"Woodstock Park" Woodstock Off The Beaten Path Tip by glabah

While almost everyone in the neighborhood will know where Woodstock Park is, it is not a park that is a major tourist attraction in the region. It is a fairly standard city park, though it has a mildly eccentric artistic feature which I will cover later in the tip.

The park adjoines an elementary school to the south, and to some extent the park and the school grounds share space.

There are several activities you will find are very popular in this park:

+ picnics of all sorts (there are a number of picnic tables in the park in various places)
+ baseball games of all age levels
+ the off-leash dog area of the park is very popular with neighborhood residents and provides a lot of room for dogs to run around outisde of the small yards in the nearby houses.
+ the playground always seems to be filled with children

Less appreciated by neighborhood residents, but still very pleasant features of the park, include:

+ "artwork" that consists of a series of brick boxes that are just high enough to sit on them, created by artist Lloyd Hamrol in 1997. These sculptures of sorts are called as a collective "Park Place" (there are several scattered through the park) and are intended to serve as gathering places similar to the picnic tables. The artist statement, found on a plaque near one of the sculptures, reads "References to architecture, cityscape and nature are revealed in these brick structures which form intimate gathering places at three locations in the park. This is a project of the City of Portland's Percent for Art Program, administered by the Regional Arts & Culture Council"

+ The large number of trees and bushes, some of them fairly old, that provide wonderful shade in the park

One of the best features of the park, in my opinion, is the lack of extremely noisy busy roads nearby. While Steele Street, on the north side of the park, is somewhat busy, it isn't so busy as to be completely obnoxious, and the noise that does come from this street can be escaped by simply going deeper into the park, as the speeds are slow enough as the noise generated doesn't overwhealm the rest of the park.

The nearest bus route to the park is #10 Harold, but #71 on 52nd Avenue and #19 on Woodstock are not very far away.

Restaurants on Woodstock are not far away at all, and if you want to have a very pleasant dinner outside it is always possible to go to one of the restaurants on Woodstock, get takeout food, and bring it to this park to eat as a picnic dinner.

More information is available below on the City of Portland Parks & Recreation web site.

Location: The park is located between Steele Street and Harold Street (though Harold Street is only a walkway on the south side) west of SE 50th Avenue and east of SE 47th Avenue.

:NOTE!: Several east-west streets near the park are not paved.

Website: http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/finder/index.cfm?PropertyID=868&action=ViewPark