Mt Tabor

This month we took a short trip to a local park, Mt Tabor. It's a dormant cinder cone of the Boring Lava Field. It is 636 feet in elevation. This lava field, with its network of cinder cones and small shield volcanoes, extends from Boring, Oregon to southwest Washington. It has been extinct for over 300,000 years. The park is located in southeast Portland. Apparently there are other cinder cones from this field within the city of Portland: Rocky Butte, Powell Butte, and Kelly Butte. We've been to Powell Butte. From 1894-1911 the reservoirs were built here to distribute water.

The hike was pretty easy for us. Three different trails are marked, green, red and blue. There are smaller connecting trails too. We stuck to the red and blue trails. The green trail seemed to just go around the outside of the park and had a road along side of it most of the way. We started out mid morning and finished just after lunch. That was with look out stops and a snack break along the way.



This is one of the pump houses, the steps identify this building as Reservoir No 5 built in 1911. Most of the building reminded me of the early 1900's. And there were lamp posts that looked older too. They reminded me of the lamp post that I imaged as I read the first book of the Chronicles of Narnia.

Older lamp post in the back ground 

The west side of the park had great views of the city of Portland.

There is a cut-away of the cinder cone near the parking lot. Apparently the part that was cut away was used to pave the nearby parking lot. 

We had fun exploring this area. Maybe we will bring the grandkids here for a walk to "get the wiggles out". There is a nice amphitheater here with a tree perfect for a picture, only I need to photoshop the chain link fence out of the frame.