Balch Creek

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Balch Creek
Creek
Waterfall in Macleay Park
Name origin: Danford Balch, early settler
Country	United States
State	Oregon
County	Multnomah
Source	Tualatin Mountains (West Hills)
- location	Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon
- elevation	1,116 ft (340 m) [1]
Mouth	Willamette River [2]
- location	Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon
- elevation	46 ft (14 m) [3]
- coordinates	45°32′16″N 122°42′41″W / 45.53778, -122.71139 [3]
Length	4 mi (6 km) [4]
Location of the mouth of Balch Creek in Oregon

Balch Creek is a roughly 4-mile (6.4 km) long tributary of the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, United States.^[4] The creek begins at the crest of the Tualatin Mountains (West Hills) near Northwest Skyline Boulevard and flows generally east down a canyon containing Northwest Cornell Road and, further downstream, Lower Macleay Trail in Macleay Park. At the lower end of the park, it is diverted underground into a concrete box culvert within the Portland sewer system. It remains underground until reaching the river in the Northwest Industrial neighborhood of Portland, approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) later.^[2]

The upper part of the Balch Creek watershed includes privately owned land in the Forest Park neighborhood, as well as municipal lands within Forest Park and Macleay Park, and an Audubon Society nature sanctuary.^[2] The natural vegetation is a mixed conifer forest of Coast Douglas-fir, western redcedar, and western hemlock, with an understory of vanilla leaf, Fendler's waterleaf, swordfern, maidenhair fern, Oregon grape, Indian plum, salmonberry, and stinging nettle. A small population of cutthroat trout reside in the stream.^[5]

The lower part of the watershed includes industrial and residential neighborhoods in Northwest Portland. This area was the historical location of Guild's Lake, site of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition of 1905. The lake was converted to industrial land in the early part of the 20th century,^[2] and a century later the Portland City Council adopted the Guild's Lake Industrial Sanctuary Plan to preserve the district's industrial nature.^[6]

[edit] Names

The creek and a canyon it runs through are named for Danford Balch, who settled a 346-acre (1.40 km²)^[7] donation land claim along the creek in 1850. Mortimer Stump, the eldest son from a neighboring family, courted the eldest Balch daughter, Anna. Balch warned Stump to stay away, but when Anna turned 16, the pair eloped to Vancouver, Washington, and married. Two weeks later, Balch killed Stump with a shotgun. Claiming that the shooting was accidental, Balch was jailed and held for trial. Escaping, he hid in the West Hills for months until re-arrested, tried, convicted, and on October 17, 1859, hanged at a public gallows.^[8] He was the first person to be hanged by the State of Oregon.^[7]

Macleay Park is named for Donald Macleay, a Portland merchant and real-estate developer who eventually acquired what had been the Balch property. To commemorate the 60th year of the British Queen Victoria's reign, he gave the land to the city for park purposes on condition that it transport hospital patients to the site in summertime and make the paths wide enough for wheelchairs.^[8]

Historic Guild's Lake, in the lower Balch Creek watershed near the Willamette River, was named for Peter Guild (pronounced guile),^[7] one of the first European American settlers in the area. He acquired nearly 600 acres (2.4 km²) of the watershed through a donation land claim.^[6] Variations exist in the spelling of Guild's Lake. The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) identifies the feature as Guild Lake, citing the sixth edition of Oregon Geographic Names as its source.^[9] In the Spring 2006 issue of Oregon Historical Quarterly, Karin Dibling et al. note that although variants occur in historic newspapers, maps, and other documents, since the beginning of the 20th century Guild's Lake has been the preferred form.^[7]

[edit] Course

Built in Macleay Park by the Works Progress Administration, this stone structure near Balch Creek was maintained as a public restroom until 1962 and still serves as a resting spot for hikers.

Balch Creek begins near the intersection of Northwest Skyline Boulevard and Northwest Thompson Road at the crest of the Tualatin Mountains (West Hills) in Portland and flows generally east about 4 miles (6.4 km) to its confluence with the Willamette River, a major tributary of the Columbia River. Originating in the Forest Park neighborhood and ending in the Northwest Industrial neighborhood, the creek lies entirely within Portland.^[10]

From its source, the creek runs east on private property along the south side of Northwest Thompson Road before passing under the road and entering Forest Park at about river mile (RM) 3). Here it turns south for about 0.25 miles (0.40 km), exiting the park and passing under Northwest Cornell Road onto private property. Turning southeast, Balch Creek flows just south of and parallel to Northwest Cornell Road for about 0.5 miles (0.80 km) until entering the Portland Audubon Sanctuary and, soon after, Macleay Park, both contiguous with Forest Park. Soon afterwards, at about RM 2.5, the stream passes under Northwest Cornell Road again and turns to the northeast.^[10]

Shortly thereafter, Woodpecker Creek enters from the right, and Balch Creek is crossed by the Woodpecker Trail and then the Wildwood Trail, which runs parallel to the creek for about 0.25 miles (0.40 km) to the vicinity of a park feature known as the Stone House.^[10][11] From here Balch Creek runs close by the Lower Macleay Trail—which is on the stream's left, then on the right, then on the left again, carried from side to side on bridges—for about 0.8 miles (1.3 km).^[12] Near the lower end of Macleay Park, the creek disappears from the surface near Northwest Thurman Street at roughly RM 1.^[10] Passing through a trash-catching rack and into an 84-inch (210 cm) diameter storm sewer, it eventually empties into the Willamette River at city-designated Outfall 17.^[13]

[edit] Geology

The Balch Creek watershed is underlain by solidified lava from Grande Ronde members of the Columbia River Basalt Group. About 16 million years ago during the Middle Miocene, the Columbia River ran through a lowland south of its modern channel, roughly where Mount Hood arose millions of years later, and through which huge eruptions from linear vents near Joseph and Enterprise in eastern Oregon and Walla Walla in eastern Washington flowed as fluid lavas that sometimes reached the Pacific Ocean.^[14] These flows recurred at intervals between 16.5 and 15.6 million years ago and covered almost 60,000 square miles (160,000 km²).^[14] About eight separate Grande Ronde Basalt flows have been mapped in the Tualatin Mountains (West Hills), where they underlie the steepest slopes of Forest Park and form the columned rocks visible along Balch Creek Canyon and Northwest Cornell Road.^[14] The West Hills were later covered by wind-deposited silts that become unstable when soaking wet. Stream bank instability and siltation are common, and landslides deter urban development at higher elevations.^[15]

About 15,000 years ago during the Pleistocene epoch, the region was inundated many times during cataclysmic ice age events known as the Missoula Floods or Bretz Floods that originated in the Clark Fork region of northern Idaho. These floods deposited huge amounts of debris and sediment and created new floodplains in the Willamette Valley. From then until altered by urban development in the 19th century, the lower Balch Creek watershed consisted of swampy marshlands and shallow semi-permanent lakes such as historic Guild's Lake. Until it was buried in a pipe, the final 1 mile (1.6 km) or so of Balch Creek flowed across this floodplain.^[16]

[edit] History

[edit] Guild's Lake

The Multnomah tribe of the Chinookan people, lived in or near what later became Sauvie Island, Linnton, and Northwest Portland until settlement by European Americans in the 19th century. By the 1830s, diseases carried by white explorers and traders had reduced the indigenous population by up to 90 percent in the lower Columbia basin.^[6]

One of the first white settlers in the Northwest Portland was Peter Guild, whose donation land claim of 598 acres (2.42 km²) covered much of the lower Balch Creek watershed, including the shallow lake later named for him. Nicholas Versteg built one of the first industries, a sawmill, in this area in the 1880s, and although large parts of the land remained undeveloped until the early 20th century, lumber mills, grain storage structures, railroads, and docks were established along the waterfront. The Guild's Lake Rail Yard, built by the Northern Pacific Railway in the 1880s, was an important switching yard for trains.^[6]

In 1905, the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, held on an artificial island in Guild's Lake, helped spur growth in the area. After the exposition ended, the lake and its surrounds were filled with soil sluiced from parts of the Balch Creek watershed in the West Hills above the floodplain or dredged from the Willamette River. Civic leaders promoted the Guild's Lake area as a good place for industry, and by the mid-1920s the lake was completely filled.^[6]

Between the 1890s and the 1930s, channel-deepening in the Willamette River improved the city's status as a deep-water seaport, as did completion in 1914 of a port terminal. Because marine and rail terminals were close together at Guild's Lake, it became the most important industrial area in Portland. After World War II, chemical and petroleum processing and storage, metals manufacturing, and other large industries expanded in the area. Roughly 60 years later, in 2001, the Portland City Council adopted the Guild's Lake Industrial Sanctuary Plan aimed at protecting the area's "longterm economic viability as an industrial district."^[6]

[edit] See also

• List of rivers of Oregon

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Guild's Lake history project
• Friends of Forest Park