Growing up in Portland, I was taught that the city had the cleanest water in the world because it came from a watershed on the Mount Hood National Forest that had been set aside exclusively for Portland’s use. The Bull Run Trespass Act of 1904 closed the 102-square-mile Bull Run Watershed, along with a 41-square-mile buffer around it, to all public entry, and only Forest Service officials and employees of the Portland water bureau were allowed to enter the area.
This belief was so well known that a medical doctor named Joseph Miller bought a piece of land on the edge of the buffer strip and built a home. There he and his wife lived for many years, content in the knowledge that behind their house was 143 square miles of pristine wilderness that, unlike most wilderness, wasn’t even open to public recreation.
I was in Corvallis studying forestry when this myth came tumbling down in the form of a landslide in 1971. Portlanders woke up one morning to find their “pristine” water to be muddy brown, and they were advised to boil it before drinking it (as if anyone would want to drink brown water). The Forest Service hastened to announce that the landslide that had polluted the city’s water wasn’t caused by one of the clearcuts in the watershed. What it didn’t say was that the landslide was caused by a road leading to one of those clearcuts. Continue reading
