Goose Hollow in Portland in Multnomah County, Oregon — The American West (Northwest)
Systems Building
Photographed by Ian Lefkowitz, June 26, 2026
1. Systems Building Marker
Long before this place was Portland, it was a quiet patch of woods tucked in between the Tualatin Mountains and the Willamette River, in sight of the freshly crafted foothills of the Cascades.
The first humans to arrive in this clearing were often just passing through, harvesting plants and fruits in what was then a savanna of oak trees and tall grass or traveling by foot or boat towards Celilo, the region’s great trading center, days east of here at the curve in the Columbia River.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the men of the Hudson’s Bay Company were trapping and trading in the area, the local tribes—the Multnomah, the Tualatin, the Clackamas, the Cowlitz—were falling to smallpox and malaria, diseases imported by the newcomers.
Over the course of a few decades, one society disappeared and another took its place at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers.
The sentiments behind the original blueprint to turn this clearing into a city were inspired half by profit, half by noble New England intentions. The smaller city blocks offered more corner plots to be sold at higher prices, but
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As the small town grew into a young city, its streets filled with people; every two hundred feet pedestrians came upon the grand commotion of a city corner, some blessed with the added pleasure of a mountain view or the light of the river.
In time, horse carriages disappeared and were replaced by trolleys and later by cars, yet at its heart city remained sympathetic to passage by human foot.
Years after Pettygrove won the famous coin toss in 1845 and named the new town, Portland continues to offer a rare physical congeniality.
(Facing south)
Inside the train, a woman adjusts her glasses and turns the page of her book, a mystery. Across the aisle, a man in army fatigues has closed his eyes and the two men standing near him are discussing the details of a dream.
In every car, people are lost in conversations or small debates, in stories or news, in the glorious monotony of a clear morning on a train.
The train touches down in Chinatown and then passes beneath
Photographed by Ian Lefkowitz, June 26, 2026
2. Systems Building: Firebrand
Across the street, through stone worn by years of rain and wind, the words etched in the sand-colored block of building speak the sentiments of Portland’s earliest settlers: GOOD CITIZENS ARE THE RICHES OF A CITY.
(Facing east)
The First Wooden Planks of Plank Road, the path through the Tualatin Mountains that this modern train route traces, were dropped in the dirt in 1851.
After sporadic success and a couple of bankruptcies, the road was as complete as it would ever be, which meant unpaved stretches and mud from natural springs: a seven-mile-a-day trip.
On this road people entered the city from the farms of the Tualatin plains, coming through the green canyon, over the crest at Sylvan, and into the raw clearing (for a time passing the wandering flock of geese camped in what would become Goose Hollow).
At the end of the century, this ragged path was one of Oregon’s first commercial highways, the Pacific Coast’s first great corduroy road. With
Photographed by Ian Lefkowitz, June 26, 2026
3. Systems Building Marker
Over time, wear and reflective glare have made reading the inscriptions a challenge.
Old planks gave way to new planks and more dirt during the Plank Road’s first few decades. In 1930, two lanes of macadam gave way to four lanes of concrete; the road's name now Canyon and, by 1960, the Tualatin hills just as likely to be referred to as the West Hills.
All the while this route remained a significant point of entrance into Portland. By the time Canyon Road entered the twentieth century, trains were a major route in and out of Portland too, and street cards were busy crisscrossing the expanding city; new homes sprawled east across the Willamette, where Portland, with the help of its first bridges, had merged with the cities of East Portland and Albina—a merger made partly to outpopulate Seattle, its only remaining civic rival in the Northwest.
And another road was drawing people into the city as well: Burnside Street. Burnside was lined with meeting halls and cheap hotels, whorehouses and lunch counters, and it boasted the longest bar in the world; by 1946 Burnside had become what Stewart Holbrook called “the most celebrated skidroad in Oregon, or on earth.”
Over the
Photographed by Ian Lefkowitz, June 26, 2026
4. Systems Building Marker
In 1890, in the United States, only San Francisco was home to more people from more different lands.
(Facing north)
Firebrand, a magazine of militant Bohemianism, was published here for two years until it was closed down by city officials in 1897. John Reed, briefly considered living in his home town again just before he went off to chronicle the 1917 Russian Revolution. (“There is no one to talk to and I’d go mad in a week,” he was said to have said at the time.) Hazel Hall wrote her poetry in a house a few blocks northwest of here. In the 1920s, Beatrice Morrow Cannady, the first black woman to practice law in Oregon, railed in The Advocate against the bigotry of the city’s Ku Klux Klan. In 1964, a senator from Oregon, Wayne Morse, raised a lonely voice in opposition to what would become the Vietnam War.
C. E. S. Wood, a corporate attorney, writer, and anarchist, argued the right
Photographed by Ian Lefkowitz, June 26, 2026
5. Systems Building Marker
Dr. Equi, a pacifist referred to as the Queen of the Bolsheviks by the local press, repeatedly protested America’s entry into World War I. In 1916 she was beaten by an angry downtown mob and forced to kiss an American flag.
In 1917, after speaking what the Oregon Journal called “unpatriotic talk” in a union hall off Burnside, Dr. Equi was sentenced to three years in prison.
“I am going to speak when and where I wish,” she said. “No man will stop me. The first man who touches me will die a slow lingering death. I’ll stick him with a pin that contains a certain virus that I can make.”
In addressing the high court on Dr. Equi’s behalf, Wood said, “The thought of man will continue to be uttered, though he go to death for it. Truth will survive, though it come from the scaffold or the cross—and error, though it come from the Supreme Court of the United States, will perish.”
Erected 1998 by Tri-Met.
Topics. This historical marker is listed in these topic lists: Communications • Railroads & Streetcars • Roads & Vehicles • Settlements & Settlers.
Location. 45° 31.315′ N, 122° 41.385′ W. Marker is in Portland, Oregon, in Multnomah County. It is in Goose Hollow. It is at the intersection of Southwest Morrison Street and Southwest 17th Avenue, on the left when traveling west on Southwest Morrison Street. Touch for map. Marker is at or near this postal address: 1798 SW Morrison Street, Portland OR 97205, United States of America. Touch for directions.
Regionally, this marker is in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge and in the Willamette Valley. It is also on the American Pacific Coast, in the Pacific Northwest, and in the Lewis & Clark Corridor. Globally, it is in North America, on the Ring of Fire, in the Pacific Rim, in the Western Hemisphere, in the Western World, and in the Anglosphere.
Other nearby markers. At least 8 other markers are within walking distance of this marker: Bronaugh Apartments (approx. 0.2 miles away); First Presbyterian Church (approx. ¼ mile away); a different marker also named First Presbyterian Church (approx. ¼ mile away); Whitney-Gray Building / Jake's Restaurant (approx. 0.3 miles away); The Telegram Building, 1922 (approx. 0.3 miles away); Multnomah County Library (approx. 0.4 miles away); Roosevelt Hotel (approx. half a mile away); Simon and Helen Director Park / Teachers Fountain (approx. half a mile away). Touch for a list and map of all markers in Portland.
Also see . . . Public Art on MAX Blue Line — Westside (Tri-Met).
Westside design team artists used the buildings and plaza to express the importance of oratory to Portland’s civic history at the station then named Civic Stadium. Robert Sullivan’s original essay on the theme is etched onto stainless steel panels covering the systems building.(Submitted on September 1, 2026, by Ian Lefkowitz of New York, New York.)
Credits. This page was last revised on September 13, 2026. It was originally submitted on September 1, 2026, by Ian Lefkowitz of New York, New York. This page has been viewed 10 times since then. Photos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. submitted on September 1, 2026, by Ian Lefkowitz of New York, New York. • Andrew Ruppenstein was the editor who published this page.
