The Bridlemile Neighborhood, roughly speaking, reaches from Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy on the south to Patton Rd. on the north, and from Dosch Rd. on the east to Scholls Ferry Rd. on the west. The area along Beaverton-Hillsdale is a mix of commercial and (primarily) multi-family housing. From there, north to Patton is mostly single-family homes.

Beaverton-Hillsdale follows, roughly, the course of Fanno Creek, from its headwaters near Ida B. Wells High School, west to where the highway crosses Oleson Rd.  Fanno Creek runs along the north side of the highway. All the streams draining the neighborhood are tributaries of Fanno, and most have their headwaters in Portland’s West Hills, north of Patton Rd. (Fanno flows into the Tualatin River at Durham, just east of Cook Park.)

Bridlemile Elementary and Hamilton Park are at the heart of the neighborhood. The school’s grounds are adjacent to Hamilton Park on its east. In the park are a softball and soccer field, tennis courts and some children’s play equipment. Hamilton is heavily used for both league and pickup athletic activities such as soccer, softball, lacrosse and tennis. The small playground for young children was created by Bridlemile residents through both fund-raising and “sweat equity.” At the east end of Hamilton Park is a wooded natural area. This is the site of several habitat restoration projects by the Bridlemile Creek Stewards, organized by local residents. Bridlemile Creek flows through these woods.

Bridlemile is a K-5 elementary school in the Portland Public School District, with an average of about 450 students. The Bridlemile PTA hosts many family events throughout the school year including: Harvest Party, Fall Book Fair, School Dance, Missoula Theater Week and Freaky Friday Carnival.

The school and the park are the major gathering places for the neighborhood.

Portland Travel “writes, “The Portland metro area encompasses many traditional village sites, including the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya and Molalla. It includes many other tribes and bands as well.”

The first European-American settlers in Bridlemile were the family of Albert and Nira Kelly. Albert Kelly was a circuit-riding Methodist preacher from Kentucky. Their 640-acre Donation Land Claim was made in 1850. The northern boundary of the claim was where Hamilton Rd. is today; the southern boundary was Vermont St. In 1956, the Kelly’s granddaughter, Hildegarde Plummer Withers offered nine acres of family land to the City of Portland for $25,000. This was the nucleus of what would become Albert Kelly Park.

Albert Kelly Park has a soccer and baseball field, a children’s play area, and a few acres of trees. Prominent among these are two magnificent old Oregon oaks, among the few remaining in the neighborhood. The park is bisected by Restoration Creek, flanked by a wooded corridor. As the stream’s name implies, the corridor is the site of a several year restoration project, initiated by the Bridlemile Creek Stewards, along with Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services and Portland Parks and Rec.

The postwar suburban development that would become Bridlemile grew from the property of Dr. John Powell and his wife Ruth. In the mid-1940s, they purchased acreage of SW Dosch Rd. Mrs. Powell loved to ride, and convinced her husband to create a bridle path, about a mile in circumference, around their property. Thinking of this path, she created the name of the future neighborhood, “Bridlemile.” Some of the streets in the neighborhood are named for their family members. They built their own home here, and decided to sell most of the property for the development of houses, rather than raising horses.

The resulting pattern of development initiated a car-oriented neighborhood, typical of the 1950s and 60s. As such, safe pedestrian and bicycle routes are limited. The main connector streets, Hamilton and Shattuck, require both pedestrians and motorists to pay attention to safety.  The Bridlemile Neighborhood Association has worked with PBOT to improve pedestrian pathway connectivity. A few years ago, Bridlemile volunteers working with Southwest Trails and PBOT rebuild a heavily used trail that connects neighborhood streets to Shattuck Rd.

In the past few years, Bridlemile has developed an active Neighborhood Emergency Team (NET), officially recognized by the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management.

From 2011 to 2019 and in 2022 the Neighborhood Association sponsored National Night Out celebrations in Hamilton Park. In 2021 and 2022 we held a July 4th parade.

This article was adapted from the “Know Your Neighbors – Bridlemile” feature (pages 9 to 12) in the July 2022 issue of the Southwest Neighborhoods, Inc. (SWNI.org) newsletter. It was used with the permission of the author and SWNI president Steve Mullinax. SWNI is an independent, all-volunteer organization working to keep SW Portland livable.