The recorded history here starts with a land claim. In 1851 John Slavin filed a Donation Land Claim on this ground, with a cabin and barn at what is now the junction of Capitol Highway and Sunset Boulevard. For nearly four decades the hillside stayed largely as it was, too steep and too far above the city to develop by ordinary means. Transportation changed that. A cable car climbed Vista Avenue beginning in 1889 and opened Portland Heights to building, and the streetcar that followed carried construction booms through the early 1900s and again in the 1920s. Elevation was the original selling point: a home up here sat above the smoke of the riverfront industries, with the city spread out below it. That logic still explains the shape of the neighborhood, where lots are stacked along ridges to keep the view. Council Crest became a destination in its own right. From 1907 to 1929 an amusement park operated at the summit, reached by streetcar and built in part to sell rides up the hill. Decades later, in 1969, the Portland Heights Preservation League formed to protect the Marquam ravine from development. It was the first neighborhood association in Southwest Portland and the forerunner of today’s Southwest Hills Residential League, which is why so much of the ravine remains parkland rather than lots.