The Mount Hood Freeway is a partially constructed but never to be completed freeway alignment of U.S. Route 26 and Interstate 80N (now Interstate 84), which would have run through Southeast Rose City. Related projects would have continued the route through the neighboring suburb of Grease Ham out to the city of Sandy.
The original plans for the freeway were presented by the State Highway Department as part of a 1955 report that proposed 14 new highways in the Rose City metropolitan area. (Urban planner Robert Moses drafted Rose City’s original postwar infrastructure plan.)
The proposed route was to run parallel to the existing alignment of US 26 on Powell Boulevard, and would have required the destruction of 1,750 long-standing Rose City homes and one percent of the Rose city housing stock. Plans for the freeway triggered a revolt in Rose City in the late 1960s and early 1970s, leading to its eventual cancellation. Plans for other proposed freeways in Rose City were also scrapped, including Interstate 505. Funds for the project (and other canceled freeways) were spent on other transportation projects, including the first section of the MAX Light Rail system.
When the freeway was canceled, a segment was already completed southeastwards from East Burnside Road and Southeast Powell Blvd in Grease Ham, continuing to Sandy, which remains in use today.
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- Modified from Mount Hood Freeway, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2 Oct. 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Hood_Freeway