Portland, Oregon

• 1. Introduction

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  Portland, Oregon sits where two great rivers meet. The Willamette flows in from the south, the Columbia from the east, and at their junction a city of more than 650,000 people has grown into the most populous place in Oregon and the 28th-most populous in the United States. Before any of that happened, before the coin toss that gave the city its name, before the lumber mills and the saloons, this land was shaped by catastrophe on a scale that is difficult to imagine.

  During the last ice age, glacial dams holding back Montana's Lake Missoula collapsed repeatedly, sending walls of water surging across the landscape. The Willamette Valley filled with 300 to 400 feet of water. The floods left behind a basin so fertile and so well-positioned between ocean and continent that it would eventually draw settlers, shipbuilders, criminals, hippies, and tech companies in successive waves.

  What happened between those ice-age floods and today is a story of dramatic reinvention. How did a city known in the 19th century as one of the most dangerous port towns in the world become, in the 21st century, a byword for progressive urban planning and craft beer? Why does the same city that built Liberty ships during World War II also hold the record for the highest percentage of strip clubs per capita in the United States? And how did two men arguing over what to call "The Clearing" end up settling the question with a coin, and why does that coin still sit on display in a building in downtown Portland today?

• 2. The Coin and the Clearing

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  William Overton spotted the potential in a rough patch of cleared land ten miles from the mouth of the Willamette River in 1843. He lacked the money to file an official land claim, so he made a deal with Asa Lovejoy of Boston: 25 cents for half of the 640-acre site. The following year, Overton sold his remaining half to Francis W. Pettygrove of Portland, Maine, and the stage was set for a dispute about names.

  Lovejoy wanted to honor his hometown of Boston. Pettygrove wanted Portland. They settled it with a coin toss, best of three flips. Pettygrove won, and the city took the name of his Maine hometown, which was itself named after England's Isle of Portland. The coin used that day is now known as the Portland Penny and sits on display at the headquarters of the Oregon Historical Society.

  By the 8th of February 1851, when Portland was officially incorporated, the settlement had grown enough to count more than 800 inhabitants, a steam sawmill, a log cabin hotel, and a newspaper called the Weekly Oregonian. Growth came fast after that. The population reached 17,500 by 1879 and nearly 46,000 by 1890. Portland's position between the agricultural Tualatin Valley and the Pacific Ocean, accessible via both the rivers and the road known as the Great Plank Road (which now runs as U.S. Route 26), gave it a natural commercial advantage over rival ports in the region.

  That same year, 1889, Henry Pittock's wife Georgiana established the Portland Rose Society. The annual Rose Festival she helped inspire is still held each June, and the city's association with roses is old enough that the nickname City of Roses dates unofficially to 1888.

• 3. Saloons, Crime, and the Gritty Port

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  In 1889, The Oregonian described Portland as "the most filthy city in the Northern States," pointing to unsanitary sewers and gutters as evidence. By the turn of the 20th century, the city had acquired a wider and more alarming reputation: one of the most dangerous port cities in the world.

  The city's docks drew miners from the California gold rush and sailors from every Pacific route, and they filled a neighborhood thick with saloons, bordellos, gambling dens, and boarding houses. Some historians have characterized Portland's early character as shaped by "the exiled spawn of the eastern established elite," a scion of New England planted at the ends of the earth. The lumber industry added another rough layer, built on the area's vast stands of Douglas fir, western hemlock, red cedar, and big leaf maple.

  A major fire swept through downtown in August 1873, destroying twenty blocks along Yamhill and Morrison Streets on the west side of the Willamette and causing $1.3 million in damage. The city rebuilt quickly, and by 1888 the first steel bridge on the West Coast opened in Portland. Its 1912 successor, the Steel Bridge, still stands today.

  The criminal reputation did not disappear with the 19th century. Portland became a notorious hub for organized crime in the 1940s and 1950s, with gambling rackets and illegal nightclubs at the center of the operation. In 1957, Life magazine published an article exposing the city's history of government corruption and crime, focusing on crime boss Jim Elkins. That article was adapted into a film called Portland Expose, released the same year.

• 4. War, Internment, and Migration

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  Between 1900 and 1930, Portland's population tripled, moving from nearly 100,000 to just over 301,000. Then World War II changed the city's demographic makeup in ways that still echo today.

  Shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser won contracts to build Liberty ships and escort carriers, and chose sites in Portland and nearby Vancouver, Washington for his yards. The demand for labor drew more than 150,000 new residents to the city. Among them was a large wave of African American workers migrating from the South and other regions, a movement that significantly expanded Portland's Black community and created new institutions even as those workers often faced discrimination in hiring and job assignments.

  The city also operated an assembly center during the war from which up to 3,676 people of Japanese descent were dispatched to internment camps. It operated from May through the 10th of September 1942, processing people not only from Portland but from northern Oregon and central Washington. General John DeWitt called Portland the first "Jap-free city on the West Coast."

  Meanwhile, in the shipyards, workers laid the keel of the USS Liberty on the 23rd of February 1945, at the Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation under a Maritime Commission contract. The Liberty would go on to become the most decorated ship for a single action in U.S. naval history.

  After the war, the city's Black population faced further disruption. The May 1948 flood destroyed Vanport, the only integrated neighborhood in Portland, displacing thousands. As displaced workers resettled, redlining pushed them into the Albina district, where they faced police hostility, mortgage discrimination, and lack of employment. Half of Portland's Black population left the city in the years following the war.

• 5. Counterculture and the Tech Surge

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  In the 1960s, a wave of hippie culture reached Portland from San Francisco, and the city's Crystal Ballroom became a hub for psychedelic gatherings. Food cooperatives and listener-funded radio stations took root. A social activist current ran alongside all of it, particularly around Native American rights, environmentalism, and gay rights.

  By the 1970s Portland had shed enough of its gritty past to be seen as a progressive city, and it enjoyed an economic run for most of that decade. A slowdown in the housing market in 1979 hit Oregon's timber industries hard, and the city had to find another engine.

  The technology industry stepped in during the 1990s. Intel established a significant presence, bringing more than $10 billion in investments in 1995 alone. The density of technology companies that followed gave the area a new nickname: Silicon Forest, a nod both to the trees and to Silicon Valley. By 2001-2012, Portland's gross domestic product per person grew by fifty percent, more than any other city in the country during that span.

  The city's reputation for culture and livability attracted college-educated residents at a rate second only to Louisville, Kentucky, during the years after 2000. Between 2000 and 2014, the population rose by more than 90,000. Housing prices followed, and by the late 1990s the Portland area was already rated the fourth-least affordable place in the United States to purchase a new home.

  The punk scene of the 1980s had left its own mark on Portland's cultural identity. The now-demolished Satyricon nightclub was the venue where Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain first encountered Courtney Love in 1990. Love was then living in Portland, where she and Kat Bjelland (later of Babes in Toyland) started several bands together.

• 6. Geology and the Quiet Threat

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  Portland sits on top of a dormant volcanic field called the Boring Lava Field, named after the nearby community of Boring. At least 32 cinder cones make up that field, including Mount Tabor, which rises 636 feet and sits within Portland's city limits. Portland is one of only four cities in the United States with extinct volcanoes inside its boundaries.

  Mount St. Helens, a highly active volcano 50 miles northeast of the city in Washington state, dusted Portland with volcanic ash after its eruption on the 18th of May 1980. On clear days it is easily visible from the city.

  More quietly troubling are the active faults beneath the Portland metropolitan area. The Portland Hills Fault runs along the city's west side; the East Bank Fault runs along the east. A 2017 survey found that several of these faults were likely a greater hazard than the famous Cascadia subduction zone, given their proximity to dense population, with potential for magnitude 7 earthquakes. A 2014 report identified more than 7,000 locations within the Portland area at high risk for landslides and soil liquefaction in the event of a major quake, including much of the west side and sections of Clackamas County.

  Recorded earthquakes offer a sense of what that risk looks like: a 5.6-magnitude quake struck on the 25th of March 1993, and the 6.8-magnitude Nisqually earthquake rattled the region in 2001. The climate, meanwhile, delivers its own extremes. On the 28th of June 2021, Portland recorded an all-time high temperature of 116 degrees Fahrenheit, breaking its own record for the third consecutive day after highs of 108 on June 26 and 112 on June 27. The previous record of 107 degrees had stood since the 30th of July 1965.

• 7. Sports, Bridges, and Public Life

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  Portland has earned the nickname Bridgetown for good reason. Three of the most heavily used bridges downtown are more than a century old and are designated historic landmarks: the Hawthorne Bridge, built in 1910; the Steel Bridge, 1912; and the Broadway Bridge, 1913. The newest bridge in the downtown area, Tilikum Crossing, opened in 2015 as the first new span across the Willamette since the Fremont Bridge in 1973.

  The city's sports culture is as devoted as any in the country. The Portland Trail Blazers sold out every home game from 1977 to 1995, a streak of 814 consecutive games and the second-longest in American sports history. The Portland Timbers joined Major League Soccer in 2011 and sold out 163 straight home games until the 8th of March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic suspended the season. In 2015, the Timbers won the MLS Cup, becoming the first team from the Pacific Northwest to claim that title. Player Diego Valeri scored the fastest goal in MLS Cup history, 27 seconds into the match.

  On the 18th of September 2024, Portland was awarded a WNBA franchise named the Portland Fire, slated to begin play in 2026.

  Public life in the city extends to its parks. Forest Park covers more than 5,000 acres and is the largest wilderness park within city limits in the United States. The 37-acre Tom McCall Waterfront Park was built in 1974 along the downtown waterfront after Harbor Drive was removed from the route. Portland also hosts the Oregon Brewers Festival at Tom McCall Waterfront Park each summer, the largest outdoor craft beer festival in North America, which drew more than 70,000 attendees in 2008. As of 2018, Portland was home to 139 breweries and microbreweries, the seventh-most in the nation.