Forest Park Trail Bridges

The project restored trail access to hikers that was temporarily limited by damaged and aging bridges. The new bridges protect the sensitive riparian environment by providing sustainable trail crossings, overlook areas, and a new durable water access point in an area that had been trampled by over-use.

Forest Park stretches over seven miles of Northwest Portland along the eastern slope of the Tualatin Mountains and includes over 5,100 wooded acres. Portland Parks & Recreation (PP&R) maintains more than 70 miles of trails within the park. ESA led a team to design and permit three backcountry trail bridges in Forest Park and Macleay Park for PP&R. We developed an iconic and unique modular bridge design that could be transported into sensitive environmental areas with limited impacts. ESA collaborated closely with PP&R staff to develop the bridge design, identify construction access routes, design new trail connections, restore riparian vegetation, and repair a trampled area along Balch Creek with a new, durable, water access point. As part of the iterative design process, our team fabricated a full-scale mock-up of a bridge section. PP&R staff, along with the team, carefully reviewed the mock-up in a collaborative meeting and identified important design elements to fine-tune for the final design.

In addition to civil engineering and landscape architecture design efforts, ESA’s environmental staff prepared a Type II Environmental Review application package for a City land use review, due to the project’s location within an Environmental Protection overlay zone and within an area regulated by the Forest Park Natural Resources Management Plan. We also prepared applications to obtain Section 404 permit coverage from the USACE for in-water project elements and prepared a historic/archaeological resources report to facilitate agency reviews of potential to impact Section 106 NHPA resources.