Wildwood Springs Trade Company
Wildwood Golf Course
Michael C. Taylor, Road of Difficulties: Building the Lower Columbia River Highway
Mile 12.6 [Westbound from St. Helens Road at NW Wardway and NW Nicolai Road]: Wildwood Golf Course
Once the site of an under-the-highway cattle crossing culvert.
Taylor 62
...the highway's route or right-of-way continued to be adjusted. In early 1917, for example, Multnomah County Roadmaster John B. Yeon recommended a relocation of the segment near St. Helens, from the Cornelius Pass Road to the Columbia County line. As a result, Joseph Parker presented a claim for $500 as compensation for ten fruit trees that would have to be removed; a mother and son were paid for their land because relocation of the road would completely absorb it; and the Wildwood Springs Trade Company, today the home of the Wildwood Golf Course, requested that the engineer leave a culvert "of sufficient size to carry the waters of the creek at its highest flood" and a cattle pass "five feet wide by seven feet high."
Such cattle passages were not uncommon requests along the highway route and, in most cases, necessary both for moving livestock and for directing the channels of small creeks that would otherwise undermine the roadway and require the installation of a culvert or viaduct.
(An excellent example of one such passage, the Adams Creek Cattle Passage, is located on the Tide Creek segment.)
Taylor 54