The Portland Parks Alliance

In 1903, John Charles Olmsted stepped aboard a horse and buggy, climbed to the crest of Portland’s famously forested West Hills, turned his face to the rising sun and gazed out upon . . . the future.

The city, barely 50 years old, boasted fewer than 90,000 people. But what Olmsted saw that morning was a teeming metropolis of 3 million, a sprawling built landscape in which people would need, crave — and deserve — extensive arrays of greenspace. And that is exactly what he offered them. His plan envisaged an artfullyintegrated “System of Parkways, Boulevards and Parks” in which the total would be so much more than the sum of its parts.

Today this intertwined network is husbanded by the Portland Parks Alliance, a grassroots coalition of almost 100 volunteers (members of more than 50 Parks-affiliated organizations) who focus on preserving, enhancing, and sustainably funding the system, ensuring equitable access for all.