Much like its architect, Driftwood Castle will disappear soon with the rising river. Within a few months, the swelling tributary will undo the architecture and sweep away its remnants — if Portland Parks and Recreation doesn’t get to it first.
In late summer, people walking on the beach in Kelley Point Park along the Willamette River noticed a strange phenomenon. Someone was constructing a building out of driftwood.
Don Rouzie walks the beach nearly every day with his dog and was one of the early spectators to the growing architecture.
“There’s always something new added,” Rouzie said.
Then, without ceremony, the man disappeared in early November, leaving his structure.
No one could say where he went.
The architect
The architect, described as “blonde, young, really healthy and tan” by Rouzie, introduced himself to Rouzie as a man named Miles. Another passerby, Jacque Fitzgerald, said the architect introduced himself as Niles, while local kids have taken to calling him “the Driftwood Wizard.”
“He's one of these guys who comes across as being very positive and really excited about existing,” Rouzie said. “He's very exuberant.”
“He was just so generous with his time and energy with me,” Fitzgerald remarked.
“A gift of beauty like that — that we get to share collectively — can be so humanizing for everyone.”
Rouzie and Fitzgerald never caught the man’s last name or where he had come from, though they recounted conversations with the man about his fort, dubbed “Driftwood Castle” by a wooden carved sign hung aloft from the fort. The sign has since been stolen, according to Rouzie.
Rouzie said the architect had a friend who helped him build new additions to the castle on occasion, a man named “Dave” who, by Rouzie’s account, used to work for the city as a surveyor, lives in St. Johns and drives a motorcycle. Rouzie didn’t know Dave’s last name or how to reach him, and Street Roots was unable to locate Dave at the time of publication.
Rouzie wondered what the architect did before appearing on the beach.
“I think the guy's like a natural architect — either that or an artist — one or both,” Rouzie said. “And an engineer, sort of a Renaissance thing.”
Rouzie could only speculate. The architect never told him whether he was formally trained or not.
Behind the castle, a path of carefully placed driftwood constituted a fenced lane into a small grove in the woods. Rouzie and Fitzgerald said the architect had a red tent he lived in there, but the grove is now empty, save for a t-shirt hanging on a branch and a few marks in the sand where a tent once sat.
Driftwood Castle
The mysterious architect confounded and impressed onlookers as the castle grew room by room, standing an impressive nearly 15 feet in height and approximately 20-to-30 feet in length. The architect added at least two other rooms, including a “kitchen” where he cooked over a fire, a staircase with a loft above, a see-saw for children to play on and three couches for walkers to sit on and watch the sunset.
“They're really quite comfortable,” Rouzie said of the couches.
Some additions are kept sturdy by pressure and the fit of the wood alone.
“Like, this is a good example,” Rouzie said, pointing at a long wooden beam stretching horizontally across the length of the castle and fitting through another Y-forked beam standing vertically in the sand to create the support for the side of the structure. “This is a piece that goes straight up more or less. It doesn't have to go straight up perfectly to support this, which comes over here to support this over here. That's just amazing.”
Other portions of the castle are held together by driftwood beams “lashed together by cedar bark that he soaks in the river,” Rouzie said. After soaking the bark, the architect “then stretches it or something and then uses it as lashing.”
Once the lashing dries around the beams, Rouzie said it holds the pieces together tightly.
Once, a few passersby offered to pay the architect for the experience, likened to an “art installation” by Fitzgerald. But the architect was hesitant to accept the payment, Fitzgerald recalls.
“I think he was really at a place of like, ‘I just want this to be a gift,’” Fitzgerald said.
Along the back, string lights without electricity line the nooks and crannies as decoration. A lone blue boogie board leans against the side, and driftwood steps lead up to a loft where castle-goers can look down on the beach and across the river at boats making the journey to and from the port.
Inside the main conical room, the architect built a “shrine to nature,” as he called it, according to Rouzie. An abandoned beehive hangs in one corner, a folder of bird feathers in another. He placed bits and bobs he had collected from the beach and yard sales he drifted through in St. Johns on a wooden altar.
“That's how he met (Dave),” Rouzie explained. Dave held a yard sale, and the architect showed up looking for things to add to his shrine.
Fitzgerald said the conical room, the centerpiece of the castle, was the first to undergo construction.
“He had a hernia,” she said. “He had some kind of rupture at one point and was in a lot of pain, and that structure actually provided him a space to rest. And then he started building out around it.”
Rouzie recalls the man saying he had once built a similar structure on a beach in Florida with his father. Fitzgerald recalls him saying he’s built driftwood buildings all across the Oregon Coast.
“First, he thought it was a distraction for him to not have to be with his pain,” Fitzgerald said the architect told her. “But he also said it's been a way for him to be with his pain and create something out of it.”
Fitzgerald said the architect told her, in addition to his injury, he lost everything in the last couple of years.
“He wasn't living in Oregon originally,” Fitzgerald said. “He came from somewhere else but made his way out to the Oregon coast and actually started building driftwood structures out there and then somehow landed in Kelly Point Park and started doing the same.”
Rising river
Now it’s November, and the construction of Driftwood Castle has unexpectedly halted. Rouzie and Fitzgerald and other regular visitors to the castle haven’t seen the architect.
“It’s been about 10 days,” Rouzie said Nov. 16 regarding the last time he’d seen the architect.
Fitzgerald last saw him on Nov. 9.
“There was a blue tarp over there,” Rouzie said, pointing at a top piece of the structure that’s now bare. “That kept out the rain when it rained for a week solid, but then that disappeared. I haven't seen Miles here.”
No one could say where the architect had gone. With the weather turning colder and the river steadily rising with winter swells, the architect told Rouzie and Fitzgerald it would be time for him to move on soon.
“I do remember him saying that he was going to have to move soon,” Fitzgerald said. “I just hoped it wouldn’t be so soon.”
The architect told Fitzgerald he would leave information about his move on the castle, but Street Roots couldn’t find any hint as to where the architect had gone.
The massive Driftwood Castle stands complete, save for the sign carrying its name and a few items from the architect’s “shrine to nature” that Rouzie said were stolen.
As the change in seasons chased “the Driftwood Wizard” — Miles or Niles depending on who’s recounting their experience — from the area, so too will it chase the Driftwood Castle. Within a few months, the Willamette River will pull the multi-use art installation, engineering feat, shelter, seating area and local destination toward its churning depths.
The river will be at its highest in late winter and early spring, according to Rouzie. By run-off in March, it’ll definitely be above the couch housed inside the conical structure by then, Rouzie said.
Before time and nature can take its course, though, Portland Parks and Recreation plans to remove the castle.
“Portland Parks (and) Recreation staff have observed a structure which appears to have been made out of driftwood in the area of Kelly Point Park,” Mark Ross, Portland Parks and Recreation public information officer, told Street Roots. “It does not appear to be occupied and will be removed.”
Ross did not tell Street Roots when they would remove the structure or why they were doing so.
Those fascinated by the tale of Driftwood Castle or locals who walk the beach daily will have just that — a tale, at least until another driftwood construction forms along another coast, perhaps in summer when the architect reemerges.
“He did also talk about wanting to do more of them,” Fitzgerald said.
Despite the lack of knowledge about the architect — where he came from, where he went, his name, or why he built the castle — Fitzgerald said the experience alone of discovering Driftwood Castle and her conversation with its architect was valuable.
“I think it's important that people don't need to do sensational things to be seen,” Fitzgerald said, “A gift of beauty like that — that we get to share collectively — can be so humanizing for everyone.”
Editor’s note: Jacque Fitzgerald provides contract services to Street Roots unrelated to editorial content.
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