Fairmount – Hendrick’s Park

Within the boundaries of Fairmount Neighbors you’ve got a lot of awesome houses and four lovely parks (Hendrick’s, Fairmount, Mission and Washburne), though the whole neighborhood is pleasantly park-ish. Witness a few flat streets and plenty of hillside, dirt-covered bedrock sloped with mature foliage, a plethora of classic, older homes mixed with stylish ‘50s-‘70s remodels.

Springs come from earth, leaving trickles in the gutters. Limbs hanging with the lichen named Old Man’s Beard reach south and west, growing towards the afternoon sunshine. There must at least be a mild modicum of professor’s, doctors and attorneys living here.

Hendrick’s park is about in the middle of the Fairmount neighborhood and is so gorgeous as to be a focal-point and deserves to be in the name of the area. The Rhododendron Park positioned atop Hendrick’s is jaw-droopingly beautiful when in bloom, and any son who fails to expose the trail-laden landscaping to his visiting mother would be neglect in his careful duties. Views of the city can be seen from the higher vantages of Fairmount, and based on the year and how things have grown a house may have one of these coveted views or it may now. A growing family reaching from the $300,000 purchase range up to $400,000 may have found one of these rare places in the last couple years, a solid, larger home needing some cosmetic attention but ready to take the kids from middle school through to their college years. And then of course there are mossy and forgotten smaller homes, sprinkled in among some regal giants, set on larger lots that look park-like unto themselves.

From this ‘hood drop easily down onto Franklin Boulevard to head downtown, drop easily down onto 24th for South Eugene High School or South Eugene, or take Franklin east just a minute to Interstate 5, or keep going east and head in the summer to a creek or in the winter to nearby skiing. The Ridgeline Trail crosses the higher elevations of Fairmount/Hendricks, is great for trail running/biking, and can deliver a health-conscious Eugenean all the way across southern Eugene to our more westwardly Crest Drive neighborhood, passing Spencer’s Butte along the way.

It’s a sublime area, high on set-back lifestyle, at the marginal borders of our town, but feeling at least partly like an important organ of the creature, somewhere near the heart.