At a far remove from the American South and Mexico, Portland in the mid-twentieth century was one of the whitest cities in the country. That began to change most noticeably after , when immigration from Latin America, Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Eastern Europe changed the racial and ethnic mix.
By , the U. Immigrant communities spread widely through the Portland region. Portland in the early twenty-first century has multiple civic personalities. Inner neighborhoods have become increasingly hip as the region attracts substantially more than its share of college-educated people aged twenty-one to thirty-five.
This facet of Portland draws on an idiosyncratic heritage in the arts represented by artists such as filmmaker Gus Van Sant and writer Ursula K. Le Guin and on quirky small businesses from Dark Horse Comics to microbreweries. In , the city was skewered in the satirical television series Portlandia , which was in its fourth season in Overlaid on hipster Portland is an earnest policy-wonk city whose citizens read books, enjoying one of the nation's most heavily patronized public libraries and largest independent bookstores, and place a high value on civic participation.
The challenge to civic leaders and citizens is to find ways to bridge rather than widen the resulting political, economic, and cultural gaps. Man in the top hat has been identified as possibly Benjamin Stark Courtesy Oreg. Research Lib. The Oregon History Wayfinder is an interactive map that identifies significant places, people, and events in Oregon history.
Abbott, Carl. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, Lansing, Jewell. Portland: People, Politics, and Power, MacColl, E. Kimbark and Harry H. Portland, Ore. Skip to main content. A project of the Oregon Historical Society. Search Search. Explore Entries A-Z Browse the complete list of entries. Entries by Themes Browse curated collections of entries. In the Classroom. Staff and Board. Donate Donors. Federal Tax ID Close modal View Source.
Zoom image. Early Portland, "Stumptown". Courtesy Oreg. Research Library, ba Portland, in Front and Stark Streets in Portland, The First Ladies Hebrew Benevolent Society, also headed by wives of merchants, provided death and burial benefits for members and relief for Jewish women facing emergencies.
By the time they were forty years old, most middle-class white women would have raised from four to six children while supervising young servant girls and perhaps a male Chinese servant. In , of a group of wives between the ages of thirty and forty-nine in elite Protestant families, 54 percent had at least four children living with them. Many households also included elderly relatives, and Jewish households often had immigrant relatives who served as clerks in family businesses.
Social horizons expanded, as wealthy families built their houses close to poor neighborhoods. While three or four wealthy families usually lived next to one another on the western and southern edges of the business district, in the s they still lived around the corner from skilled working-class families. Members of the Failing, Ladd,b Corbett, Pittock, Meier, Goldsmith, and Hirsch families needed only walk around the block to be on a street where harness makers, carpenters, and brick masons lived.
With meager public funding and limited technology, cities in the nineteenth century were susceptible to fires, floods, and epidemics. As early as , the city had four volunteer engine companies, with about fifty members each. In , a new engine house was built on Front Street, south of the central business district; another opened on Northwest Nineteenth and Q Streets, near mills and machine shops.
In , the city began to pay fulltime firemen, who used horses to draw firefighting wagons. When fires seemed beyond the control of local firemen, telegraphic dispatches summoned help from Salem and Eugene, which sent engines and crews on river steamers and, later, trains.
The Willamette Valley was periodically flooded by late spring thaws in the Cascades. On June 24, , the water flooded stores along Second Street, reaching a highwater mark of twenty-five feet. The Portland Gas Company had its generators flooded and its mains washed out. Boats floated through the downtown like gondolas in Venice, conveying produce and people to the second story of three- and four-story masonry buildings. Unlike fires, which city officials tried to prevent with building codes and to fight with a professional force, floods seemed inevitable.
To help control them, the city eventually built higher walls along the waterfront, and the Corps of Engineers constructed dams on the upper Willamette. Many other towns had the same two kinds of businesses. People needed blacksmiths to shoe horses and repair tools and other equipment. In frontier towns, where men outnumbered women, laundry, traditionally done by women, was one job …. Scott was born on a farm near Groveland, Illinois. In , as a teenager, Scott traveled the Oregon Trail and settled in the Willamette ….
After graduating from the University of Oregon Law School in , Meier spent four years practicing law before joining the family business. He became store manager and vice president …. This photograph, taken by Carleton Eugene Watkins, shows Oregon City and the Willamette Falls soon after the first portage railroad was built there.
Oregon City had been incorporated in and was the first official city established west of the Rocky Mountains. The earliest non-Native settlers near Willamette Falls were …. The timeline includes links to history pages on the web sites of individual bureaus and programs where more detailed information can be found concerning specific functions.
Written materials and on-line resources on City history have also been provided by staff of City bureaus and commissioners' offices. The right-hand column of the Timeline identifies the bureau which provided the information.
We will continue to add items in the coming weeks and months.
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