Cornell Road
Cornell Road is an east–west street and traffic corridor in the Portland metropolitan area, in Multnomah and Washington counties in the U.S. state of Oregon. It crosses the Tualatin Mountains between the Willamette Valley and the city of Portland on the east and the Tualatin Valley and the city of Hillsboro on the west.
Cornell Road runs between the western end of Northwest Lovejoy Street in the Hillside neighborhood of Portland to East Main Street in Hillsboro, passing through unincorporated parts of Washington County and through Beaverton on the way. On the west side of NW 185th Ave, it is called Northeast Cornell Road, as it runs through the northeast quadrant of Hillsboro.
Although intended, on its section within the city of Portland, to be a neighborhood collector street with relatively low traffic volumes, it has often functioned as a major traffic street and commuter highway between downtown Portland and its western suburbs. It shares this role with more intensely busy traffic corridors along West Burnside Street and U.S. Route 26. The road has at least two lanes in each direction the entire length while south of US 26, while those portions north of US 26 are largely one-lane in each direction.
History
The first section of the road was already in existence in the 1850s. It is named for William and Emily Castle Cornell, who moved onto a donation land claim on what is now Cornell Road, just east of the present-day western boundary of Multnomah County, in 1852. William Cornell, a descendant of Thomas Cornell, worked as a preacher and Sunday-school teacher in the Cedar Mill area, in nearby Washington County. Businessman John B. Yeon was the roadmaster as of 1915 for the Portland section, on what was described that year as "delightfully smooth" for the stretch in Portland. Plans for the Pacific Highway from 1917 show Cornell joining it near present-day 185th, with that highway then continuing to downtown Hillsboro. That highway was never built as such, but the alignment is similar to the route followed by U.S. 26 and Cornell's route from approximately 185th Avenue to its western terminus. The section between 185th and 173rd was widened to three lanes in 1981.NW Cornell Road was renamed to NE Cornell Road between Cornelius Pass and 185th as of March 2018.
Mass transit
The main TriMet bus line along Cornell Road is number 48-Cornell. Serving communities on the western side of the West Hills, it has stops between Northwest Cedar Hills Boulevard/Northwest 113th Avenue, in Cedar Mill, and Cornell Road's western terminus in Hillsboro. This bus line continues west from the end of Northeast Cornell Road to the Hillsboro Transit Center, with connections to other bus lines and to the MAX Blue Line, linking Hillsboro to Beaverton, Portland, and other communities by light rail.Other bus lines stopping along shorter segments of Cornell Road include line 62-Murray Blvd., between Northwest Murray Boulevard and Cedar Hills Blvd. The easternmost segment of Cornell, between Northwest Lovejoy Street and Northwest Westover Road in Portland's Hillside neighborhood, is served by bus line 18-Hillside.