MOUNT TABOR, PORTLAND, OREGON

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Mount Tabor, with Mount Hood in the distance and downtown Portland in the foreground.

'Mount Tabor' is the name of an extinct volcanic cinder cone, the city park on the volcano, and the neighborhood of Southeast Portland that surrounds it, all in the U.S. state of Oregon. The name refers to Mount Tabor, Israel.

Contents
The cinder cone
The park
The neighborhood
References
External links

The cinder cone


Mt. Tabor Reservoir

Near the peak, where a basketball court and outdoor amphitheater are now situated, part of the cinder cone has been cut away, and is visible to park visitors. The remaining cinders were used to pave the nearby parking lot.
The Tabor cinder cone is part of the Boring Lava Field, an extensive network of cinder cones and small shield volcanoes ranging from Boring, Oregon to southwest Washington, and dating to the Plio-Pleistocene era. Some of the Field's other volcanoes, such as Rocky Butte and Kelly Butte, also lie within Portland.
Portland is one of two major Oregon cities to have extinct volcanoes within their boundaries; the other is Bend, with Pilot Butte. The volcanic nature of Mount Tabor became known in 1912, years after it was included in a public park.

The park


196-acre (0.79-km²) Mount Tabor Park, established in 1909, is known for its reservoirs, three of which were accepted to the National Register of Historic Places in January 2004. The park was designed, along with other Portland parks, by the Olmsted Brothers.[1] Its elevation and central location relative to the city of Portland made this an ideal place for the city to house a water supply from the Bull Run Reservoir.
The Mount Tabor reservoirs were built during the period of 1894 and 1911, along with reservoirs in Washington Park. The reservoirs and their gatehouses are artistically constructed, incorporating extensive stonework and wrought-iron. There were initially four above-ground reservoirs, numbered 1, 2, 5, and 6. (Reservoirs 3 and 4 are at Washington Park, and Reservoir 7 is a small underground reservoir near Mount Tabor's summit.) Reservoir 2, on the corner of SE 60th and Division, was decommissioned in the 1980s, and the property was sold to a private developer. Its gatehouse remains, and is used as a private residence. Reservoir 6 is the largest, with two 37 million gallon chambers; it also contains a fountain, which was unused for many years, however it was reactivated in early 2007.
Mount Tabor Park also features a Depression-era sculpture by Gutzon Borglum (of Mt. Rushmore fame) representing Harvey W. Scott, an early editor of ''The Oregonian''.[2]

The neighborhood


The Mount Tabor neighborhood lies between SE 49th Ave. (SE 50th Ave. south of SE Hawthorne Blvd.) on the west and SE 76th Ave. on the east, and between E Burnside St. on the north and SE Division St. on the south. It borders Sunnyside and Richmond on the west, the Center Neighborhood on the north and west, Montavilla on the north and east, and South Tabor on the south.
Mount Tabor Park is the neighborhood's principal feature. The campus of Warner Pacific College (affiliated with the Church of God (Anderson)) is located just south of the park. The neighborhood also marks the eastern end of the Hawthorne District.
Before becoming part of Portland in 1905, Mount Tabor was a rural farming community dating back to the 1850s. It became a city-recognized neighborhood (encompassing a far smaller area than its historical boundaries) in 1974.[3]

References


1. http://www.halcyon.com/tmend/OlmstedNW.html#Portland
2. http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/finder/index.cfm?action=ViewPark&PropertyID=275
3. http://www.mttaborpdx.org/history_early_years.html

External links



Mount Tabor Cinder Cone, Portland, Oregon (USGS Cascades Volcanic Observatory)

Friends of the Reservoirs

Friends of Mount Tabor, a non-profit group founded in 2000

Mt. Tabor: Architectural Heritage, 1850–1930 (by Jan Caplener)

The early years of Mt. Tabor (by Grant Nelson)

★ Closeup of the crater, the half-circle next to the parking lot

Audio from March '07 news story on KPOJ, about traffic on Mt. Tabor

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