Ambling along the trails of Forest Park, you come to expect a lot of things: lush green forest, tranquil streams, insects and animals rustling in the brush.

Coming across the ruins of the Stone House is a pleasant surprise, but finding it covered with graffiti is a surprise that's dividing local hikers.

The Stone House (sometimes known as the Witches Castle) is the remains of a two-story public restroom, built in the mid-1930s by the Works Progress Administration. After the 1962 Columbus Day Storm took out the water line to the restroom, city officials decided to gut the structure instead of making costly repairs.

Since then, Portland Parks and Recreation notes, it's been a popular spot to rest at the junction of the Wildwood and Lower Macleay Trails. It's also been a popular spot for recent vandalism, leaving the stone structure covered in spray paint.

But whether that's an atrocity or an attraction depends on who you ask - and possibly where that person is from.

LOVE IT OR HATE IT

To Jeanna Hall, the Stone House is an eyesore. It's not the actual structure she can't stand but the colorful spray paint that covers almost every inch of it.

"To say I was outraged would be an understatement," she said, after hiking by it this spring. "I was just completely amazed by how badly it was defaced, just completely covered."

Hall, a longtime Portland resident and regular hiker in city parks, said she considered the Stone House a sort of landmark, one of the places she looks forward to seeing along the Wildwood Trail. She hadn't been by in a while, so seeing the graffiti was jarring.

"I think it's really unfortunate that it just can't look like something that belongs on your hike," she said. "It puts a damper on your experience."

Her opinion is likely shared by many locals, who have grown to love the iconic structure. But Portland tourists hiking by on their way to Pittock Mansion may not share the animosity.

On any given spring or summer day, the Stone House is swarming with people, their cameras and cell phones out, smiling for photos on top of the ruins. If you haven't seen the structure in its increasing stages of graffiti, it might seem like a normal part of the attraction.

Timo Weiland and Jeff Petriello, who were recently visiting Portland for the first time from Brooklyn, stopped by to take pictures on their way through the park. To them, the graffiti was no reason for outrage.

"I actually kind of like it," Petriello said. "But I have no background into what this actually is."

Weiland said he liked the bright colors and some of the positive messages painted onto the walls, like one that reads "I am the one who loves you." He said coming across the Stone House was "unexpected, for sure," but a pleasant surprise along the hike.

Both men admitted that part of their appreciation for the graffiti comes from living in Brooklyn, where spray painted walls are more common than forested trails. Still, without any information, the Stone House was just another abandoned building, taken over by vandals. They liked it.

But while opinions may be divided between some tourists and locals, there is one place where the graffiti finds no love at all: Portland Parks and Recreation, which is set on cleaning up the place - if they can.

'A CONSIDERABLE CHALLENGE'

Make no mistake: Portland Parks and Recreation is well aware of the Stone House graffiti. Knowing it's a problem is one thing, but removing the spray paint is a much bigger issue.

"Bringing a fair amount of water (needed for such a paint removal project) to this location is a considerable challenge, as the Stone House is 0.86 mile from the closest trailhead on a steep trail," parks spokesman Mark Ross wrote in an email.

Furthermore, the structure is right next to the serene Balch Creek, a habitat for native cutthroat trout. That means officials will need to be especially careful with any runoff from the cleanup effort.

The department is currently in talks with the Portland Office of Graffiti Abatement, Ross said, to find a way to remove the graffiti and possibly repaint the structure with an anti-graffiti coating.

"Ideally, we would prefer to remove the graffiti and leave the natural stone face. If that does not work, we can consider painting over it," he explained.

The parks department is in a tricky spot. Any cleanup effort that doesn't include some kind of abatement plan - be it coating the structure or handing out citations - will likely be a temporary fix, turning back the clock to repeat the process later.

That wouldn't be good enough for locals like Hall, who want to see the structure cleaned up and preserved.

"I just still feel that leaving it in such a really terrible condition like that, I wish there was something else you could do," she said. "If nothing else, I just would like there to be some way of understanding that it's just not acceptable to deface property."

--Jamie Hale | jhale@oregonian.com | @HaleJamesB