Portland's Lost Waterfront

The post today is dedicated to my father, whose funeral will take place later this day. John Reuben Blalock was born in Condon, Oregon, on November 3, 1911. He died June 18, of this year—he was 100 years and seven months old. He was still an infant when the family moved back to Tillamook, the home of my grandmother. According to my uncle Miles, they made the trip by wagon. When they passed through Portland, the family spent the night at the Multnomah hotel, an unheard of extravagance on the part of my grandfather.     My Father My grandfather had been a Baptist missionary to the Pacific coast. The family moved to various places in Oregon, California, and Idaho, but the hamlet of Beaver, in Tillamook county, was always considered home. After high school my father came to Portland to attend what was then called Western Baptist Theological Seminary on S.E. 28th and Salmon (the building is still there). After graduation he was called to preach, and to join ...

Repetition of a Holbrook fiction is a sure indication of lazy scholarship and gullibility.  In an earlier post I mentioned the little detail that Stewart Holbrook added to his Nancy Boggs story to make the floating bordello believable—it was "painted Nile green and red." Apparently the trick worked in this case, since the exact detail was repeated by writers of popular history ever since. I don't think this detail was invented by Edward C. (Spider) Johnson, the Erickson's Saloon bartender/bouncer from whom Mr. Holbrook got so many of his tales. It has a distinctive Holbrook ring to it. Let it never be said that I have no respect Mr. Holbrook. He was a fine storyteller, far better than I will ever be. He was also a talented painter in oils. Few people in the Portland art community thought so—his crude primitives seemed to be poking fun, rather than reaching for some ineffable transcendence. A New York gallery gave him a showing, but this was ignored by the Po...

This was what I saw when I stepped outside   Some days I find myself almost falling into the illusion of "retirement remorse." I miss being right next to the river, even though it would take me only 5 minutes to get there from my house. Most of all I miss my fellow workers. If I were more social, instead of being a agoraphobic recluse, I would go seek them out: except that most of the time they are working weekends and nights, and have no time to socialize. I put up the www.portlandwaterfront.org website during a long period of 12 hour shifts. Some of my fellow workers, like Stu here in the picture, did other things with their time. Stu finally retired for real last month I looked over the old website the other day and did a lot of cringing. I need to get rid of a few things that turned out to be not as true as I once was led to believe. (Oy!)  I am ¾ finished with a new, HTML5, with lots more, and much larger images version. I will also include a more compr...

Courtesy the Historic Photo Archives A surprising thing happened on the morning of New Year's Eve in 1901 . The French bark Asie, newly arrived from Tasmania, had come to Portland under contract with Balfour & Guthrie Co. to load grain for Europe as part of the season's grain fleet. At 8:30 that morning the vessel was at  Davidges Wharf, on the west bank of the river, where its ballast of sand was nearly finished being off loaded. Some of the local stevedores were sweeping the last remaining sand into buckets, while others were hoisting the buckets aloft and onto the wharf. A group of sailors were mopping up behind the stevedores to ready the hold for grain, and another group was in the forecastle mending sails. Monsieur Ollivaud, the captain, had just left the master's cabin, a cabin which he shared with his wife, and was stepping off the gangplank, on his way to a meeting in the downtown office of Balfour & Guthrie Co. At that moment there was a shift in ...

The M. V. Weser, of the Norddeutscher Lloyd shipping company, was fast, having an average cruising speed of 19 ½ knots.  In spite of its working ship, bulldog looks, it was outfitted in a luxurious style in its interior; for unlike most freighters today, there were 21 of the "largest and best-furnished passenger cabins seen in this harbor." At least this was the report given by visitors to the ship in the entourage on Armistice day in 1934. It seems that these cabins were not difficult to fill with passengers; the ship was already booked weeks before arriving on its "fruit run," taking the apples of Hood River and the pears of Yakima to the green grocers of Europe. Grandfatherly old Captain Franz Voigt appears to have been a friendly fellow, but maybe a little reserved. It was Armistice day, after all, not the best day to be a German in America. The agent referred to this as the North German Lloyd "Christmas Ship" that would arrive in Europe w...

I now have-without exaggeration-enough research material on the history of the Portland waterfront keep me writing articles, blog posts, even books for the rest of my life. The problem is, there is no stopping place. Every time I look into one thing something else of interest catches my eye. I am also fortunate enough to be allowed to sort through the maritime photos at the Historic Photo Archives belonging to Thomas Robinson. Some of these have not been seen since the photographer filed them years ago. It is tremendously rewarding to be able to research the background of these images. The phrase, "kid in a candy shop" keeps coming to mind, except that kid can eat too much candy and get sick-I can't imagine getting sick of this activity. From time to time I will be bringing out some interesting bits that come my way, so check back.