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| The powerhouse in its heyday, notice the interurban car to the lower right. Image courtesy of pdxhistory.com |
 The wooden flume linking the Little Sandy River to Roslyn Lake, which fed the powerhouse. Both the lake and the flume are gone. |
Welcome to the former Bull Run Powerhouse of PGE. It was decommissioned in 2008, but it has a rich history.
The Mt Hood Railway and Power Company began the Bull Run Hydroelectric project in 1906. The MT Hood Railway started as a steam railway linking Montavilla in East Portland (near Where I-205 and Stark street is today) to Bull Run. Later it was converted to an electrified Interurban. The Railway's first goal was to provide supplies and workers for the dams and powerhouse for the Bull Run project. The Mt Hood Railway was later absorbed by Portland Railway Light and Power, the forerunner of today's PGE.
The project began by the building of a dam on the little Sandy River. A 3.2 mile wooden flume was built from the dam to the man-made Roslyn Lake. This lake fed water to the powerhouse which opened in 1912. In 1913 a dam was built on the Sandy River, diverting water from the Sandy to the Little Sandy river by canal and tunnel.
The Wooden Flume was interesting in that it has a railway built on top of it for inspection and maintenance of the flume only. Workers would walk or ride the rails everyday checking for leaks and performing maintenance as necessary.
The Interurban trains linked Bull Run to Gresham and to Montavilla. At Montavilla you could board a Mt Tabor Streetcar for your journey to Portland, or to Linnamon Jct for an interurban to Portland. The line was popular with picnickers on weekends stopping at what is now Dodge Park. However auto competition doomed the interurban. The last electric train pulled out of Bull Run in December of 1930.
The Powerhouse and Flume survived until maintenance costs of the Flume was starting to rise causing PGE to reconsider keeping the project running. Plus the dams fish ladders were proven ineffective at keeping the salmon runs alive.
PGE decided to no renew is licence in accordance with agreements with various agencies and environmental group. The decommission of the dams and Roslyn Lake was approved by the Army Corp of Engineers in 2007. Marmot Dam was removed in 2007. The Little Sandy Dam removed in 2008, which eliminated Roslyn Lake. The Flume was removed over time.
Today there are plans to reopen the powerhouse as a museum. The small worker railcars for the Flume Railway are at the Oregon Electric Railway Museum. Also at the museum is a Mt Hood Railway Interurban Express car, although it does not have running gear.
The cache has a slight view of the Powerhouse. It would have been closer but another cache was already there. It is a good sized container hidden by a semi-wide road shoulder. Some of the swag inside is Portland MAX related. Seemed appropriate as the MAX Blue and Orange lines run on former Interurban lines that can trace their lineage to PGE's lineage.