Mount Hood Freeway - Remnants

Remnants

Only a few physical signs are around of the canceled freeway, mostly in the form of incomplete connecting ramps or ramp stubs. Some previous evidence of the Mount Hood Freeway has been eliminated with new roadwork.

• Interchange grading: At the western end of Segment Three, the highway was graded to support an interchange with the proposed Segment Two.

• Ramp from I-5 southbound: Just as the southbound lanes enter the lower level of the approach to the Marquam Bridge, a left exit (which would have been 300A) is blocked off, complete with an empty sign bridge. This would have been the southbound I-5 access to the Mount Hood Freeway eastbound. Places to attach similar ramps were built for other directions of travel on I-5, but they were instead used to widen the freeway in 1990 (and reconstruction of the ramp from I-5 northbound to I-84). There is a bridge support that is wider than needed to support the existing lanes of I-5.
• Marquam Bridge configuration: On the lower deck (southbound), the ramp to I-405 exits in the left lanes, not the right. This was because the Mount Hood Freeway ramps were to come onto the bridge on the same side before the span, so lane changes would be unnecessary to continue on US 26 (it was to be duplexed with I-405). The same applies for the upper deck for the right lanes.

• Grand Avenue Viaduct: A ramp stub on the bridge over the railroad tracks was intended as a connection to at least I-5, if not the Mount Hood Freeway. With the MLK viaduct project of 2007-2011, this ramp stub has been removed.

• I-84 Exit numbering: I-84, which replaced I-80N, has a strange numbering pattern near its junction with I-205, indicating that its Banfield Freeway portion was originally considered to be temporary. Specifically, there is about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) between exits 5 and 9, and mileposts along the Banfield Freeway jump between Mile 7 and Mile 10. The current exit numbers are different from original numbers on the Banfield, which were based on the actual mileposts; for example, what is exit 1 eastbound was originally exit 2A, and what is exit 9 was exit 6. This original exit numbering scheme also points to the temporary routing of I-84 on the Banfield.

• I-84/I-205 junction configuration: As one approaches the interchange on I-84 from the east, one uses an exit off the freeway alignment to access the Banfield Freeway (continuing on I-84), whereas one stays on the mainline to access I-205. Also, as one approaches from the west, the Banfield Freeway's lanes merge on the right of lanes that come from I-205.

• I-405 signage: At I-405's northern terminus, one keeps left to follow US 30 exiting on I-5 and eventually I-84. The overhead signs marking this exit, however, only mention "US 30 East/The Dalles" without any mention of I-84 (however, auxiliary signs do say "I-5 South/I-84/East Next Left"). While the current signage is newer and more reflectorized, the original sign's text probably was the same when the Fremont Bridge was opened in 1973, when the Mount Hood Freeway was still planned to be I-80N's Portland routing. (As a side note, I-405's northern interchange with I-5 contains many ramp stubs and truncated ramps of another scrapped Portland freeway, the Rose City Freeway.)

• Piccolo Park: This small park sits on land that was acquired for the freeway.

• Along Powell Blvd, on the south side of the street are a series of linear parking lots and skinny buildings that have been built in the last 25 years on land that was acquired for the freeway.

• Division/Powell exit, southbound on I-205: The approach to the Division/Powell exit has been curbed in an odd way, as if it were to have been a splitting of a duplexed I-84/I-205 into separate freeways; it is now an unusually wide exit. After leaving I-205 the exit splits again, sending Powell-bound traffic beneath a wide Division Street underpass and non-stop to a westbound-only turn onto Powell. This was to be the continuation of westbound I-84 as it merged with the Mount Hood Expressway.