Ed Carpenter with the steel frame of the Barbara Walker Crossing during its construction. Photo: Naim Hasan for Portland Parks Foundation
“You can just see the way the bridge just dives into the woods on either side,” Ed Carpenter tells OPB in a new film they’ve produced about the Barbara Walker Crossing. “And that’s so satisfying, to have it be just emerging from the woods, growing out of the DNA of the woods, part of the forest—I love that.”
Carpenter has designed sites all over the world, so when he began championing the project that would become the Barbara Walker Crossing, people listened.
One of those who listened was Jeff Anderson, the former executive director of the Portland Parks Foundation. “This project represents really the best of… community leaders coming together to try to solve a problem in partnership with the City,” Anderson told OPB.
Anderson, Carpenter, and many others from the Portland community came together to build this safe crossing over busy West Burnside connecting Forest Park’s Wildwood Trail to Washington Park.
OPB’s weekly television show, Oregon Art Beat, conducted interviews and gathered footage throughout the project’s life. We’re grateful to OPB for spreading the story of the Barbara Walker Crossing and the hundreds of Portlanders who made it happen.