True irony . . . the street marked "Patton" on the map became part of the Portland area's major N/S highway prior to the advent of I-5 and was then devolved to N. Interstate. Where the cable line ran on this old map, we now have the MAX line.

I truly loved Mr. Haneckow’s piece titled “Peripheral Explorations.” It lured you in slowly, then delivered a great reward for reading. The sad ending notwithstanding.

When work was completed and the new "Minnesota Freeway" freeway opened on December 2 1964, traffic on Interstate dropped immediately, heralding a long period of decline.

I got lost off of Interstate Ave the night I moved here about a decade ago, looking for my friend's house over on Church.

The Interstate hood was, um...how do I put this...a little different back then. Crack whores milling around, boarded up houses with people living in them, broken glass all over the streets, cars that had been stripped, set up on blocks, the windows smashed in and then abandoned for what looked like years. Cruel and hard looking people standing around drinking 40s, scattering when the cops blooped their sirens and pulled to a halt...

It was lovely. My very first thought was, man, they are never, ever gonna gentrify this ! Cheap rent again at last !!!

How wrong I was. Should have talked a bank into one of those loans, bought one of those crack houses and sold it around 2005 !

Only time will tell if the gentrification we have seen over the past 5 years is permanent, or if the long-term effect of the Interstate MAX corridor eventually transmogrifies the area so that it resembles a resounding success story like Rockwood...

I remember Lombard being repaved 20 or so years ago. Underneath the aspault there are (or at least were) still rails with a red brick roadbed. Seemed like a waste then, not to put them to use.

Those rails on that map look suspiciously like streetcar lines ...