The pathway courses 100 feet (30 m) above Oregon City and features the Grand Staircase and the man-made Singer Creek Falls.

[4] According to the National Park Service, Singer Hill Bluff had been inhabited by various Native American tribes, predominately the Molala (or Molalla) people, several thousand years before the arrival of the settlers of European ancestry.

[6][7] The linear 7.8-acre (3.2 ha) McLoughlin Promenade is composed of the natural features on Singer Hill Bluff, and the man-made structures created by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) 1936–1939.

Oregon's State Emergency Relief Agency (SERA) was purposed to provide assistance for the unemployed, and the WPA was a government jobs creation program during the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, that included historic preservation, programs in the arts, and building or improving infrastructure such as parks.

[12] The side of the pathway that overlooks the city features 1,400 linear feet of basalt barrier walls and posts of varying heights.

[13] The north end of the pathway adjoins the Grand Staircase, which was constructed along Singer Hill Trail, a route used by these indigenous peoples as they traveled to and from the Willamette River.

The east leg turns towards an illuminated pedestrian underpass, after which that direction of the staircase rises two flights to the McLoughlin House historic site.