In August 2016 I was in the Portland, Oregon area for business reasons. I was however able to squeeze in some hiking time to enjoy the nice scenery that Oregon has to offer.

Among others, I found a hike along an abandoned stretch of the Port of Tillamook Bay Railroad online. The description sounded like a post-apocalyptic thing, so I was too curious to not do it. It was a great experience, and gave a good feeling of the forces at play to cause the destructions as seen there, which were 3 storms and the resulting water levels in the Salmonberry River.

However, when I later browsed the area on OSM I noticed that the Salmonberry River is not on the map at all. That could should not be the case, so I saw an oportunity to make my first big contribution to OSM.

Therefore I retraced my steps and combined it with info from USGS Topo maps to fill in the blanks and map the full river. Next to that I noticed that the Port of Tillamook Bay Railroad as imported from TIGER data, was not really accurate in position and none of the bridges and tunnels were put in. So I had work to do.

Five mugs of tea, one coffee, a skipped lunch, an emptied bag of Trail Mix and 13 edits later the whole river is mapped, the POTB railroad position has been corrected between Nahalem River and Wolf Creek Trestle, a few bridges have been put in and the Nehalem River has been slightly adapted. A bit more work to do, but I keep that for later! - A bunch of side branches that drain into the Salmonberry River - The tunnels of Port of Tillamook Bay Railroad - The Port of Tillamook Bay Railroad bridges east of Enright

I learned a lot about mapping and tagging today. I hope that will aid my future mappings and result in a short cycle time :).

Cheers!

Links: The hike @ Oregon Hikers

The Salmonberry River Link