From Portland to St. Helens
Delightful Day’s Drive by Motor Over Oregon Roads
If you want to take a four hour, 30 mile round trip that involves a combination of excellent roads and varied scenery, get “king’s ex,” some afternoon soon and aim your motorcar at St. Helens.
Tucked away in the comfortable confines of a 1916 automobile, a party of us pulled away one day last week for one of the most delightful short automobile trips possible. We went by way of the Linnton road, but on the return a swing was taken up over the old Germantown road that departs from the regular highway at Claremont. This change not only gave us a variety of road and scenery, but brought us back over the skyline boulevard and the Cornell road, which is now in a superb condition.
On the entire 60 miles of the round trip, only two rough stretches of road were encountered, the distance intervening between the old Lewis & Clark fair grounds and the Standard Oil plant, and intermittent patches of irregular surface between Scappoose and St. Helens. Just this side of St. Helens workmen are busy perfecting the finest kind of a road, and an insignificant detour is necessitated as a result, but the road that they have completed at the other end is worth going a long way to meet. The motorist is, of course, made happy by the warrenite that bridges the gap between the Standard Oil plant and Claremont Tavern.
Every motorist has learned of that stretch of road by experience, but comparatively few know that a solid ten miles of highway between Linnton and the Columbia County line, not far this side of Scappoose, had been matted down into a veritable boulevard.
The road that leads to St. Helens might well be called the road of a thousand curves, and perhaps this characteristic is the basis for much of its charm. As each turn is rounded a new landscape is uncovered and a new angle is given to the river and mountain scenery that leads the eye to the eastern horizon.
First, as you drop down from Thurman street the site of the 1905 fair commands your attention, then the handsome plants of the Standard Oil Company and the Portland Gas and Coke Company, then the Government moorings and soon the lower harbor that opens out before you. All the time you have been able to look across to Portland and study the settlements that have sprung up in the attractive woods that lie to the west. At Linnton the mammoth plant of the Clark & Wilson Lumber Company is an interesting sight.
Farther down, the road skirts the water’s edge in some places. Now the railroad track is below and again it is above the road. As your car lunges from one pretty stretch to another, Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams and Mount Hood alternate in sentinel duty on the eastern skyline, and the variety of scenery is completed by farms and orchards that dot the lowlands.
Perhaps the cream of the trip was the pull up over the Germantown road and Skyline boulevard and the pleasant coast down Cornell road. Any old time you want to ascertain whether or not your motor’s lungs are in good shape, turn it loose on the Germantown hills. For every chapter of ascent there are “a couple or six” sharp turns, and the road is just narrow enough to test the driver’s nerve and give the passengers a few stitches of excitement, particularly when vehicles come ahead from the opposite direction. It’s a mighty good thing to have a faithful
The roads to the east of Portland through most delightful touring country.
