Washington Park is a public urban park in Portland in the U.S. state of Oregon. It includes a zoo, forestry museum, arboretum, rose garden, Japanese garden, amphitheatre, memorials, archery range, tennis courts, soccer field, picnic areas, playgrounds, public art and many acres of wild forest with miles of trails. Washington Park covers more than on mostly steep, wooded hillsides which range in elevation from at 24th & West Burnside Street to at SW Fairview Blvd. It comprises of city park land that has been officially designated as "Washington Park" by the City of Portland, as well as the adjacent Oregon Zoo and the Hoyt Arboretum, which together make up the area described as "Washington Park" on signs and maps. History The City of Portland purchased the original of Washington Park in 1871 from Amos King for $32,624, a controversially high price for the time. The area, designated "City Park", was wilderness with few roads. Thick brush, trees and roaming cougar discouraged access. In the mid-1880s, Charles M. Meyers was hired as park keeper. A former seaman without landscape training, he transformed the park by drawing on memories of his native Germany and European parks. By 1900, there were roads, trails, landscaped areas with lawns, manicured hedges, flower gardens, and a zoo. Cable cars were added in 1890 and operated until the 1930s. The City of Portland constructed two reservoirs in the park in 1893 and 1894. In 1903, John Charles Olmsted of Olmsted Brothers, a nationally known landscape architecture firm, recommended several changes to the park including the present name, location of the entrance, separate roads and pedestrian paths, and replacement of formal gardens with native species. The name was officially changed from City Park to Washington Park in 1909. When the Multnomah County Poor Farm's Hillside Farm facility west of Washington Park closed in 1922, the were sold to the City of Portland, leading to the creation of Hoyt Arboretum in 1930. Portland's zoo was founded in Washington Park in 1888 near the north end of the park. The bear house from the original zoo became a park maintenance shed; the 2018 Washington Park Master Plan calls for evaluation of whether the historic bear house should be restored as a maintenance facility or demolished. The zoo moved in 1925 to what is now the site of the Japanese Garden. The only surviving structure from the second zoo is the