Cooper Mountain Area

Jacktown appears on WashCo's GIS map of local communities at the intersection of Farmington and...Jacktown Rd. There's a dearth of information on Jacktown in the local history resources so everything I know I learned from the Facebook forums. That includes members of the Jack family. 

The area was platted for a neighborhood but I get the sense that there weren't many takers. Most of the plots have been aggregated into a single operating farm.

There was a schoolhouse on the north end of Jacktown road (labeled as Rosedale Sch on midcentury maps) but when I visited, I just saw a field (maybe it's been moved?).

Heading south on Jacktown road, I see farms on either side 

With views in either direction:

From a biking perspective, the worst thing to say about Jacktown is that the road is only accessible from the very busy Farmington Road. I hop on the shoulder and pass a goat farm on my way further south toward Kinton.

The Road to Kinton

Kinton is located at the end of Tile Flat Road where it meets Scholls Ferry Hwy. Named after the Kindt family who made their DLC here, the town had a post office for several years in the 1900s. By 1954, most of the build-up was gone and farms had reclaimed the area.

But the ebb and flow of urbanization continues. Now the urban growth boundaries are butting against Tile Flat road. It may not be long before Kinton becomes a small city center once again. 

From there, it's a frantic sprint down Scholls Ferry (there's a paved shoulder the whole way, just more high-speed traffic than I'm accustomed to) before I turn north toward my next destinations.

Cooper Mountain

Despite a long history of settler occupation (mostly for timber), the hill has never been regarded as a community. Compare that to Kinton and Jacktown, two places included as unincorporated towns on WashCo official maps, despite having very few residents for decades.

That's a roundabout way to say that I didn't have to climb to the top of the hill (fun fact: Cooper Mountain is lower elevation than David Hill). In fact, when I set out, I had no plans to summit at all but when I arrived in Hazeldale (more on that later), I did it anyway.

It's a steep climb on crowded, often shoulderless residential streets. There's a reason I've never gone up before and I'm unlikely to do it again.  I take the sidewalks and let cars pass when I can. The top is a sizeable park along the south face with short hiking trails. It's a good local day-hike. The west face is taken up by a Knife River quarry that's best viewed from a satellite. I also stopped by the pioneer cemetery before coasting down.

Hazeldale

Hazeldale is another mystery to me. It never had a post office but did have a school and a store. That's often enough to make it on the local maps. Hazeldale is on the bottom slopes of Cooper Mountain where Farmington Road skirts along the north edge.

It's most famous today for Jenkins Estate (treacherous to bike up to) and Hazeldale park.

Today Hazeldale is unincorporated but within the urban growth boundary in that region we amorphously label "Aloha". It's single-family homes and apartments in all directions from the top of Cooper Mountain to TV highway.

Hazeldale park has a nice multipurpose path north that I take toward my final destination.

Tobias