Fulton Park Real Estate Available!
The two principal founders of the Metropolitan Railway Company were brothers George A. and James Steel, noted Portland bankers, entrepreneurs, and real estate developers, who also had financial and marital connections to River View Cemetery’s founding families. So when the Steels invested in land in the Fulton area, there was plenty of incentive to build a trolley to get people out to their holdings.
In 1887, doing business as the Southwest Portland Realty Company, the brothers bought 411 hilly acres above the Willamette River settlement of Fulton and named it Fulton Park, or Fulton Park Addition. It extended west into what is now the Carson Heights area of the South Burlingame neighborhood and north to the land now occupied by Portland Parks and Recreation's Fulton Park. With little regard to topography or buildability, the Steels platted their land, cleared it of timber, and created almost 1,400 lots, building a few demonstration houses around Fulton Park Boulevard. Promotional pieces in the Oregonian described Fulton Park as being away from the malarial influences so peculiar to flat lands
and having a delightful east view… telephone and telegraph communication with the city…and five miles of beautiful boulevards.
And by 1891, it was only a trolley ride away!
On this map, circa 1910, Macadam Avenue and Willamette River are at the bottom.
The Southern Pacific Rail Road curves along what is now Barbur Boulevard.
The fan-shaped platting is the developers' fanciful idea of how Carson Heights (Forum Hill
) would look.
Full resolution un-cropped map is available in our Resource Collection.
