History of Portland

History of Portland

Like many fertile banks and rivers along the West Coast, Portland's first inhabitants were bands of Native Americans. Dating back to more than 10,000 years ago, indigenous tribes created complex thriving communities where they lived off and traded the various natural resources. Thanks to the networks of rivers, including the mighty Columbia, one such resource of abundance was salmon. Tribes such as the Chinook based their entire economies and cultures upon the cycles of salmon runs.

By the late 1700s into the early 1800s, Europeans began to descend from the West, while the famed Lewis and Clark expedition opened up the portal that began to draw settlers from the East. The British Hudson Bay Company, looking to find permanence and expand its fur-trading empire-in-the-making, founded Fort Vancouver, a settlement that resided in the Portland metropolitan area then known as Oregon Country.

With growing interest in the beauty and bounty of the West, both the Oregon Trail and the Barlow Road passages enabled the first large wave of pioneers to create settlements in the early 1840s. As legend has it, two such pioneers were William Overton and Asa Lovejoy. Overton was particularly impressed by the region's commercial prospects and set his sights on obtaining land. Unable to subsidize the 25 to file a land claim for the 640-acre site, he borrowed the quarter from Lovejoy in return for half of the claim. They cleared trees, built roads, and constructed this area's first buildings.

The next phase of the region's evolution arrived after Overton sold his portion of their joint claim to former shopkeeper and would-be developer Frances Pettygrove. When it came time to name their new settlement in 1845, Lovejoy and Pettygrove disagreed on what they wanted. Lovejoy, a Massachusetts native wanted "Boston," while Pettygrove, from Maine, preferred "Portland." To settle the matter, they did a coin toss -- best of three -- in which Pettygrove prevailed.

From the time Pettygrove and Lovejoy built a log store on the southeast corner of Front and Washington, growth moved quickly. Tanneries, saw mills, and even an oxen-driven mill wagon serving as the first public transportation system had been established. By the end of that decade, Portland had 800 residents. The Oregon Territory was officially formed in 1848. It was a vast chunk of real estate that included land north of California all the way south of Canada. Through the help of Congress and the passage of the Oregon Land act, every man or woman became entitled to 320 acres.

With the first of three transcontinental railroads reaching Portland in 1883, the city's fate of becoming a major trading hub was further solidified. In 1887 the Morrison Bridge -- not the one visible today, which replaced the original in 1958 -- had been built across the Willamette River. With more arrivals came more neighborhoods and annexations: by 1900, Portland had become the Northwest's largest city with a population of nearly 100,000. However, it was the nearly 1.5 million visitors that came over the course of several months to take part in the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in 1905, which spurred the next major growth wave. Portland's population doubled in the next five years.

A drive around the city, particularly in the Northeast or Northwest areas, and you'll see the beautiful Victorian-, Edwardian-, and Colonial-style homes built during this time. The Pittock Mansion, one of the most notable, still-standing depictions of Portland's development is now a public museum fully furnished with period artifacts. Belonging to lumber, real estate, and publishing magnates Henry and Georgiana Pittock, and completed in 1914, the 46-acre estate is nestled 1,000 feet directly above the city.

Remarkably, by the mid-1920s, nine of Portland's existing bridges had already been built, including the Steel, Hawthorne, Broadway, Interstate, Sellewood, Burnside, Ross Island, and Vista bridges. Due to the first and then second world wars, and the demand for an army of 100,000 workers to meet demands at the Kaiser Company, one of the largest shipbuilding operations in the world, Portland continued its iconic stature as a place for prosperity.

Ever-progressive even then, Portland housed many of these workers -- roughly 40,000 of them -- in Vanport, what was considered the first public housing project ever built in the United States. Unfortunately a flood later destroyed Vanport and left many of its residents displaced. The instant swell in homeless coupled with continued regional growth over the next decade prompted the expansion into suburbia. Portland's largest suburbs -- Gresham, Beaverton, and Hillsboro -- saw the biggest increases in residents.

By the late 1960s into the early 1970s, government stepped in to exercise the people's will and preserve the place Portlanders knew was special. It is because of the grassroots efforts coupled by what visionary politicians set in motion during this time that Portland is the city it is today. Under Governor Tom McCall, land conservation policies were adopted, including the creation of an urban growth boundary. Under this policy, high-density development was focused in designated urban areas and firm restrictions were placed on farmland. This approach was counter to what most cities across America of this size and growth rate were experiencing: as automobile use became more engrained into suburban culture, most people were abandoning city centers in favor of outlying areas being developed along highways.

Those in favor of this political approach say it has preserved precious farmland, provided an economic base for the farmers -- many of whom have been in the area for more than a hundred years -- and forced the creation of public transportation options. As a result, over time these circumstances have yielded less overall traffic compared to other cities of this size.

Though not entirely congestion-free today, because of such thoughtful planning Portland is a vibrant, clean, ever-evolving destination, nationally and internationally recognized for its urban planning, sustainability practices, and transportation efficiency.