Located off the Eastbank Esplanade near Hawthorne Bridge, this Portland beach has been a work in progress for many years. With the help of our volunteer Beach Brigade, HAP has removed 50 yards of concrete, rip rap, glass and debris from the beach. In July and August of 2025, we hosted the Tuesday Splashdown which brought close to 200 people down to the beach each week.

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, we have “UnRocked the Bowl” moving over 50 tons of rip wrap from the rivers edge to create a beach area at Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Next on tap - redeveloping this space into a world class, toe's in the river, water edge park that facilitates robust activation.

In 2014, HAP helped forge a path to a semihidden Willamette River beach under the Marquam Bridge nicknamed Poet’s Beach. It is now Portland’s first official beach, and is 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.