Pier Park Disc Golf Course

Pier Park is an 85-acre City of Portland park in the St. Johns neighborhood, acquired in 1920 and named for Stanhope S. Pier, a city commissioner in the late 1920s who later served as acting mayor. Its disc golf course, built in 2002, is the only disc golf course inside Portland city limits — 18 holes at par 54, threaded through a forest of mature Douglas fir and red cedar with genuine elevation change rather than a flat park loop. Friends of Pier Park, a nonprofit, works alongside Portland Parks & Recreation and the volunteer group Stumptown Disc Golf to maintain it, including a fundraising tournament (Frisbee Friends) that has paid for tee pad benches and other improvements.

Because it's the only course in a city of Portland's size, it gets busy — local coverage notes regulars try to tee off before about 9 a.m. on a nice day to skip a line at the first hole, and a local club has spent years lobbying the city for a second course to spread out demand. The course runs an alternate 'winter' layout from November through May, closing some holes and opening others to give wet hillside and valley ground a rest during the rainy season; par holds at 54 on both layouts. It's free to play with no tee times, and in spring the fairways fill in with flowering rhododendrons.