Crossing Wallace Road at Second Street and Studying a Brush Fire Recovery: West Salem Bits

A couple of meetings for West Salem have items of interest this week.

WSRAB agenda for Wednesday

On Wednesday the 5th in the morning, the West Salem Redevelopment Advisory Board will revisit the concept and challenges for an at-grade crossing across Wallace Road at Second Street, the former railroad alignment and current termination of the Union Street Bridge pathway.

ODOT letter September 2015

You will recall that ODOT has opposed this strongly.

Nevertheless they had a temporary crossing there this summer, and unsurprisingly it was a big hit.

WSRAB and City Council should push back and advocate strongly for a crossing here. It is completely logical and follows intuitively from the path and former rail alignment.

Salem, Falls City & Western Line, 1915 USGS map

WSRAB will also discuss the "Edgewater Parkway sidewalk." That might mean the path along Highway 22. Perhaps more will come out on that.

Recently see:

• "New Paving and Sidewalks on Wallace at Edgewater Feature Green Crossbikes"
• "The Edgewater Path along Highway 22 and Interpretation of R. S. Wallace"
• "WSRAB Hears about Crossing Wallace Road at Second Street and Path to Union St Bridge"
• "New Ramps on Wallace Road Lead to Nowhere"

Part of a summary on a Oak Savanna study

Separately, the West Salem Neighborhood Association meets in the evening also on Wednesday the 5th. In last month's minutes was an interesting summary of a recent brush fire and plans to study the recovery over the next few years.

The summary mentions collaboration with Willamette University students. It is silent on any Tribal collaboration, and perhaps that's another avenue that will develop.

This summer anthropologist David Lewis visited Minto Park to follow the Camas fields. He thought a lot about the role of cultural fire. (See "Seasonal Wetlands and Minto-Brown Island Park" and "Camas and Micro-seasonality at Minto-Brown Park.")

Fire has been a big issue of late and many studies have moved to looking at cultural fire as an answer to the problems of maintaining traditional landscapes. This seems important and critical. Its clear that there are numerous blockades to making this happen but many studies are now being done to record the effect of fire on the land, how it can be used safely, and the benefits to society as a whole. It is hoped that with enough evidence that we will being to change minds and be able to implement cultural fires as a land stewardship method. Essentially these efforts are rebuilding the conditions of the early 19th century when cultural fire was the norm. The tribes set fires annually for many purposes and those cultural fires help steward the environment for all peoples, even settlers....

For Minto-Brown - there is no fire season, and the City of Salem has yet to adopt cultural fire management, they normally mow the fields. This is an artificial human-made condition because it would be normal to have a fire there at regular intervals. It would be interesting to see if the return of fire management to Minto-Brown would stress the thistle and blackberries and other undesirable to the point where they become less intrusive. The native plants, camas, tarweed, and mallows, are adapted to fire management after thousands of years of cultural fires set by Kalapuyans, so they will survive fine and perhaps thrive better. Interestingly Minto-Brown is perfectly situated for cultural fire, without much housing crowding the park and with much of the park overgrown with invasives, blackberries, English ivy, and now scotch broom coming back. Mowing does nothing to control invasives and may in fact help them by eliminating or interrupting the seasons of native plants.

This local study in West Salem could help build support for a new policy employing strategic controlled burns in the urban environment. It promises to be very interesting!