Longview, Town of, Washington

Lake Sacajawea Park is a design feature of the town of Longview, the first master-planned city built in the Northwest. Founded in 1923 by the lumber baron R. A. Long, Longview was the first planned city of its size to be designed and built solely with private funds.  Long operated the lumber mills along the nearby Columbia River, and built this city for the mill workers. Designed according to a classical model, but modified for a car culture, the city has wide boulevards radiating from the civic center, and is ringed by parkways. It took until the post World War II boom to fill in the empty, distinctly-zoned blocks, as many workers opted to live in the cheaper, unplanned, adjacent town of Kelso. Also near downtown is the Nutty Narrows Squirrel Bridge, a rare example of a bridge built to allow squirrels to cross the street safely.