Tell Us About Your Favorite New Deal Site
Westmoreland Park, Portland, Oregon
Launching toy boats at Westmoreland Park
Courtesy, City of Portland Archives.
Westmoreland Park is four blocks from my home in Portland, Oregon. I enjoy it often and recently discovered it was created from swampy farmland by hundreds of WPA laborers between 1936 and 1939. A distinctive feature of the park is a collection of magnificent Sequoia gigantea trees that surround a vast fly-casting pond constructed by the WPA. The WPA also built a clubhouse for fly-casters, baseball fields, basketball courts, a model yacht lagoon and rustic pedestrian bridges hewn from local trees. Salmon migrate through the park since the city’s recent restoration of Crystal Springs Creek. There’s a new children’s nature playground. A “friends” group keeps this well-used park in good shape. The visionary investment of WPA funds by Portland leaders created meaningful work during the Great Depression and gave the city this beautiful neighborhood haven enjoyed by people of all ages today.