Bundy’s Baths and Windemuth Portland Swimming Holes

From 1898 to 1924, the Willamette River close to Ross Island, south of downtown Portland, was a preferred place to swim, dive, canoe, and play within the water. Two common and celebrated venues, Bundy’s Baths and Windemuth, supplied fenced entry to the river in the course of the summer time months, providing a measure of privateness for bathers and swim lessons. The personal swimming holes have been utilized by tens of hundreds of Portlanders till the Nineteen Twenties, when waste and residue from sewage, pulp mills, and meals packing crops overwhelmed the Willamette River and closed the river to swimming. The demise of Bundy’s and Windemuth signaled the top of that period’s love affair with the river.

Bundy’s Baths—the place Portlanders met the river

Bundy’s Baths was a set of fixing rooms, a snack bar, and gathering areas constructed on floats and pilings anchored to the east financial institution of the Willamette River on the foot of at present’s Ross Island Bridge. The construction was opened in summer time 1898 by Captain Thomas Bundy, a British-born boat builder, swimming advocate, and part-time actual property speculator who got here to Portland in 1893. Bundy constructed fencing alongside the financial institution and into the river to offer some privateness for swimmers, notably for younger girls. Members of the Multnomah Athletic Club first frequented the “swimming hole,” and it quickly took off with most of the people.

During its peak of operation in August 1915, Bundy’s Baths rented out 1,300 swimming fits a day and served greater than 40,000 individuals. In 1908, the Oregonian reported: “‘Have a swim at Bundy’s’ soon became a summer salutation among Portland’s society folks…. At times, the place was so crowded that the captain was forced to reserve certain hours for “particular patrons.” Bundy died in 1908, however his baths continued to be common till the late 1910s below the administration of Joe Valentine, a longtime worker whom Bundy referred to as his “adopted son.” The cleanliness of the river and competitors from the close by Windemuth swimming gap led to the baths’ closure in 1920.

Windemuth: “The most popular resort in the city”

Windemuth operated from 1911-1924 as a large floating platform off the northern tip of Ross Island and featured a pool, dance pavilion, and an open-air gymnasium. The swimming resort took its identify from a small subdivision of heaps platted alongside SE Woodward Street the place the Ross Island Bridge is at present. Boasting “open river and tank swimming,” Windemuth marketed its location as more healthy than shore-based bathing websites due to the free-flowing, cleaner water within the river’s mid-channel.

Getting to Windemuth was a part of the journey. Because the large picket platform was afloat, its operators supplied a free launch service from the foot of Woodward Street on the east riverbank—conveniently accessed from the Brooklyn Streetcar—and from Favorites Boathouse, a preferred place to hire and launch canoes on the west finish of the previous Morrison Bridge. Patrons might additionally paddle their very own craft to the resort.

Competitive open-water swimming {and professional} diving have been common pastimes in the course of the early 1900s, and well-known water athletes from throughout the nation visited Windemuth to race, dive, and carry out as crowds watched and cheered. “Fancy diving” competitions and different swimming occasions notably appealed to younger Portlanders, however swimmers of all ages frequented Windemuth.

On summer time evenings, Windemuth turned a preferred dance venue that includes stay music and a picket dance flooring fabricated from maple. An commercial from June 1920 referred to the occasions as “Dance[s] of Delight: If you haven’t experienced the exhilarating thrill and novelty of dancing to the strains of a wonderful orchestra out on the gentle rolling Willamette—you still have much to live and long for.”

The finish of river swimming

In August 1923, the Lents Trunk Sewer—a five-mile lengthy, 4-foot by 5-foot tunnel—started draining uncooked sewage from 30,000 properties as far east as Foster Road and emptying it into the river at Harney Street, simply upstream from Windemuth. Sewage was already being discharged by metropolis sewers upstream on the west facet of the river, together with waste from industrial operations. In 1923, Portland had 23 outfall sewers that drained the town’s uncooked sewage straight into the Willamette River.

In the summer time of 1924, public concern was on the rise about water high quality and the protection of swimming at Windemuth. That June, when proprietor John Jennings utilized to relicense his swimming resort for its tenth 12 months, Portland City Council balked and took extra time to research water assessments. By mid-July, the outcomes confirmed the best ranges of fecal coliform micro organism that had ever been recorded for the Willamette River.

On Sunday, July 27, 1924, Windemuth voluntarily closed, by no means to reopen. The homeowners had hopes of reopening in 1925 or relocating onto dry land on the north finish of Ross Island with a large tank crammed with nicely water; however by then, development of the Ross Island Bridge was underway, and the injury had been finished to Portlanders’ sense of confidence in swimming within the Willamette. Jennings died in 1927, and the imaginative and prescient for a renewed Windemuth died with him.

Portland’s uncooked sewage continued to be discharged into the Willamette River and Columbia Slough till 1952, when the town established a main sewage therapy plant. Industrialization and the passage of time have since erased all traces of each venues, each bodily and from dwelling reminiscence. But their reputation as well-loved summer time points of interest is documented in tons of of reports tales, pictures, and ads that convey the function they performed in Portlanders’ relationship with the Willamette in the course of the 1910s and Nineteen Twenties.