Exploring Portland's parks, one class at a time

History professor Catherine McNeur, center, leads students through a walking lecture on Mt. Tabor's summit as part of her Parks & Portland course. McNeur spoke about all the ways Mt. Tabor became synonymous with good health, from Bull Run water to the perception of clean air that drew sanitariums and open air schools to locate around and on top of it. (PC: Patric Simon)

On a recent sunny afternoon, Laurelhurst Park was filled with Portlanders picnicking, pushing strollers, playing with pups and gathering for a May Day march. And taking it all in was a group of Portland State students.

For their history course, Parks & Portland, the scenic park was their classroom for the day. With an iPad loaded with archival photos and a portable microphone, professor Catherine McNeur transported students back 120 years, tracing the park's evolution from a cow pasture to the public space it is today - one shaped by themes of real estate, advocacy and access.

"Whose park is this? Who gets to control it? Who gets to use it?," McNeur asked before sending the class on a then-and-now photo scavenger hunt. "That kind of rule-making and policing of space has been part of parks from the very beginning. And these rules continue to be written and rewritten."

Parks are truly public spaces, McNeur says, and help tell the history of a city and the people who've called it home.

"Parks, in many ways, can be a microcosm of the city, and over time Portlanders have remade them to suit their new needs.," she said. "Some of the tension that comes with social or cultural change plays out in parks, but people also continue to find ways to build communities in these spaces. They are spaces for protests, celebration, inclusion and exclusion. We can even trace the transformations in how we've understood health and nature through these spaces."

Classrooms Without Walls

For McNeur, developing the Parks & Portland class has been a labor of love more than two years in the making.

An environmental historian, McNeur has always been interested in the changing role of parks in cities. Over the years, students in her classes have too, often gravitating towards parks history for final projects. In public history courses, McNeur partnered with Portland Parks & Recreation and Friends of Peninsula Park Rose Garden. But her goal was always to create a walking tour-based course that would get students out of the classroom and up close with Portland's history.

McNeur drew inspiration from her own undergraduate experience taking a walking course on New York City architectural history.

"It made me realize that classrooms don't have to have walls," she said. "History is not just in the libraries, it's not just in books, but it's also being able to be in the place and experience where it took place and get a sense how things have changed physically."

That has resonated with students in the class, who come from majors as varied as history, computer science, math, biology, environmental studies, electrical engineering, business and political science. For many, the course was an opportunity to spend significant time outside in the spring - for credit, no less - while exploring either a new city or familiar parks in a different light.

"A lot of history you learn is far away in time and space, but these are places that are right around us," said Ian Coates, a history major. "You drive past them, use them as landmarks or maybe foray into them in a surface way. But by coming to the parks and learning about them, we're not going to forget them. And now when other people talk about them, we can teach them something new about the park."

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'Seeing History Everywhere'

A 10-week course couldn't possibly cover all of Portland's hundreds of parks, so McNeur carefully selected parks that were both accessible from campus and anchored in distinct historical moments. In any given class, she can cover a century of history, but the course is structured to move chronologically from the Park Blocks - among the city's oldest parks - through an overview of more recent parks.

"I did a lot of research on so many parks to narrow it down," said McNeur, who logged more hikes than she can count, often bringing her dog along for the ride. "Trying to make a walking tour that geographically makes sense and walkable in a class but also covers the chronological history is complicated."

Weekly class walking tours include Washington Park; Mt. Tabor; Lownsdale & Chapman Squares and North Park Blocks; Laurelhurst; Forest Park; Irving, Dawson and Two Plum parks; Duniway, Lair Hill and the Portland Open Space Sequence; and Tom McCall Waterfront Park and Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade.

On the class' visit to Laurelhurst, McNeur's three-hour walking lecture started in front of the Old Laurelhurst Church and ended near the park's edge by SE Oak Street. Topics ranged from neighborhood zoning and restrictive housing covenants to Emanuel Mische's Olmsted-inspired park design, Chinese botanical history, the evolution of the pond, neighborhood children advocating for a playground and more recent tensions that cleared tent encampments for pickleball courts and skate ramps.

McNeur says park goers can pass by the blooming Rhodendrons or the Dawn redwoods without a second thought, but the class helps "bring things that we take for granted alive, so that suddenly you see history everywhere."

Parks History Gone Viral

McNeur has been bringing that history to broader audiences, sharing snippets of her research in short videos on TikTok and Instagram. What began as a way to promote the new course has turned into unexpected local attention, with videos garnering thousands - even hundreds of thousands - of views.

"It took off, not just with PSU students but with people across the city who got really enthusiastic about it," she said. "I didn't know there was such a hunger for history on social media."

She's now occasionally stopped on the street and even a parks maintenance crew was excited to see her class on a recent visit. People reach out to her with questions, leads, maps and more.

McNeur says the popularity of her videos has changed her own approach to research. Previously, she'd hold off until a book came out before sharing more broadly, but now she's sharing as she's learning. The research she's done for the course has inspired her next book project on Portland's history as told through its parks.

"There are people who want to know the history of cities, and this is an accessible way to do it," she said.

McNeur now hopes to use her platform to amplify some of her students' work. All term, they've been visiting and researching a park of their choice - one not covered in the course - while digging through maps, newspaper archives and historic photographs. For their final project, they'll create a short-form video documentary, much like the dozens their professor has made, to tell a story about their park.

"My dream is that the students will not only become good historians in the process, but also good consumers of media," she said. "They'll now know how to do the research to check people's work."

Some students chose parks close to campus, like Marquam Nature Park or Council Crest Park, while others focused on spaces near where they live, like Holladay Park by Lloyd Center, Pier Park in St. John's or Couch Park in the Alphabet District.

Max Bykowski, a math major, says he was drawn to Council Crest because of its interesting history as an amusement park.

"I've kind of diverted from that route and I'm just finding weird local stories like a statue being stolen and found in a house in northeast Portland," he said. "There's also a time capsule buried there I'm intrigued by."

What McNeur's enjoyed most about the class has been talking with students in between stops - something she's able to do more organically than in a classroom.

"It's kind of like walking office hours," she said. "We'll talk about their other classes, brainstorm solutions to their research problems, celebrate their research wins and talk through different stories they're considering for their videos."

And the students are finding their own community, too.

"In the same way that I get to talk with these students in between stops, they're talking with each other and I'm seeing friendships take off," she said. "I have a feeling this is going to be a community that lasts beyond the class."