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Overview
The Columbia Children’s Arboretum, a Portland City Park, stands on land originally owned by the old Columbia School District and marked as a possible site for a new high school in the 1920s. The area was taken in by Portland Public Schools in 1964. Students from the local middle school, which served a lower income and very transient neighborhood, began working here under the GROW program, part of a hands-on approach to science. The brush was cleared, orchards, trees, and organic gardens planted, and the 50 state trees project was begun. However, in 1983, the Columbia Middle School was closed and the interest in the park dwindled as the site became a magnet for homeless campers. Portland Parks purchased the acreage from the public schools in 1999 and began a rehabilitation effort with the help of local volunteers. Many of the state trees have been replanted and new signage has been posted. This quiet haven is now an inviting enclave for tree lovers and school groups among the industrial expanses of North Portland. Walk up the gravel road past the gate. There’s an alder-shaded ditch to your left. Go right on a chip track past spruce and beech trees and an old orchard. There's an expanse of lawn beyond the orchard. Rejoin the gravel track and pass a footbridge that leads out to Meadow Drive. Cross the Towle Bridge, named after two of the park’s benefactors, which crosses the moat, or drainage ditch, that encircles the main part of the park. Willow, cottonwood, and alder shade this quiet backwater. Look for beaver activity here. At a couple of longleaf pines, the state tree of North Carolina, go right on a narrow chip track. You’ll now begin to circle the long meadow in the middle of the park and can make diversions to some of the labeled exhibits. For example, to your left are a white birch (New Hampshire) and an eastern cottonwood (Nebraska). The trail enters the thickets above the moat, where a more natural cover of Pacific Northwest vegetation - Douglas-fir, Pacific willow, black cottonwood, red osier dogwoo
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Photos
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