Willamette Street will be getting much needed improvements this year, both below and above ground.

The Eugene Water and Electric Board (EWEB) has started work to replace the water main and services from 23rd Avenue to 28th Avenue along Willamette Street.

Work is scheduled to continue through the end of June between the hours of 7:00 AM and 5:00 PM Monday-Thursday.

Construction activity may cause temporary traffic impacts, flaggers, and lane changes, along with temporary delays and noise. EWEB will provide advanced notification prior to water service interruptions.

This project is part of EWEB's strategy to improve our water system and increase water reliability.

For more information, contact EWEB's Water Division at 541-685-7595, [email protected], or website.

After the completion of EWEB's portion of the project, the City of Eugene Public Works will start its work in the fall of 2019.

The project will reconstruct Willamette Street and its sidewalks, driveway aprons, street lights, pedestrian signals, and storm drainage system from 24th Avenue to 29th Avenue. The project will also resurface the pavement from 23rd Avenue to 24th Avenue. Except for 23rd to 24th Avenues, all the new pavement will be Portland Cement Concrete.

Rain gardens (curbed stormwater treatment planters) will be added to some side streets near where they intersect with Willamette Street. Sidewalks will be widened to 9 feet. All sidewalk ramps will be constructed to ADA guidelines.

Some driveways may be consolidated. All driveway aprons will be reconstructed. The power utility will not be undergrounded.

The bicycle lanes and center lane will remain.

Traffic Impacts

• Drivers should expect lane closures and detours during construction.
• During signal replacement at 27th Avenue and Willamette Street, 27th Avenue (but not Willamette Street) will have stop signs. Pedestrians will have a push button rapid flashing beacon to assist crossings.
• Pedestrians should expect sidewalk closures and detours.
• Bicyclists should expect to merge with motor vehicle traffic and be subject to detours.
  
• All commuters should expect equipment and workers in the roadway leading to congestion and delays during the work.
  

Project Funding
Funding sources are from a federal STP-U grant, the Pavement Bond Measure passed by voters in 2012, and stormwater user fees.

For More Information
Project Manager: Patrick Cox, phone 541-682-5331, [email protected]
Online road reports: www.eugene-or.gov/traffic
On Twitter: twitter.com/EugenePW

​The FAN Transportation Team will coordinate and publicize the progress of this project through the Friendly Newsletter, Friendly Flyer, Google Group, and Facebook and Twitter feeds. Sign up or follow us to participate and stay informed.

FAN Transportation Team Meetings
First Monday of the month, except January and September.
7:00 - 9:00 PM
Billy Mac's Bar & Grill
605 W 19th Ave
Eugene, OR 97402
Map and Directions
The Transportation team meetings are open to the public.

By Gary Arnold

If you have ever walked by the track in Westmoreland Park, you may have noticed the plaque. Great athletes deserve recognition, but after all, this is Eugene. Even Olympic level athletes aren't that uncommon. Is there anything to this story that deserves a second glance? Read on, and decide for yourself.

Margaret Johnson was born in New York City, in the Bronx. Her father, Duke Johnson, moved the family out to Eugene when she was five years old because he decided Eugene would be a good place to raise his children. A pretty normal kid, she had no particular interest in sports. Just by happenstance, she was passing South Eugene High during an all-comers track meet. On a lark, she entered several events and did pretty well (even though she ran the events in dress shoes). Wendy Jerome was at the meet (wife of world class UO athlete Harry Jerome) and instantly realized that she was watching someone with exceptional talent. Wendy became Margaret's coach and soon ran into a problem. There were no other girls in Eugene that gave her any competition. So she started running against boys—same problem. She eventually was able to find a challenge by giving all her opponents head starts. As she grew older, she started training with some of the sprinters from the UO, and as a high schooler, she usually beat them in practice.

At Churchill High School as a junior, Margaret won the 100- and 200-meter races in the state championship meet, and was part of the winning 4 x 100 relay team. That same year she set an American record in the 200 (22.95 seconds) and tied the world record in the 100 (11.1 seconds). As a senior, at the ripe old age of 17, Margaret ran a time of 11.30 seconds for the 100 meters and 22.95 seconds in the 200 meters. Those times were both good enough to win the state championship, in fact, they were both Oregon high school state records. Consider this: 50 years later, these marks still stand as Oregon high school state records. No one sets a track and field record that stands for 50 years.

​Her times were good enough to qualify her for the 1968 Olympic trials. At the trials she won the 100 and took a second in the 200. While staying in the Mexico City Olympic Village, she contracted pneumonia. She was unable to train for almost a week. Nowhere near full strength, she was able to place fifth in the 100-meter Olympic final (time of 11.3) and seventh in the 200-meter Olympic final (time of 23.1).

Margaret had one more Olympic event left, the 4 x 100 relay. Barbara Ferrell would run the first leg, Margaret would run the second leg, Mildrette Netter ran the third, and Wyomia Tyus ran the anchor leg. Wyomia Tyus was the veteran of the group having won two gold medals in the 100 meters and the 4 x 100 relay four years earlier in the Tokyo Olympics. She had just won another gold medal in the Mexico City 100 meters, setting a new world record. Barbara Ferrell, in that same race, had taken the silver medal.

The US fielded a strong team, but there were plenty of good sprinters competing. And several of the national teams had a lot more experience working together as relay teams. Poland was one of the favorites coming into the event, but they had dropped the baton in the qualifying heat and were out.

You can watch the entire race.

​And then came what is perhaps the most amazing part of the story. In today's world of woman's Title 9 access to sports scholarships, the pro track circuit and corporate shoe endorsements, it is difficult to remember a time when opportunities in sports were limited, especially to women and especially to women of color. After the Olympics, Margaret walked away from the world of sports and never competed again. By the time she was 17, she had married, had a daughter, and had moved to California. Years went by, and only family and Margaret's closest friends even knew of her accomplishments. But the record books had not forgotten her, and eventually a new generation of track fans began to discover the story.

Margaret was inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame and the High School Track and Field Hall of Fame. She was invited to attend the 2008 Olympic Trials in Eugene as an honored guest. And the next year, the old Jefferson Middle School cinder track where Margaret used to train was re-built into a modern all-weather facility and dedicated as the Margaret Johnson Bailes Memorial Track.

More Information
​

• Induction into the National High School Track and Field Hall of Fame
• Induction into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame
• Dedication of the track at Jefferson Middle School as the Margaret Johnson Bailes Memorial Track, Eugene Register Guard article

The KORE radio station and transmission tower once stood along Willamette Street between 26th and 27th Avenues. The image (GN1330) above is courtesy of the Lane County History Museum and shows the South Willamette area circa 1942 as seen from approximately 25th and Olive (on the eastern flanks of College Hill) looking to the southeast. The street to the lower left is Summit (now called 25th). The KORE radio transmission tower is in the center of the image. The channel of the Amazon Creek is indicated by the dark patches of trees and shrubs in the distance.

KORE began broadcasting in 1927 in Portland.  It soon moved to Springfield and then to Eugene. It is Eugene's oldest radio station. The current broadcasting tower is located on the banks of the Delta Ponds, just off Goodpasture Island Road.

Originally built in 1945 as Brumwell's Friendly Service, the Friendly Street Garage was torn down in 2004. It was located near the corner of 27th Avenue and Friendly Street. It also served as a Shell gas station. The location has since been redeveloped and currently hosts residential units.

Originally, the Eugene Country Club (ECC) was located on College Hill. The 9-hole course ran between 24th and 28th Avenues and Willamette and Lawrence Streets. The club was founded in 1899. It is the second-oldest country club in the state. ECC filed articles of incorporation in February of 1913. It remained on College Hill into the mid 1920's when a new 18-hole course was opened at the current location on Country Club Road.

The original course was not the verdant and manicured oasis we think of today.  In reality, it was little more than a dusty pitch-and-putt without any kind of modern irrigation.  The "greens" were made of sand (see picture below). It must have been a challenging course—the College Hill topography coupled with putts like this.

The area of College Hill between Lincoln and Lawrence and 23rd and 25th is the repository for drinking water for the City of Eugene. When we turn on the kitchen tap, water the lawn, or wash the car, chances are the water we are using comes from one of three reservoirs located on College Hill. The reservoirs and green water tower are owned and operated by the Eugene Water and Electric Board (EWEB).

The oldest of these reservoirs is close to 23rd and Lawrence. This one is known as the 603 reservoir, which is the number of feet above sea level to the overflow pipe at the top of the reservoir. This large concrete tank began life about 1915. In the beginning it had an open top and was surrounded by a wrought iron rail. About 19 years later it was covered with the present concrete lid. This concrete tank holds about two and one-half million gallons of water when filled.

Adjacent to this reservoir is the 607 reservoir, the large concrete structure with the pipe railing around the perimeter. The 607 reservoir was a product of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Public Works Administration and constructed in 1939. This reservoir is divided into two sections, north and south, which when combined hold some fifteen million gallons of water. This facility is teamed with a larger reservoir near 25th and Hawkins, and other facilities store a supply of drinking water for the City of Eugene.

At the very top of the Friendly Area Neighborhood is the 703 reservoir, also completed in 1939. This steel tank is about thirty feet in diameter and twenty feet tall. Its six legs raise it some seven hundred feet above sea level where its red blinking light can be seen from most of downtown. This reservoir holds about one hundred thousand gallons and serves the homes in the immediate area which would have insufficient water pressure if gravity fed from the adjacent in-ground storage.

​By Greg Giesy, Friendly Area Neighbors former Board member and longtime Friendly resident.

Originally printed in the Summer 2011 edition of the Friendly Area Neighborhood Newsletter.

​Several neighborhood people were asked by Andrew, our newsletter editor, to write an article about Willamette Street both looking at the past and hopes for the future. Because I am a long-time resident and grew up in the Friendly neighborhood, he asked me in particular to talk on the past of Willamette Street.

My earliest memory of anything on Willamette Street was at about four years old going to the grocery store that is now Capella with my father (Willamette Street between 24th and 25th Avenues). He soon switched to the Big Y Market on 6th Avenue and then to the Little Y on 19th and Jefferson, which was a full service grocery store in those days, with even a butcher. There was a gasoline service station across the street from the Little Y so I didn’t see Willamette again until grade school.

​I attended Francis Willard Grade School, and occasionally after school I was allowed to go to a friend's house on Pearl south of 29th. We would walk by the Eugene Drive-In Theater's sheet metal walls and past the drive-in's screen to a grocery store on the northwest corner of 29th and Willamette. The store had packages of flat gum with three baseball or football cards for two or three cents. The gum as I recall was terrible but we were after the trading cards.

The drive-in theater took up most of what is Woodfield Station today. The screen faced into the hillside, and home owners above could pay the drive-in a monthly fee to have a speaker (that you normally hooked to your car window) wired in their living rooms, so they could watch the movies with sound out their picture window.

Summers were partly taken up with swimming lessons at Amazon Pool. Willamette was the biggest street I needed to cross on my way to the pool because there was no Amazon Parkway at the time.

By Greg Giesy, Friendly Area Neighbors former Board member and longtime Friendly resident.

Originally printed in the Summer 2011 edition of the Friendly Area Neighborhood Newsletter
​
Willamette up to my teenage years was mostly vague memories but the lure of the automobile, girls, and "The Gut" was to become some of my fondest memories. For those of you that don't know, Willamette Street was called "The Gut". And "The Gut" held the imagination of Lane County teenagers with cars from the 1950's into the 1980's, and I was there for its heyday in the 1960's and saw the start of its slow death in the beginning of the 1970's.

The original Gut started in downtown Eugene at 6th & Willamette and went to the A&W Root Beer Drive-in Restaurant on the southeast corner of 29th & Willamette, then back down Willamette to 20th, with the turn over to Oak, and on down to 6th to start the track again back up Willamette. Why? The car was freedom, fun, and adventure. You could escape your problems, worries, and especially your parents with your friends, and luckily gas was cheap.

The Gut was originally broken up in sections, with the important ones being downtown, because there was a traffic light at each block so you could talk to the car next to you on a one-way street at each light, 13th to 18th for a not-so-serious drag race, 24th to 29th to yell at people going by, and driving through the parking lot at A&W to see who was there.

​The Eugene Downtown Mall closing Willamette from 6th to 11th was to make "The Gut" smaller and more problematic as it eventually became just 24th to 29th with more teenagers in cars coming from Pleasant Hill, Creswell, and Cottage Grove. Friday and Saturday was even more crowded than the other days of the week, with bumper-to-bumper traffic from late afternoon into the early morning. Kids tried to park with the cramped conditions and higher gas prices, while merchants got tired of the nonsense with no trespassing signs and the police.
​
"The Gut" faded away by the 1990's to the relief of merchants, the police, and the City in general. Kids found other things to do with their time, and some of us went on with our lives, having memories of a different time without expensive gas, concerns of pollution, and global warming.

Willamette Street hasn't changed much from the 1960's, with destination merchants still relying on the car to bring most if not all of their business. My hope for the future is that we house enough people around the south Willamette area with denser housing and change the road to three car lanes and bike lanes so that more people will use Willamette as a place to enjoy in a different way without the car that has been so important to Willamette Street's history.

Do you have any old family albums with photographs that pertain to the Friendly Neighborhood? Volunteers are working on articles of history in the FAN, but some of the subjects are a bit sparse in material. If you are willing to share your pictures, we will scan them and incorporate them into our posts. Not to mention, give you and your family a by-line in the article.

Things we are most on the look out for:

• Pictures of the old Eugene Drive-In Theater (29th and Willamette)
• Pictures of the old Eugene Country Club golf course on College Hill
• Pictures of the Friendly Gas Station (28th and Friendly)
• Pictures of any business along Willamette St that are no longer there.

If you have anything about the subjects listed above, or any other material of history in the FAN, please contact us and we will get back to you. The Friendly is an interesting place, please help us all share in the stories.

A group of dog lovers have stepped up to volunteer and care for Wayne Morse Dog Park (595 Crest Dr, Eugene, OR 97405), a lovely off-leash dog park with meadows, hills, trees, trails, and happy dogs and their owners. The group works with the City of Eugene, neighborhood associations, and other groups to hold work parties to maintain the park. This group is open to all park users.

On a rainy day in February, two volunteers and two staff from the City of Eugene Parks and Open Space braved the weather to plant two giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) saplings. The group's supervisor, an expert on digging holes, provided direction and guidance. Photos from the planting event are below.

These two trees will count toward the "2,021 in 2021" project. In 2021, Eugene will welcome the IAAF World Track and Field Championships and thousands of visitors from across the globe. To help offset the carbon footprint associated with such a large event, Parks has launched an initiative to plant 2,021 giant sequoia trees by 2021. An article in the Register Guard has more information.

​The group is planning another Dog Park Work Party on a Saturday morning on either June 15, 22, or 29. The work party could take care of the following:

• Fill mud holes
• Resurface trails with gravel
• Weed whacking (string trimming) the fence lines
• Debris removal (if still present)

Spread the word with your friends, family, and neighbors. If you are unable to perform hard manual labor, the group also needs help recruiting participants or preparing snacks and beverages for the volunteers. Most importantly the group has fun and builds community. Join the Google Group to receive about once monthly updates.