Stride StoriesRunning tour · portland
Square to the City of Books
1.9 mi run
How it works. Press start and go. As you reach each place, a narrator tells its story, timed to your pace. Your music drops down while a story plays and comes back after. Tours download to your phone and play without a connection.
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The stories on this route
Pioneer Courthouse Square
Look down. The bricks under your feet carry names. We'll come back to those.
Portlandia
Look up above the entrance: a kneeling copper woman with a trident, reaching down from her perch, about forty feet up. She's Portlandia. The architect Michael Graves conceived and named her as part of his design for this building.
Mill Ends Park
Look in the median strip for a tiny circle, about two feet across, with a single small tree. That's Mill Ends Park, the smallest urban park in the United States. For decades Guinness called it the smallest park in the world, until a park in Japan took the title in 2025.
Portland Oregon White Stag Sign
Look up at the rooftop sign facing the bridge: an outline of Oregon, the words Portland Oregon, and a leaping stag on top. It greets traffic coming into downtown across the Willamette.
Lan Su Chinese Garden
Look at the high, plain walls along the length of the block, with tiled roofs and upturned eaves rising above them. Inside is Lan Su Chinese Garden. It fills the whole block.
Powell's City of Books
This bookstore fills the whole city block. Powell's City of Books claims to be the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world. Inside, there's more than 68,000 square feet of retail floor, about 1.6 acres, and over 3,500 sections.
Stories researched October 2026 · every fact checked against a source
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