Looking at the Willamette River below the Ellsworth Street Bridge on April 13, 2025.
For the last week I have been away, sometimes riding a bike around Jacksonville in Southern Oregon but mainly taking it easy. So here are are few photos from around Albany over the last month.
At the entrance to the Periwinkle Bikepath at’Queen Avenue and Geary Street, the sign bans motorized vehicles. As powerful and fast electric bikes become more common, Albany and other towns may have to decide just what “motorized” means.
The Periwinkle Bikepath is Albany’s premier bicycling route away from motor traffic. Completed in 1977, the paved bikeway measures eight feet across, wide enough for bike riders and walkers to get past each other.
This vacant lot at the corner of First and Burkhart was the site of a fuel tank farm back in the day. Since 2007 it has been owned by the Carson Oil Co. in Portland, which has not forgotten about it. One day in April, I ride past the lot when someone from Carson sprayed the weeds there. He told me the idea was to keep the property from becoming a fire hazard.
The Ellsworth Street Bridge seems to be building its own logjam, but it has a long way to go before it can match the big pile of debris caught on the railroad bridge downstream.
And down south, the rails of a local railroad from a century ago have been preserved as historical artifacts on this street in Jacksonville, OR. Albany missed the chance to do something similar in the reconstruction of Water Avenue that is now going on.
OK, that’s it. Thanks for taking this short tour with me to see some of what was in front of my cell phone camera over the last few weeks. (hh)
Thank you for the photos. A nice snapshot of Albany.
Re preserving historic track, it’s not too late. There’s track that can be preserved on Fifth Avenue in front of the former Oregon Electric Railway depot, and on Baker Street between Fifth and Sixth.
Need to get down to Jacksonville. Cool town. Haven’t been there in like too long.