Located off the Eastbank Esplanade near the Hawthorne Bridge, Audrey McCall Beach was once a neglected stretch of riverfront littered with concrete, trash, and riprap. Over the years, HAP and our volunteer Beach Brigade transformed it into a true city beach—removing more than 50 yards of debris, adding a swim ladder to the dock, and introducing a trail and stairways to the river. In summer 2025, our Tuesday Splashdown events brought nearly 200 people to the beach each week, celebrating a new era of river access in Portland's Central Eastside neighborhood.

HAP privately fundraised to hire landscape architecture firm MIG to re-envision this dock as a non-motorized swim dock. Pulling examples from similar facilities around the world, HAP made a strong case for swimming use. As a result, the City of Portland committed to making Duckworth Dock a world-class urban swimming site – open to fishing and non-motorized boating. MIG’s work has received national attention including a design award from ASLA Oregon and a feature in Landscape Architecture magazine. Learn more here!

Since 2012, HAP has “UnRocked the Bowl,” removing over 50 tons of riprap from the river’s edge to create a beach at Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Next up: transforming this space into a world-class, toes-in-the-river waterfront park designed for vibrant public use and year-round connection to the Willamette. Learn more here.

In 2014, HAP helped forge a path to a semihidden Willamette River beach under the Marquam Bridge nicknamed Poet’s Beach. It became Portland’s first official beach, and served as the launch point for The Big Float. Stones along the path are engraved with children’s poems from the Honoring Our Rivers anthology, and native Chinook words from the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.