Portland's Lost Waterfront

Anyone who bicycles, walks, skates, or jogs on the Eastbank Esplanade wedged between the roaring Interstate 5 freeway and the Willamette river will pass by the Fire Boat Dock beneath the Hawthorne Bridge. In 1905, when this newspaper image was produced (I can't really call it a photograph, can I?), Washington Street ran straight down to the river, ending abruptly at the fire tug dock. In the nineteenth century things were always catching on fire, including boats. Portland burned to the ground in 1873 (well, most of downtown). There couldn't be two steamboats going in the same direction without it turning into a drag race, so that caused a lot of boiler explosions. Gas lights burning everywhere, cigar stubs, candles, oil lamps--and almost everything was built from timber. The historic newspaper databases are as close as I suppose I will ever get to a time machine (something Santa didn't bring me for Christmas). But with a few details, a splotchy old picture, and an act...

There is a useful Pidgin expression I learned from a Hawaiian fellow: "Tengs ah neba no!" It is to be said with the mouth slightly ajar and an expression of amazement at having learned a new and interesting fact. I have been finding myself muttering this to myself a lot lately as I delve into my city's sordid history. Charles Dickens had given a world wide notoriety to the seedy, whore mongering (in the correct sense), haven of drug and drink in London with the ironic name "Whitechapel". It wasn't long before the name was bestowed on the districts of other cities that bore a similar infamy. Portland has done a rather good job of stowing its skeletons in places that are out of the way and hard to find, so when I kept bumping into the mention of "Portland's Whitechapel district" in nineteenth century newspapers it took me awhile to realize that this was a "district of the soul" and not one that I would not find on any map of t...

This being Christmas Eve I deem it to be an appropriate time for this subject. As all of you know, the supercargoes on the sailing vessels of yesteryear had the difficult task of insuring that their vessels would not keel over and sink due to an uneven, or overly light cargo. So, should there be no other cargo weighty enough to stabilize the vessel at the port, they would take on paving materials, or, if it was available, coal. I was once told by an Old Portlander named Alice that the paving stones in the garden of our church were brought to Portland as ship's ballast. She had dreamy blue eyes hiding in her wrinkled smile, eyes that inspired thoughts of the romance of Jack Tar unloading stones quarried on the banks of the Mersey River and loaded at Liverpool. Alas! I have punctured my own dream on this cheery Christmas Eve. It is well known that Portland's biggest trading partner back in "the day" was San Francisco. I have discovered that the streets of that city ...

M/V Panamax Sun loads 120,000,000 pounds of Soft White Wheat at O Dock 2011 Way back in the 1970’s I was struggling to support a family by working at a music store. This would be pathetic enough on its own, but the store manager was addicted to heroin and needed to steal my commissions to feed his habit. One day it occurred to me to go to the state employment office downtown to see if I could make a career move. Something that caught my eye was a temporary job, “30 day appointment” doing what sounded like driving a truck and picking up samples of grain. I thought that would be easy, that I would get laid off after the 30 days, and then I could collect unemployment until I figured out what I could do with my life. I then stepped into a rabbit hole leading to the wonderland of the waterfront world at a peculiar time in history. The United States had been given a black eye around the world for the nefarious and greedy practices of its grain exporters, especially in the Gulf C...

crossing the river 1912 My uncle Miles once told me about coming through Portland the spring of 1912. According to Miles my grandfather, who was a Baptist preacher, had been "run out" of Condon by the two old "hardshell spinsters" that ruled the local church. They were on their weary way back to my grandmother Mae's birthplace, the green, moist valleys of Tillamook. They crossed the Willamette river at dusk on the Morrison Street bridge, and then, a very odd thing happened. My grandfather, who was as tight fisted as a Scottish miser, headed the team of horses over to the newly built and grandiose Multnomah Hotel.  That he would stay in a place of sin, tango dancing, drinking, and other highfalutin vices was nothing short of  a miracle; but it was a miracle of love for his frail and sickly wife who, at the time, was nursing my newly born father. Then the waterfront would have been a long series of dilapidated wharfs where a great variety of ...

The very worst thing about writing and researching is that my cuckoo clock keeps singing the hour every five  minutes, and then the day is over, and I find myself deep up some side creek and far from the stream I should be following. Today it was the simple act of looking into who this man Albert Deane Richardson was, the fellow who wrote such an interesting account of his journey west--including the Columbia and Willamette rivers--in the mid eighteen sixties. It turns out that he was a Union spy, a Secret Service agent, who was captured and spent a year and a half in a Confederate prison. As a journalist he ended up living in New York City where he fell for a woman who was married to a rich Irish man who abused her greatly. Finally she separated from her husband, and during this time period the husband--blind with jealousy- attempted to kill Richardson. When a divorce was finally granted the husband showed up at Richardson's office and shot him, giving him a wound that would sho...

Many of the adventuresome young men who came to  Oregon while the Hudson Bay Co. was still the ruling force lived here long enough to see the log cabins turn into gigantic stone edifices, such as the Portland Hotel, or Meir & Frank. The entertainment went from being some fiddles at a barn dance to operas and orchestras, and the frontier wives were transformed into queens of high society. They rode to entertainments in carriages with beveled glass windows, and then in Packard town cars. I imagine that they learned how to talk in that fake British accent that you hear "cultured" Americans using in the old movies—at least their daughters did, after being sent to "finishing school" in the East.  Pillars of Society in Portland, Oregon This takes me back to York, in the U.K., a place I mentioned earlier as being very, very old. In fact, York is where the emperor Constantine was crowned as Roman Emperor, and it was an old city then. My friend Randy Giles ...

Poking around in the attic of old mariners I have discovered a puzzle, Captain George Flavel. He is reported to be the first person to be issued a Columbia River Bar Pilots license, branch license No. 1. He received this license in the year 1851, according to lots of sources, including the CRBP website. http://www.columbiariverbarpilots.com/columbiariverbarpilots_history.html Back in the days of yore the mouth of the Columbia was known around the globe as a good place to lose a ship with all hands and cargo, so getting them across safely was the first order of business for the entire region. What makes the Flavel story odd is that the folks in Astoria had decided to have a Board of Pilot Commissioners in 1846, and in January of 1847 the territorial legislature passed a section of rules and regulations for this commission to follow ( Spectator, Oregon City, Jan 7, 1847). So that means they had to wait for someone to show up who was brave and skilled enough to be pilot number on...

Portland harbor postcard I try to keep my eye one the ephemera connected with our city's past. One image that keeps coming up is this postcard of a busy Portland harbor that was sold during the Lewis and Clark Fair of 1905. They must have sold by the thousands because they turn up on Ebay regularly, and can usually be found in local antique stores in their postcard box. Here I have to brag about have purchased a collection of well over one hundred antique Portland postcards on Ebay for around seventeen dollars. I though it was a scam until I had them in my hands. Most of them were over a century old. At the fair of 1905 not only did a lot of postcards get sold to the tourists, but one of the exhibits sold, or gave away monkey puzzle tree ( Araucaria araucana ) seedlings. Now there are 106 year old monkey trees throughout the city. Most articles on the subject say that it was the Chilean exhibit. I searched the Historic Oregon Newspaper Database but could find zilch. Once an...

I always knew that I would miss this place, even at the end of an eleven hour shift--of which there were many. In the morning I came mentally prepared to spend some time sitting at the top of the hill. The road into O Dock is the only private road in the city crossing the Union Pacific tracks. As a private road it can be blocked by the train for quite awhile, sometimes hours. One never knew if a train would be sitting there waiting for its time to move into the Albina yard. So, every morning I came with a travel mug of coffee and something to read. One day I had my camera with me. The first photo is when I got there and joined the line of longshoremen, company men, and FGIS inspectors, the second photo was taken when the train finally moved on, letting us all get to work.  

The bar at the mouth of the Clackamas The earliest stories of our city are well known, even the legendary coin toss between Maine and Massachusetts. It is still a bit thrilling for a nerd like me to run across a bit of very early history. I came upon this letter by Captain John H. Couch to the Oregon City Spectator defending the notion that Portland was as far as anyone could reasonably believe that ocean going vessels could navigate. He even mentions seeing natives wading across the river at the Clackamas bar. The letter receives an amen from gentleman farmer, and riparian land owner Thomas Stevens. The Spectator, Oregon City, Jan 10, 1850   The main obstacle to navigation is the bar that is formed from sand pushed out from the mouth of the Clackamas river. I have canoed that area many times. Once, during high waters in the spring I was surprised and terrified to come upon a place at the bend below Hog Island that had turned to standing waves higher than anythi...

I started off the morning trying to see if Portlanders ever actually referred to the city as Stumptown back in the early days, as the legend goes.But maybe I should wait for the rains to return. On a beautiful, bright sunny day like today it is hard to remember the endless drizzle and the heavy clouds hiding the hills.  Our soggy winters are infamous. Lewis and Clark complained about the wetness, and then pulled up camp and high tailed it back to dryer regions as fast as they could. In Portland the rainy season (some say it lasts for eleven months out of the year) is bad enough to make the necessity of good paved streets and sidewalks a given. But I have friends who live well within the city limits, and the city street in front of their house is an unpaved, mud-caked sinkhole without sidewalks and only traveled by 4 wheel drive. (I am not exaggerating, and can provide images if called upon to do so.)  courtesy: http://www.museumofthecity.org It has been over on...

O Dock, foot of North Holladay When I started working on the waterfront the first place I was assigned was to a place that was indicated on the dispatch roster as "LDC". This stood for Louis Dreyfus Corporation, but few people called it that. It was known to the longshoremen and most everyone else as "Globe". The dock has gone through a number of names over the years and is now wearing the name O Dock. I am of the opinion that this is an older name than Globe, harking back to the Portland practice of naming docks after the streets of which they were the "foot". "O" referring to Oregon Street. At one time Victoria Street ran all the way down to the river having its foot in this same area. In those days there was a Victoria Dock. It was burned to the ground in 1902 by an arsonist who had spouted threats while spending a bit of time in the Oregon State Penitentiary that he was going to "burn Portland to the ground." He got as far as l...

After having spent thirty three years working at export grain facilities on the Willamette river I have entered a new phase--retirement. I am also starting to write a book about the history of the Portland waterfront. I have been collecting things for years; a photo here, a newspaper article there, with the idea of putting some of it together, if not into a book, then a largely improved Portland Waterfront History Website . Providentially, right when I was busy doing  a thousand other things, I was contacted by the commissioning editor from a prestigious (in my way of thinking) publisher specializing in American history. She had seen the website was wanted to know if I had any interest in writing a book on the subject. After recovering from the shock of such a sudden prospect leaping into my path, I consented, and put together a proposal, the long and the short of the matter being, a book is in the making. This brings me to the blog at hand. I see it as a place to toss bits ...