Council Crest was first named as Talbot Mountain by Portland settlers after John Talbot, who held a land claim on the site. It was renamed as Council Crest in 1898, although it being named as such because it was a meeting place for Native American tribes is now seen as unfounded. McArthur's Oregon Geographic Names suggests it was named by delegates to the National Council of Congregational Churches, who met at the summit in 1898.
As Portland grew in the early 20th century, plans began to be formulated as to how the site could be commercially exploited. Some called for it to become a city park, while others wanted to build a grand summer hotel at the summit.
A lease was taken out on 23 acres at the summit of the crest in February 1906 by Messrs. Van W. Anderson and Leland L. Smith, real estate dealers, who had grand plans for a “modern amusement park.” Their plan may have partially induced the Portland Railway Company to extend their Portland Heights line up to Council Crest. Anderson and Smith – doing business as the Council Crest Amusement Company – promised to hire a competent manager for the park. This seems to have been one Arthur Duchamp, as in March 1907 he took down the observation tower that he had operated on Portland Heights during the Lewis & Clark Exposition and rebuilt it on Council Crest, along with a photography studio and cafe. By July 1907, a dance pavilion had also been constructed. A camera obscura that had been at the Portland Heights site failed to do much business at Council Crest and was relocated to Washington Park, where Duchamp hoped to attract someone to purchase it from him.
Duchamp took out a 20-year lease on the site in January 1908 from members of the Smith family that owned the tract with the aim of improving it further and providing additional attractions. By this point in time, Duchamp seems to be the manager of the Council Crest Amusement Company, and Anderson and Smith are not heard of again related to this venture.
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Note that this lease from the land owners to a private company disproves the long-held “truth” that the amusement park was owned by the Portland Railway, Light & Power Company and operated as a true “trolley park” like The Oaks. Later, C. A. Finley operated the park under the auspices of the Finley Amusement Company.
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By May 1909, Council Crest had become a fully-fledged amusement park with observation tower, carousel, scenic railway (an early roller coaster), flume ride, and tavern among other attractions. Some of these attractions – the scenic railway and the carousel among them – were built and operated by the L. A. Thompson Company, which was developing quite a reputation for their thrilling rides across the country.
Disaster struck immediately, however: a car on the scenic railway overturned on the first day of operation, injuring eight passengers. The Portland Railway, Light & Power Company felt the need to clarify that the incident had not occurred on the Council Crest streetcar line, often referred to in publicity as the “scenic line,” as opposed to the amusement park’s “scenic railway.”
Duchamp had an antagonistic relationship with the city council, battling with them over undesirables causing trouble in and around the park, license fees to be paid to the city, and whether or not the park should be permitted to have a dance pavilion (as dancing was often seen as “immoral”). His license was revoked and then restored more than once, and the city also threatened to just take over the site as a city park. The pavilion seemed to flip between being a dance hall and a theater almost every year as different edicts were issued by the council.
Despite these underlying troubles, the park was popular, with more than 40,000 visitors a week in the summer of 1912. Duchamp renewed and added to the attractions at the park over the years – there was briefly even an ice skating rink in 1911, though this seems to have quickly become a roller skating rink as that craze swept the nation.
Management of the park passed from Duchamp to Charles Finley between the 1913 and 1914 seasons. Finley had been operating one of the rides in the park (possibly the scenic railway?) as a concessionaire since 1910, and his son, Homer S. Finley, took over management in 1922 when his father retired. Homer managed the park through 1928, after which new management – identified in the press only as “a syndicate of prominent Portland business men” – took over for 1929. This was to be the amusement park’s last season, though no mention of this was made when the season ended in September. The park owed a large sum of money to the Hansen Construction Company for repairing and renewing the scenic railway, and were taken to court over the debt in October. It can be speculated that the park’s management simply didn’t have the money to reopen in 1930. It’s also worth noting that public dances at Council Crest were once again going to be banned for the 1930 season, removing one of the park’s main areas of revenue.
By July, some of the park’s buildings were being demolished, although the observation tower remained in place until December 1941 when it was replaced by a water standpipe. Another company presented grandiose plans for the renewal of the park in August 1930 – including an ice skating rink, toboggan slopes and a much taller observation tower – but the onset of the Great Depression probably put an end to this scheme.
By 1935, the derelict grounds were seen as an eyesore and embarrassment to the city, with conductors on the Council Crest cars given instructions to warn potential sightseers about the dilapidated state of the site. A deal was struck with the owners of the land – still members of the Smith family, operating as the Ukase Investment Company – where Council Crest would be given to the city in exchange for a block of land at SW 4th Avenue and Yamhill Street previously occupied by a fire station. After a long struggle, including legal cases brought on by citizens who thought the city was making a bad deal, Council Crest finally became a city park in March 1937.
A rare color photograph of Old 506 in Council Crest Park, taken c. 1951.
From November 1950 onward, the park was home to “Old 506,” one of the distinctive Council Crest streetcars that ran up to the Heights from 1904 to 1950. Years of weather and vandalism took its toll on the streetcar, and it was removed to TriMet’s Center Street facility in June 1970 to await repairs in a safer place. The car eventually became part of the Oregon Electric Railway Historical Society’s collection, and is now at their museum in Brooks, Oregon.