Witch's Castle (Stone House, Macleay Park Shelter)

The stone ruin now widely known as the Witch's Castle stands on the Lower Macleay Trail in Portland's Forest Park, on land that pioneer settler Danford Balch claimed in the 1850s. Balch became the central figure in one of the Oregon Territory's most notorious early criminal cases: on November 8, 1858, after a bitter dispute over his teenage daughter Anna's elopement with hired hand Mortimer Stump, Balch fatally shot Stump with a double-barreled shotgun on the deck of the Stark Street Ferry. After escaping custody and hiding in the woods on his claim, Balch was recaptured and hanged on October 17, 1859, in what is generally documented as the first legal execution in the Oregon Territory.

The Balch property eventually passed out of the family's hands. In 1897, Scottish-born Portland businessman Donald Macleay donated a portion of the surrounding canyon-land to the City of Portland on the condition that the city create a park; the parcel became Macleay Park, later incorporated into Forest Park, one of the largest urban forest parks in the United States.

The stone structure itself dates to 1929-1936. The Portland Bureau of Parks commissioned architect Ernest F. Tucker to design a small public toilet, pavilion, and storage building for Lower Macleay, and the structure was constructed by Works Progress Administration crews in the mid-1930s. The Columbus Day Storm of October 12, 1962, damaged the building's water line; the city opted not to fund repairs, and the shelter was abandoned. Over the following decades, weather, moss, and forest reclamation turned the roofless stone shell into one of Portland's most photographed ruins.

The 'Witch's Castle' nickname, according to Wikipedia and the Forgotten Portland local-history project, was coined in the 1980s by area high-school students who used the ruin as an after-dark hangout. The site sits a short hike from the Lower Macleay trailhead and is now a heavily visited stop on Forest Park outings.