Q – What is the milepost 5 stone on SE Stark Street?
A – Here is the short answer. This obelisk-shaped stone is a wayfinding tool, also called a milestone or a milemarker. Historically, they were put up along roads to indicate the distance to or from a particular place. Here, the “P” stands for Portland, and the “5” stands for the distance from that place.
This milepost is one of 15 erected at one-mile intervals along SE Stark Street. Nine survive, but not necessarily in their original locations. Milepost 5 may have been moved around during later street construction, but it is still approximately five miles from downtown Portland.
The Milepost 5 marker is listed in the Portland Historical Landmark inventory, which places its installation date as 1854, the same year Stark Street was created. In that year, the Clackamas County Commission, in response to a property owner’s petition, approved the construction of a dirt road from the Willamette to the Sandy River. It followed the base line surveyed for the Territory of Oregon in 1851 and became known as Base Line Road (now SE Stark Street).
Mileposts or milestones have a long history, dating back to the Roman Empire. The ancient Romans erected them along important roads at one-mile intervals, which for them was 1,000 double paces (.9 of our mile). Milestones were also used in Britain from the Middle Ages on.
This 1741 British milestone has a truncated obelisk shape like the ones found along Stark Street. Source: Alan Rosevear article in Milestones & Waymarkers, vol. 1, 2004
Milestones were used in America from colonial times until the early 20th century. Colonial Postmaster Benjamin Franklin wanted these markers on post roads to improve mail service efficiency. In Oregon, the importance of mile markers for wayfinding was encoded into territorial law. In the 1850s, Oregon laws required mileposts on territorial roads and made it a crime to remove or destroy milestones, mileboards, or guideboards.
By the 1920s, the old mileposts were being replaced with modern standardized road signs. But on our freeways, we still apply the old Roman system of identifying distance in relation to a significant destination.
This is part of a new segment at Montavilla News called Montavilla History Questions Answered. If you have questions about Montavilla’s past that you’d like answered, local historian Patricia Sanders will investigate your question. Please email your questions to history@montavilla.net and we may feature it alongside Patricia Sanders’ research in a future post on this page.