"Street View" LoL. (It's a bit of a hike from the nearest street)
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Yeah, it's a bit of a hike from the nearest street.
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Google Stream View
Is it? There's a gravel road 400 feet away.
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That Gravel road is partially washed out in parts. and VERY rough. its completely unmaintained. Unless you get out and study the angles, and have a few friends guide you (and experience) your going to high-center most regular clearance vehicles, at least some parts of the year. The actual trail has spots where you have to use a rope some nice person tied to a tree to lower yourself down a cliff about 15-20 feet, etc. Especially when its wet, which is 10 months of the year.
Also no signs or parking lots.
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Interesting to see this on HN - it's a few miles from my house, and was very happy to see the sale to the state.
Note that there are TWO possible paths down to Abiqua creek that are quite close to one another at the top of the (quite deep) ravine in which the falls are located. One is hard, but not impossible. The other one is the "death trail" which isn't really a trail - it's a series of broken shale rock slides covered with fallen trees and steep "waterfalls of rock" but helpfully someone has put some ropes down it to make it seem like yes, this leads somewhere. It does not. One summer evening we thought it would be a nice after-dinner hike to take the "other trail" to the falls. Yeah... my thighs were sore for two days after the up/down/sideways, and the water was too deep to even go upstream to the falls. But it was an adventure.
Cool! Pixel sorted falls!
This could easily be developed into a resort. Instead the state is getting its grubby hands on it and will probably leave it as an unimproved dirt hole.
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Good. The more unimproved dirt holes and fewer resorts the better.
Google Maps isn't good for this one as it is off of a forest road. My understanding is that it is less than a mile from where you would park if you were to drive there.
Really stunning piece of land. Glad it’s able to be protected
it's not a public good, it doesn't have the criteria for a public good. It's rivalrous, and can be used by someone for near perfect tranquility by preventing others from using it as well.
I know what you'd like it to be, and I can agree with you, but it's not a public good.
Kinda wish they'd just given the money to the foundation and let them still take care of it. Now they're out two million and still have to fork out more cash to take care of it.
I think it was sold precisely because the foundation didn't want to care for it going forward:
>“There were a lot of people that were hiking on the property, and while we welcome that, we wanted to ensure that the proper stewardship was overseeing it.”
IIRC, it was a fairly hard trail -- the hike in has ~500ft elevation gain in only ~1 mile. That does need a lot of seasonal upkeep.
Very cool visible basalt
... how is a comment observing the really cool basalt rock formations in the photo being downvoted? Most HN readers are (I'd assume) nerds, are we not allowed to nerd out about geography?
A lot of the Cascade range is basalt, and you don't need to cut down very far to expose it. A result is that most waterways in Oregon have revealed a lot of basalt around them, at least in the mountains.
Yep, there's a ton of it to be found especially in the Columbia River Gorge. For anyone not hip to Nick Zentner, allow me to introduce you to this national treasure...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQhjkemEyUo
Pilot rock outside of Ashland you can even hike to the top
It's rare to have basements where I live in Bend, because it's all lava rock right under our feet, which is really expensive to remove.
Climbing on columnar basalt is interesting. Vantage / Frenchmans Coulee (2 hours or so east of Seattle) has a bit of a bad reputation but some of the routes are decent.
Studying geology in Portland as an undergraduate, I didn't appreciate how unusual it was to have widespread basalt formations. It's super common in the area due to some ancient flood basalt. I appreciate it more visually after leaving and getting some perspective from other landscapes.
If you went to PSU, was the geology department still in that damn basement?
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Lol yes. Though i graduated in 2016 so no idea if that's the current location.
All the better to see the rocks I guess
I've got some lovely basalt formation in my basement crawlspace. Evidently, the builder in the 1940s said "screw it" to excavating any further. It also causes me grief digging fence posts or even a small hole for a plant.
Great for untapping.
It feels like it's back where it belongs.
>Its owner, a nonprofit that supports a community of Benedictine monks, put it on the market earlier this year.
>The foundation put the property up for open auction in early February, meaning there was no minimum or maximum bid, she said. It accepted the offer the state made under the bill that passed.
>The listing worried fans of the natural wonder. But at the tail end of the legislative session this month, a bipartisan group of lawmakers stepped in and approved $2.1 million to buy the falls and its surrounding land.
Zero chance this wasn't arranged in some capacity off record. The state doesn't "just" buy waterfalls without such plans being tacitly agreed to beforehand or at least deemed viable by people who "know things".
One of the rare times where I’m probably kind of ok with it
Drat! I was going to buy this and put the entrance to my secret lair behind the waterfall. I would have gotten away with it too if not for those darn kids!
meddling kids. :P
Probably they had been trying to sell it to the state for months/years/decades, and nothing had happened, so they escalated. Here in California in east bay there are thousands of acres of land around Mt. Diablo that are held by a non profit trust because the state/parks department is too lazy to aquire it/don't have funds to manage it. The privately owned/managed land around Mt. Diablo is roughly equal in size to the state park it surrounds.
This kind of thing exists in many places in the USA for many reasons (tax relief, government stupidity or inability or lack of funds, etc).
Sometimes the government is forbidden from buying land but nothing stops an individual or charity.
>Probably they had been trying to sell it to the state for months/years/decades
Third option:
Monks want to put up some minor tourist attraction, put in some parking and hand rails or engage in literally anything, doesn't really matter what since it's all invariably regulated near water. Bureaucrat who doesn't "get it" says no this is a special site if you want to do that you need to do XYZ first or GFY. Monks say we can't afford XZY, that would make this whole thing a nonstarter or defeat the point. Site languishes for a decade or two because while the subsequent bureaucrats may know what's right they can't necessarily ignore what the first guy said without sticking their necks way out. Eventually the monks find someone to help them out who gets the state to take it off their hands. Maybe they monks get a fair deal, maybe they're losing their ass, who knows.
This fact pattern is really common with redevelopment of eyesore unoccupied buildings in prime locations so it wouldn't surprise me to see it going on with some natural site like this.
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This sort of cynical catastrophizing isn’t really helpful. If you have a concrete example that applies to this situation, please share it, instead of gesturing vaguely in the direction of “government bad.” (Buildings in prime locations aren’t equivalent.)
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>This sort of cynical catastrophizing isn’t really helpful. If you have a concrete example that applies to this situation, please share it, instead of gesturing vaguely in the direction of “government bad.” (Buildings in prime locations aren’t equivalent.)
This has nothing to do with government and a lot more than nothing to do with sneering jerks who dismiss the potential for systemic failures and stupidity by handwaving it away as "catastrophizing" enabling the systems to produce exactly those sorts of failures. Any bureaucracy can screw up in the manner I'm describing, insurance, bankers, it's not just government.
Bad outcomes are very, very, very sticky because the people that rise to positions that could undo them don't get there by being disposed to such actions. Some non-standard organization (a bunch of monks who aren't pro RE developers) with a nonstandard situation are high on the list of places these failures will happen. They submit something to some agency and use the wrong words, some dude who doesn't see many of these cross his desk denies it on some grounds and you've just locked in a problem that's gonna cost a lot of money to undo and monasteries aren't typically engaging in the sort of high dollar economic activity where they can just fight through it knowing it'll be paid back later.
I'm not saying that's what happened here but this is exactly the kind of place it could happen.
>(Buildings in prime locations aren’t equivalent.)
There are old mills on the outskirts of town and then there are historic mills on the river on main street.
There are overgrown farmers fields and there are forests with waterfalls in them.
See what I'm getting at?
The East Bay Park district is the largest regional park system in the US, so I'm not sure it's entirely fair to call them "lazy". There's an ongoing fight over whether they should prioritize improving/maintaining/restoring what they already have or acquiring new land.
I just want to remind everyone: Washington, Idaho and Oregon are terrible places to live.
In 2 of these states, it just rains all the time. You never ever want to visit these waterfalls, because you're perennially living in a waterfall. The local population is always depressed/suicidal. The only Oregonian of note got in trouble for that whole Nancy Kerrigan fiasco. And Washington is under the grip of Bezos and Gates. If you think Windows is bad ...
And Idaho, is, well, Idaho. There's a reason people doubt its existence.[1] It's because there is absolutely nothing of note there.
Texas is great! Lots of land. Number 1 in green energy. Go there.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/groups/221739400799965/posts/302745...
Yep, this is sooo true. Washington and Oregon are especially terrible. I tell you what, you're going to be sitting in traffic in Seattle just as much as you do in LA. And it's all very expensive. Texas is a much better decision.
Have you seen Texas city traffic lately?
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Have you visited Seattle in rush hour?
I kid you not when I say it took over 20 minutes for me to drive one block to get on to the freeway. There was no accident or other problem.
I go to LA often. Seattle is way worse.
Shhh don’t encourage people to come by making comparisons please.
>I tell you what ... Texas is a much better decision.
I tell you h'what*
Yes everyone should stay away from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho! Terrible places to live! California is a dream compared to those hell-holes.
Indeed! No one made a song with the title "Washington Dreamin". Same with Oregon and Idaho.
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Someone made "Choosin' Idaho"
I agree! These are just miserable places to live. Please reconsider just moving to Arizona or Utah. Leave us to our 10 months of misery a year. :)
Is this a meme? I've never heard it before.
Sort of. Phrasing varies, but at least for Idaho it's very common for people who live in Idaho to go on the internet and tell people how awful Idaho is and how you should absolutely not move there. On a related note, for people who do move to Idaho, one of the things they are advised to do as soon as possible is get new license plates so that they're not constantly advertising the fact that they came from out-of-state. Idaho has received a massive amount of immigration from other states and many people are unhappy about this.
The meme is "<____> sucks, dont' go there." Traditionally spoken by a "local", in reference to stuff they love. It kinda/sorta makes sense in the broader culture of "locals define themselves by excluding others" left-coast parochialism. (I don't think HN is the correct place for it.)
Another example of the meme style is this ski resort "tier" map: https://www.reddit.com/r/skiing/comments/1d96f93/my_tierlist...
Which is actually funny. And the "joke" is that the person who made the tier list is trying to "hide" the resorts they want to ski (Mt Rose., Mammoth, Kirkwood, Sugar Bowl, Alpine) from whoever's reading the blog post. While falsely "praising" the famous places in an effort to divert the crowds there. (The Reddit post is great b/c the author clearly communicates that they're being ridiculous.)
I think it originated in 1971, when OR governor Tom McCall famously said, "Come visit us again and again. This is a state of excitement. But for heaven's sake, don't come here to live." It wasn't meant as a joke, he was speaking in earnest. One of his ongoing themes was opposing growth for growth's sake and he helped pass the strict land-use policies that largely still exist. It has become a joke though, you will see "Welcome to Oregon, now go home" bumperstickers and such. And a quick way to get dirty looks at a party is to announce that you just moved here from California and can't believe how cheap the houses are.
That I don't get about the PNW is the property prices of places hours away from any economic center that pays well enough to justify them. Are that many people still working remote for FAANG that those prices can be justified?
I have no doubts you're right, but got any examples? Just curious to see them.
No, but rich assholes like getting away from it all too.
I assume part of this is because there is a lot of national forest not that far from Portland, and aside from a few exceptions here and there you can't buy a piece for yourself. So if you do want your own piece of rural wilderness you have to buy farther way. And Portland does have millions of people, many of whom have the financial resources to buy a little chunk of their own paradise.
Personally I'd pay a solid chunk of change for a campsite size chunk of land on the east fork of the Sandy River near Mt. Hood, right where Nottingham Campground is. I'd never leave.
I guess the OP has never experienced any part of eastern Oregon or Washington.
It's a tongue-in-cheek statement to prevent more people moving there so crowds don't spoil it.
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I hadn't drank my coffee yet when I read it at first :)
Going around shitting on other states is a very Texan thing to do
Last night in Arizona, I was watching You Can See Everything about Elizabeth Holmes. Her husband and two children had relocated from a picturesque beach cottage in Del Mar, California, to Texas to be near her federal prison camp. But there was a threat of her being transferred to a prison out of state, and Billy began shouting about "having to move to fucking Arizona!!" which played really well in our packed theater auditorium, I can tell you!
Please move to Texas. Those of us who like waterfalls, are not suicidal, and who will accept beautiful nature in lieu of a functional state government appreciate you freeing the capacity for someone else.
As a Texan,
stop telling people to move here, I-35 just keeps getting worse
What? This is absolute lunacy, I hope its sarcasm. It rains a decent amount but not all the time, summer in Oregon is absolutely beautiful and there's plenty of time to visit the waterfalls.
The parent comment is a tongue-in-cheek comment that emphasizes the negatives of a location because the commenter likes it so much.
The idea (and it's a semi joke) is that it will discourage more people from coming so it doesn't get spoiled.
A bit like telling people some tiny restaurant isn't all that good, because if too many people eat there, you will never get a table again.
30 years ago, listening to FM radio in the Seattle area (probably Marty Reimer on KMTT), the DJ was talking about the gorgeous weather we were experiencing and added “if you’re talking to folk down in California, be sure to let them know how gray and rainy it is”.
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July and August are usually great summer weather - though I never had to deal with forest fire smoke when I lived there. Often June is nice as well.
These are the Seattle Tourism marketing months. Microsoft's college interns got the best weather of the year.
What they don't tell prospective residents is that the other 9 or 10 months of the year will be gray and drizzly/rainy, esp. December to March.
I could deal with the inclement weather, but one person I knew had to get a bright light to treat his seasonal affective disorder.
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It rains only twice in Seattle. Each time it lasts 6 months.
I've been here 35 years now. Yeah, winters are dreary, but rarely snowy - more just drizzly rain and gray skies. There's usually a good patch in February. Pretty sure that DJ comment was in February, though maybe early spring.
And I don't have any data to back it up, but it feels like the weather has gotten better (less gray, less drizzle) over the decades. Or maybe that's just Stockholm syndrome.
Still, I'll likely never move away.
I am hoping the Cascadia fault stays quiet another few decades, until I'm dead and gone. That, not the weather, is the thing that worries me.
>In 2 of these states, it just rains all the time
Sounds like the perfect place for me, I love rain. If only the housing was more affordable though.
Wouldn't breaking the news before the deal is sealed cause the price to blow up?
It'd attract all sorts of billionaires to bid on it and make it unaffordable for the public.
(The story seems to be old though, so hopefully it did end up being sold to the public.)
Hopefully a non-profit that supports a group of monks would be motivated by more than just the bid with the highest amount of money, especially since they seem to have always allowed public access to the waterfall.
“The foundation put the property up for open auction in early February, meaning there was no minimum or maximum bid, she said. It accepted the offer the state made under the bill that passed.”
What is with the "listed on Redfin" gumpf? It was listed by a broker on MLS, AFAICS this is just Redfin posting the MLS data as it is wont to.
You can't optimize the sweet sweet ad cash by just being a journalist! The need for a commercial tie-in zinger twist is ingrained now.
I don't think journalists (or even the AP) get cash for this. Usually it's more that companies can give the journalists an easy story by giving them a pre-packaged story in a press release. I can't see any such connection here, though.
“Journalists are in charge of headlines” I say as I smooth out my sash that says “News Expert” on it, “I read that online”
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The redfin stuff is in the text of the article, which certainly was written by a journalist.
If you read the article you see it was a quote from one of the interviewed people.
Listed on RMLS by Lisa Johnson. HORSEPOWER REAL ESTATE
Not Hydropower Real Estate?
Happy for the monks but if they were real players they would’ve worked with the Land Trust Alliance to get this protected forever? Glad the state was able to step up though. Looks like a beautiful spot!
I have been here. It is very beautiful, and it would be very sad if it was closed to the public.
As an Oregon resident, I approve!
Love this!
https://www.redfin.com/OR/Scotts-Mills/Abiqua-Falls-Lot-400-...
Seems like reasonable use of public dollars (~$2.1M) to protect and preserve a public good as public land.