Blue Lake Park and Oxbow Park are celebrating their 50th Anniversaries this year! To help celebrate, Metro has placed three caches at each park for you to find. Find all six and you are eligible to get a 50th anniversary commemorative geocoin. To get the coin you need to obtain a code from the inside of the lid of each cache. Once you have them, take all 6 code pieces to the main office at Blue Lake Park. If you get the correct codes, you get a coin! There are only 450 coins available so they will go FAST!!!!
Coins will only be available at the Blue Lake Park office M-F from 8:00am-3:00pm. If you have questions about the coins or collection please call 503.665.4995, option “0”.
History of Blue Lake Regional Park
Every year, 350,000 people picnic, splash, swim, fish, bike and play at Blue Lake Regional Park located in Fairview. A publicly owned park since 1960, Blue Lake is deeply intertwined with the lives of millions of Oregonians.
Long before it was a park, its history reaches back to the Upper Chinookan people who once lived there. Like much of the resource-rich bottomlands along the lower Columbia River, today’s parkland was home to Native Americans—a settlement called Nichaqwli (Ne-cha-co-lee), which explorers Lewis and Clark recorded in their journals.
According to Oregon Geographic Names, the lake was named by Pete and Jim Odell and Jake Lenz; while out hunting, they looked down and saw a lake they thought looked like a blue huckleberry. The shallow, 64-acre lake is influenced by levels of the Columbia River; it was connected to the Columbia until a dike built in the early 1900s protected land to the south from the river’s annual flooding.
In the park’s first decades its offerings were much different than today--combination of big band dance hall, carnival, neighborhood pub and communal backyard. In addition to all the activities, families could prepare meals throughout the park on the small concrete cook stoves with a metal tops using firewood we provided.
Through the 1950s, the park continued to have carnival elements: rides included a merry-go-round with a live pipe organ, an octopus and roll-o-plane. In 1960, the Welsh family sold Blue Lake Park to Multnomah County, which closed the park for three years as it upgraded its water system, built a new bathhouse and dock, hauled off the carnival-style rides and razed the dance hall. When Blue Lake Park reopened in 1963, it was again a huge draw.
In 1994, Multnomah County Park Services Division merged with Metro Greenspaces to become Metro Regional Parks and Greenspaces. Blue Lake added “Regional” to its name to better reflect its role in a park system that spans three counties. Since then the park has kept adapting to an evolving demographic in the region, and changing recreation tastes. In 2006, a water spray ground was installed; in 2012 a gold level disc golf course was added.