The story behind Portland's unfinished freeways

Posted Dec. 13, 2021

By Elizabeth Philbrick

Staff Editor

More cars are driving on these roads every year, but the infrastructure isn’t getting any younger.

When most of these freeways were being built in the 1960s, Portland’s city planners were working towards a network of freeways and highways that was nearly double what exists today.

In September 1943, Portland city and Multnomah County invited the urban developer, Robert Moses, to come visit the city. He was well known for transforming the New York City boroughs with his highways, parks, and bridges. While he was one of the most influential 20th-century urban developers, he was also very controversial. The later decades of his career would see his corruption and racism brought to light; his projects became notorious for dividing communities at the cost of his vision for progress.

WWII was still ongoing, but Portland’s leaders were looking ahead to see how they could revitalize the city and create jobs for returning servicemen once the war was over. Most other big cities weren’t planning ahead for these postwar challenges. Moses was brought in and presented an 87-page report that outlined his vision for the city’s future infrastructure, which would modernize the city in ways it had never seen before and create 20,000 new jobs in the process. Planners would expand upon these ideas tremendously in the coming years.The Federal-Aid Highway Act, which introduced the new interstate highway concept, was one of the things that inspired these plans. These wider, faster roads fueled Americans’ growing love affair with automobiles and the number of cars on American roads more than doubled during the 1950s.

In June 1955, a year before the highway act was passed, the city announced its first blueprints for 14 freeways, 14 expressways, and five new bridges. Of these projects, the first was already being built and opened just four months later in Oct.; the Banfield freeway linked the center city with the Northeast Portland neighborhoods, continuing out of the city as far as Troutdale. This freeway is known as I-84 today.

Around the city itself was what Moses proposed as the inner-belt thruway, with freeways serving both Willamette River’s sides. The route on the river’s east side would become I-5, which opened with the Marquam bridge’s completion in 1966. I-405 opened a few years later in 1969, circling downtown and forming the loop’s western half. The loop wouldn’t be fully completed until the Fremont Bridge opened a few years later in 1973.

Further east is I-205 which serves as an outer loop that bypasses the city center. This was Portland's last freeway to be built, opening in 1983.

Half of the materialized routes in the 1955 plan were never materialized, although some of them came very close.

Starting with the Industrial freeway, which would’ve run a little over five miles off of the inner-belt thruway, ending with a connection to the St. Johns bridges. Since it wasn’t a major connecting route, the idea didn’t get much traction for over a decade. The city had its hands full with building its major interstates, which remained the top priority through the end of the ‘60s.

But in 1968, Congress approved additional funding for new interstates. With more money available, the city chose the industrial freeway as part of the new construction’s second wave.

The future route was designated as I-505, and the route’s proposed length was still being decided and planners briefly explored the idea of extending it to eight miles, running up closer to Sauvie Island. These ideas didn’t last long and the freeway was soon scaled down only to serve the Northwest industrial neighborhood.

As these plans were made public in 1969, local residents were skeptical but were initially supportive. But there were plenty of concerns about the project from the start, including nearly 400 residents being displaced.

Alongside the Industrial freeway, the Rose City freeway was another dismissed project. It would’ve run right across the Fremont bridge, where I-405 closes the loop with I-5. Originally planned to have split off from this interchange into the Northeast Portland neighborhoods, the freeway would’ve been about six miles long, running along Northeast Fremont street and bending around Rocky Butte before merging with the Banfield freeway. This idea was seriously considered for several years.

By 1960, I-205 was far from being built but its alignment had been mostly figured out after years of local pushback, the proposed route changed slightly to accommodate this. The new plan made it so the freeway would be about five and a half miles for six lanes running up to Prescott street then eastward, eventually reducing to four lanes until hitting I-205. Planners still weren’t ready to build the freeway quite yet, but the Fremont bridge’s construction would provide a critical starting point.

Part of this project included a set of freeway ramps that led straight to the nearby Albina district neighborhoods, which was going to be the connecting segment for the freeway once it was built. In the meantime, they would serve as the street connection to the bridge.

The neighborhood wanted nothing to do with the freeway. Albina was home to the majority of Portland’s black residents and many of their homes and businesses had already been destroyed by I-5’s construction. In September 1971, neighborhood groups staged a protest on the recently built freeway ramps. They argued that connecting these street networks would bring disruptive amounts of traffic, noise, and pollution to the neighborhood.

Two years later, in November 1973, the Fremont bridge was finally completed, but the freeway ramps still had not been connected to the surface streets as the neighborhood continued to block this from happening.

Finally, by fall 1979, the ramps were connected to the streets and opened to traffic; fortunately for the neighborhood, the city had long since given up on any intentions to build the freeway.

Likewise, the Mount Hood freeway was another discarded project. Of all Portland’s canceled freeway projects, this one became the most notorious. This east-west route in Southeast Portland would’ve been the city’s freeway system’s crown jewels, providing a major community route between the city center and Gresham.

But when the interstate highway program was announced the following year, the Mount Hood freeway wasn’t chosen as one of Portland's first interstate. The Banfield freeway had just opened and already provided the city with an east-west route. It was soon grandfathered into the interstate system instead, and the Mount Hood freeway was put on the back burner for the next decade.

By the mid-’60s, the city was exploring several different route options for the I-205 outer loop. And in what was called a “hot potato” situation, the city kept eyeing routes for the freeway and then getting pushed out by neighborhood protests. But the Portland city was still fully on board with building the freeway as its own project, even if it couldn’t get the full federal funding.

The route would’ve split off I-5 on the Marquam bridge east end, which was still under construction at the time. The massive eight-lane highway would’ve been four city blocks wide, traveling east along Division street and Powell boulevard’s current route, spanning just over five miles. It would then intersect with I-205, and from there it would continue east as the Mount Hood Expressway, a less substantial road that would run to the Southeast end of Gresham.

As Southeast Portland residents learned about these plans, their reactions were mixed. Some were respective but most were frustrated. They felt that the city should provide more clear information about the project and involve them in the planning process.

In January 1969, the Federal Highway Administration approved this new plan and the city began making preparations to move forward. But because of the protest uproar against the project, in 1975, local politicians made a compromise. They agreed to cancel the Mount Hood freeway plans and instead focused their efforts on finishing what they had started with I-205.