// WRITTEN HISTORY

Background. On Halloween night 1990 a group of Portland skateboarders unloaded bags of quick-set concrete in an unused parking lot beneath the east end of the Burnside Bridge and began pouring transitions against the bridge's main wall. They had no permission, no city involvement, and no plan for what came next. The pours continued through the early 1990s. Each weekend added another section: a small bowl, a hip, a wall ride, a pump bump. The geometry was set by what worked under skating rather than by any drafted design. Skaters built, repaired, and modified the park continuously, and the city of Portland — initially hostile — gradually accepted Burnside's existence and folded it into the public-space conversation through the mid-1990s. The park has never received municipal construction funding and remains community-funded and community-maintained. Burnside is the template every modern DIY skatepark references. The model — unauthorised construction followed by community defence and de-facto legalisation — has been replicated in dozens of cities worldwide. Wall Street Journal in 2009 credited Burnside with transforming Portland into "the skateboarding capital of the world."

// MODIFICATION HISTORY

• // OCT 31, 1990 — First concrete pour. Builders unknown by name but the night is documented.
• Portland city government formally accepts Burnside as a public skatepark after years of de-facto acceptance.