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Michael C. Taylor
Oregon native Michael Taylor has been a Portland resident for about eight years longer than "Packy," the Oregon Zoo's most famous elephant. Fortunately for friends and family, he is smaller, more peaceful, and eats less. He has walked, hiked, backpacked, cross-country skied, rock-climbed, caved, and bicycled in all parts of the state and throughout the Northwest. His interest in Portland and Northwest history is long-standing, and his library has now reached such mythic proportions that family members refuse to deal with transporting any books or paper ephemera during a move to new quarters.
He graduated from Marylhurst University with a BA in Communications and has published articles and contributed towards cultural research projects on the Northwest and on purebred dogs.
His interest in the Columbia River Highway intensified in the early 1980s when he began to research and retrace the path of the original road from Biggs Junction to Astoria. The lower half of the highway, long forgotten while the upper half received historic designation, was a particularly challenging project. Generous cooperation from the Oregon Department of Transportation, various county historic societies and individuals resulted in the long-awaited documentation of a forgotten part of Oregon's transportation history.
