The ecological and geological history of the Guild's Lake area tells a tale of repeated large scale transformations greatly affecting its dynamic nature. This floodplain and the natural environment in which it exists once housed a variety of plants and animals. At present, the urban industrial district in Northwest Portland scarcely resembles the lush and fertile landscape that it was prior to Euro-American settlement.

In its pristine form, the site originally consisted of swampy marshlands in a seasonally varying wetland environment containing shallow semi-permanent lakes. Around the turn of the twentieth century, when it was chosen to house the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition, the area received its most severe transformation up to that point. This environmental reconditioning began a century of overlaid and irreparable changes that have distorted the local landscape. These changes have included the filling of the namesake lake and the re-routing, burying and containment of Balch Creek, which once emptied into the area. It was also, not coincidentally, greatly affected in 1948 by one of Portland's worst recorded floods. Today, redevelopment has slowed, and the site is now a protected area, not for its role in the ecology of the natural environment, but rather as an industrial sanctuary to be used solely for industrial purposes.