Salem Willamette riverfront
— a carousel and a globe at the river's edge.
Not only on a wall.
“A long green park along the east bank of the Willamette where the river bends through downtown Salem. The carousel runs every day a child wants it to, and the Eco-Earth Globe, a mosaic-covered former pulp-mill acid ball, sits where the riverwalk meets the lawn. A pedestrian bridge crosses west to Minto-Brown Island and a quieter set of trails. The Willamette Queen sternwheeler still docks at the south end.
Salem Willamette riverfront, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Riverfront Park is a 26-acre city park on the east bank of the Willamette in downtown Salem, the Oregon state capital. It was built in stages from 1980 onward on land reclaimed from a former paper-mill site. The park runs about half a mile between the Center Street and Marion Street bridges, and joins Minto-Brown Island Park across the river by way of the Peter Courtney Minto Island Pedestrian Bridge, which opened in 2017. The Willamette here flows north toward the Columbia confluence about sixty miles downstream.
The Willamette at Salem runs roughly two hundred feet wide and reaches the Columbia River 84 miles to the north. Flow at the USGS Salem gauge averages around 8,000 cubic feet per second across the year, with winter floods pushing higher and late summer dropping under 4,000. From the park you can see the Marion Street and Center Street bridges to the north, and the Union Street Railroad Bridge, a 1912 truss converted to a pedestrian crossing in 2009, just upstream.
The Salem Riverfront Carousel opened in June 2001 with 42 hand-carved horses and figures, all donated and named after Salem families. Admission to the park is free; the carousel charges a small per-ride fee and stays open most days into the early evening. The Gerry Frank Salem Rotary Amphitheater hosts free summer concerts on the lawn. A.C. Gilbert's Discovery Village, named for the Salem-born inventor of the Erector Set, sits at the north end of the park and welcomes children most days of the year.