Located NW of Portland, Sauvie Island stretches from Portland to St Helens, lying between the Columbia River and the Multnomah Channel. It is entirely rural. Sturgeon Lake occupies much of the northern half of the island.
A narrow bridge leads from the mainland to Sauvie Island Road, a diketop byway that skims north past houseboats and fruit and dairy farms to Sauvie Island Wildlife Area. Covering the northern half of the island, the area serves as a rest stop for 2 to 3 million migratory wildfowl and as the winter home for more than 150,000 ducks and geese. Tundra swans and sanshill cranes visit during the fall, and great blue herons, wood ducks, beavers and red foxes live at the refuge year-round.
