Industrial Portland

Working Portland, seen from Overlook Park
View of the Union Pacific rail yard, the Fremont Bridge (auto traffic only), and Downtown, all on a typically wet January day.
Forest Park looms on the hills behind the city’s industrial corridor on the Willamette River.
The yards are always busy with rail commerce.
Looking to mostly industrial lands and the historic Montgomery Park building

Portland’s riverfront, north of the Fremont Bridge (that big one seen in these photos), is utterly about work. Trains. Factories. Shipping and receiving facilities. Grain depots. Cement kilns. Factories. Fuel depots. The best perch to soak all that up is from Overlook Park. I took the photos from here, and also from another spot a block away at Overlook House. (Click on each photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

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Barrel yard, near the Willamette River
A storage yard on the Willamette River is filed with barrels that proved irrestible, so I took a picture.

I passed by this storage yard several times on my bike, along Highway 30, which is the main arterial serving the many industries that line the Willamette River in north Portland. Barrels are normally used for storing and transporting chemicals, but I had no idea what these were used for. I found similar barrel yards in Seattle along the industrial Duwamish waterway, in Seattle. (Click on the photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Cement kiln, southeast Portland
Shot in October 2014.

The Lehigh Northwest Cement Co. is located near the large railroad yard in the industrial area of southeast Portland. I always have liked living near railroad yards. They are reminders of what keeps our country’s economic engine moving, and cement producers are always likely neighbors. To me they are strong icons of our industrial economy and fall into the category of photography I embrace focussing on industrial typologies. (Click on the photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)