Portland's Lost Waterfront

I spent many happy hours as a child looking at the world through View Master lenses. It was one way for me to experience the country of my birth from the tatami mats of my room in far off Yokohama. One of my favorite discs was of the wonders of California, from Disneyland to the Redwood Forest. Had I been born sixty or seventy years earlier I would have been gazing into a stereoscope at such curiosities as these U.S. Navy torpedo boats in the Portland harbor. The back of the image doesn't name the vessels, but they are anchored very near to the Wolff & Zwicker Iron Works where several such boats were constructed. Navy torpedo boats from the Portland waterfront This image is a very small example of the fact that even though my book is finished, and I should be concentrating on the sequel covering the period from WWI forward, I am still obsessively collecting images and stories from all the periods of Portland's fascinating past.

I will have the immense pleasure of doing some book signings in the near future. Since all my other books were self published, and not promoted in any useful manner, this will be a new experience for me. I am not sure exactly why authors do this sort of thing. Well, I know it is to sell books, but you see, I myself, have never been to a book signing. So I look forward to it. I am very grateful that someone would actually buy a copy of my book, so should they want me to sign it, I will do so gladly. I especially look forward to meeting people who know a lot about the subject of Portland history. I know you are out there and I am dying to meet you. While on the subject I had better mention the details: Meet the Author Events OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY 45th Annual Holiday Cheer Event A Celebration of Oregon Authors Sunday, December 2, Noon - 4 PM Admission: $5, free for OHS members, includes admission to museum exhibits COSTCO Aloha store December 8th - Time to be anno...

The Author Toots His Own Horn, a wee bit   Golden Fleece Some years back my wife and I were visiting York, staying in a B&B pub called the Golden Fleece, a pub so old that no one could say when it was built,   but it was mentioned in a document penned in 1503. Around the corner was the old York Merchant Adventurers' Hall built in 1357. The curator of this hall was delighted to discover that we were from Portland, Oregon. He had been one of the children evacuated from London during the bombing, and had been sent to live with a family in the Dunthorpe section of Portland. He told us how, as a historian, it seemed so convenient and wonderful to have a city whose entire history was recorded, and could be discovered; unlike York, whose founding was by Vikings and whose ghosts—pagans, Romans, or otherwise—were mostly illiterate and left behind more mystery than artifact. Merchant Adventurer's Hall Portland has a relatively short history, but it seems to be one t...

  Anyone who has seen many of the collectable old postcards of Portland from the late 1880s up into the early 20th century has seen a view described as the "Lower Harbor." This view usually has some tall ships in the center, a steam tug or two, and the grain docks on the west side and the Albina side. One the west side these will be in this order: Albers, Greenwich, Columbia No. 1, with lumber docks in the misty distance. On the Albina side the docks are in this order: Victoria, Irving, Columbia No. 2, and 1, Montgomery No. 1, and 2, with more of the long grain warehouses in the distance. If the photo is a good one, Portland Flouring Mills will be seen afar off by the east ship channel next to Swan Island. A casual observer might mistakenly take them for the same photo, but the vessels are always different. It doesn't take a history detective to figure out that these were all taken from the upper span of the first Steel Bridge, which means they were all taken after ...