Germantown Road

Since 1931, Germantown Road is accessed from NW Bridge Avenue on the US 30 Bypass route over St. Johns Bridge.

Roger Gregory, The Oregonian: Paths linking past and present

Cornell. Meek. Scholls Ferry. Washington County road names that pay tribute not just to homesteaders who tilled this land, but also to descendants who still live and work here... Many roads are named after families who settled here in the 1850s on donation land claims. Other names credit those who came later and made their mark.

Pioneers immediately recognized the need for better roads. An 1854 law required every man in the county, ages 21 to 50, to donate two days of labor a year to road work. No-shows were fined $2 a day.

...

Germantown Road:

As the name suggests, Germantown Road traversed an enclave of German immigrants, all lured by the Homestead Act of 1862, which provided 160 acres of land to anyone willing to give it a go.

Most important, though, the road provided a 10-mile link between the Tualatin Valley's fertile wheat lands and the goods-transporting Columbia River.

Peter Burnett, who later became California's first governor, built Germantown Road 1,000 feet north of the well-worn Plains-Linnton Road. Germantown Road --completed in 1844 --emerged where it ends today, just north of St. Johns Bridge.

"And though theoretically there was a vital route across the hills to the Tualatin Plains, the route was 'long, steep, tortuous, and almost impassable for loaded wagons,' said Eugene Snyder in 'Early Portland: Stump-Town Triumphant.' We know it today as steep, twisty Germantown Road."

Germantown Road is the northern terminus of Leif Erikson Drive, which I suspect may have become a key route of the CRH if things had worked out a little different for the ill fated boulevard.

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