbreak warning was issued for Portland tap water. Residents were urged to boil the water they use for drinking and washing dishes.

On June 15, 2011, a man was observed urinating

Urination

Urination, also known as micturition, voiding, peeing, weeing, pissing, and more rarely, emiction, is the ejection of urine from the urinary bladder through the urethra to the outside of the body. In healthy humans the process of urination is under voluntary control...

in a nearly 8,000,000 gallon reservoir, prompting city officials to drain the water at a cost of around $36,000.

External links

Mount Tabor Park in the Oregon Encyclopedia
Mount Tabor Cinder Cone, Portland, Oregon (USGS Cascades Volcanic Observatory)
Friends of the Reservoirs
Friends of Mount Tabor, a non-profit group founded in 2000
Mount Tabor: Architectural Heritage, 1850–1930 (by Jan Caplener)
The early years of Mount Tabor (by Grant Nelson)
Closeup of the crater, the half-circle next to the parking lot
http://620kpoj.com/cc-common/mediaplayer/player.html?redir=yes&mps=news.php&mid=http://a1135.g.akamai.net/f/1135/26191/1h/cchannel.download.akamai.com/26191/610/richmedia/TABOR_BIKES-W-1.wma?CCOMRRMID=2337116&CPROG=RICHMEDIA&MARKET=PORTLAND-OR&NG_FORMAT=newstalk&NG_ID=kpoj620am&OR_NEWSFORMAT=News/Talk&OWNER=610&SERVER_NAME=www.620kpoj.com&SITE_ID=674&STATION_ID=KPOJ-AM&TRACK=Tabor_bikesAudio from March '07 news story] on KPOJ, about traffic on Mount Tabor
East Buttes Terraces and Wetlands Conservation Plan

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Cinder cone

Reservoir problems

See also

External links