You can barely see First Lake from this spot in Simpson Park.
Sunday was an unusually mild and pleasant November day in these parts, and the bike and I paid a visit to Simpson Park.
This was the part of the park between First Lake and the access road to the Portland and Western’s Millersburg rail yard.
I got off the bike and looked around. Join me if you want:
It seems to me that with First Lake, we’re missing the boat.
This former oxbow of the Willamette is narrow, overgrown with weeds in the summer, and studded with poles from back in the day when — if memory serves — it was used as a log pond for the mill that used to be there. (Somebody nailed nesting boxes to the poles, a nice gesture for wildlife.)
As lakes go, it’s not much.
But the Albany area doesn’t have many usable lakes, so we can’t be choosy. And this one is large enough to float a rowboat. What it needs is a good way to get a canoe or something similar into the water and out again.
There’s a place where people have done that — launched a little boat, that is. It’s at the upstream end of First Lake off the unimproved trail that leads from the Simpson parking lot down between the lake and the Willamette River.
But that spot is anything but easy to use. If the city of Millersburg was looking for a useful project to improve recreation at that, the south end of its municipal jurisdiction, a simple ramp would not come amiss. (hh)
Looking back toward the parking lot at Simpson Park and Talking Water Gardens.
I have been reading your bike ride stories for a while now. I find then interesting especially when you add bits of area history with then. It reminded me of the books a former newspaper reporter wrote of the area in New York where I grew up. Have you considered polishing your stories up and publishing them in book form? You wouldn’t make a pile of money but locals would love it.
I have canoed both First and it’s connected neighbor, Second Lake, to their connecting channel with the Willamette River several times prior to non-native plant life infestation.
You correctly identified the launch areas as “anything but easy to use”. My observations of Albany’s First and Second Lakes were of two waste ponds on the unseen backside of past and present industrial land. Decades ago the land surrounding the lakes was home to a large transient population. Today the access warrens to numbers of year-round camps are easily visible from the torn Talking Water fences. The Cities of Albany and Millersburg are wise to forego improvements to these backwaters. There is no redeeming value other than their proximity to both municipalities.
The ponds were used for log dumps for Simpson plywood mill. It used to have a small like tugboat there to push the logs around as many where quite large trees. The city acquired the ponds from Simpson Timber under conservation easement. I have caught some pretty good sized bass from there and it has some pretty big bull frogs as well turtles.