Hi, I’m Jeff Reifman. The concept for Portland Wild emerged from walks around the Portland area, seeing so many beautiful trees and discovering the Heritage Tree program. I thought there should be a photo-driven map that made it easier to find these trees. Gradually, I realized there should be a map for murals too. If not for the podcast 99% Invisible, my awareness of the value of data collection and legacy might not have been as active for me.

As I began preparations, I found Matt Blair at Elsewise Media had already built PDXTrees, a now defunct iOS app, and an iOS app for murals, Public Art PDX. Matt has been incredibly gracious, sharing data and encouraging me to offer a map solution for the public internet, an idea he had hoped to build one day. I’m touched by his openness to supporting a “competitive” solution. Thank you Matt.

Portland Wild is built with Next.js, React, MySQL and the Google Maps API. It was originally built on the Yii Framework for PHP — check out my tutorial series on Yii at Tuts+.

Dedications

Portland Wild is dedicated to my street friends Daniel, Millie and Leroy, and to my friend Jim Feldmann, RIP.

It’s also dedicated to Little Free Library founder and executive director Todd H. Bol, who passed away October 18th, 2018 from pancreatic cancer.

Acknowledgements

I greatly appreciate all of these folks for their support, encouragement and feedings:

• Matt Blair at Elsewise Media, creator of the iOS Public Art PDX and RIP PDXTrees, for sharing his data, knowledge and gracious encouragement.
• The sage of the Heritage Trees, incipient nonagenarian Dr. Phyllis Reynolds, for sharing her Heritage Tree photo collection, and Lyndsay Dyk at Timber Press for helping me find her. You can purchase the current version of Trees of Greater Portland from Powell’s.
• Portland Parks & Recreation Urban Forestry, the Heritage Tree program and esp. Gina Dake.
• Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) esp. Danielle Davis.
• Little Free Library for their amazing, inspiring efforts and for sharing their data.
• Sarah Iannarone, my go-to expert on navigating Portland and getting connected.
• The staff at Sweet Hereafter for keeping my vegan pretzel burger level normal, the staff at the Elevator Cafe for keeping my caffeine properly elevatored, and Olivia at Nourish Northwest for helping me manage my vegan pretzel burgers.

About Jeff Reifman

I’m a writer, activist and technologist. My recent projects include the Black Women in Politics database, America Possible and Meeting Planner. Learn more about me at my website or follow me @reifman. Contact us any time.