Portland's Lost Waterfront

Oregon Ozone (Recycled)  1 My grandfather, Reuben Blalock was born in 1869 “up a holler” in the great Smokey Mountains of North Carolina. He did some “book learning,” and memorizing scripture, and when he was still a youngster he loved to join in the hot debates that raged in the hill country following the War Between the States. The debates he loved the most were of an ecclesiastical nature, dealing with the “signs of the true church.”  Thomas, his older brother, had taught him to look for the “landmarks of faith” that distinguished the “true Baptists,” from the worldly imposters—like those of the Southern Baptist Convention. Thomas then went to China, leaving Reuben to hold fast to the things he had received. Around 1890 Reuben came west to see if he could work for his uncle Niles, who was a big rancher in Walla Walla.  He also owned an island in the Columbia River, and a ranch, up a canyon in the Gorge, that both bare his name. It seems that Niles (or N.G. as he li...

When I first started working on the waterfront, back in the 1970s, I didn’t realize I was coming into a scene that was rapidly disappearing. With the exception of the automobile docks in Saint Johns and Rivergate, Portland docks did not have much in the way of guards at the gate. I should mention, Terminal 4 had a guard gate, but it was rarely occupied, and when it was, no one stopped to be checked in. This means that one of the regular sights was some vehicle—either a taxi cab, or a Cadillac, or an old beater—filled to the brim with prostitutes headed for the ship. A regular visitor (and one who took the bus) was a pitiful woman, known as “Penny dirty legs.” Her mother had been a prostitute, or so it was told, who brought her daughter with her on the job. It is hard to say how old Penny was, somewhere between 30 and 50, but it was obvious she was mentally undeveloped—probably from being abused her entire life. By the 1970s the great majority of the vessels were Liberian flag, ow...

Where: Portland Museum of Modern Art, 5202 North Albina (located in Mississippi Records)  When: Now through November 24, 2013 http://portlandmuseumofmodernart.com/Mr-Otis-October   “The man who made Grandma Moses blush.” (Joseph Rambo) “Van Gogh had one ear, Mr. Otis has two.” (Bennett Cerf)“I am convinced this character uses a brush while painting.” (Therese Pol, L’Art Magazine) The Portland Museum of Modern Art I have written about Stuart Holbrook in this blog before, and some may have the idea that I don’t hold him in admiration. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just because I am opposed to writers of history taking his fictional folk tales as fact does not mean I didn’t enjoy reading them. The man was, above all, a caricaturist, and the hyperbole he poured out on Portland—past and present—was very entertaining, and meant with a sly wink and a nudge (figuratively speaking). It is highly unlikely that anyone would have heard of Joe "Bunko...

I am hesitantly thrilled to announce that the OPB, Oregon Experience series has created a program called "Portland Noir," examining the seedy days of yore. Since I am either seedy enough, or ancient enough, I was invited to add my thoughts on the workings of Portland's old waterfront. There will be a screening of this program Friday, October 11th at 7 p.m. (the doors open at 5:30) at the McMenamin's Mission Theater Pub 1624 N.W. Glisan St. (The old longshoremen's hiring hall). You are invited. My hesitation comes from a certain uneasiness at seeing myself on a screen of any size.

I don’t know if anyone has noticed this, but the Steel Bridge on old postcards is often designated as being owned by any one of three different companies. Most often you will see the words “O.W.R. & N. Co. Bridge across the Willamette,” or something to that effect. Other times the card might read, “O. R. R. & N. Co. bridge, Portland, Oregon.” Then, on occasion, a card might say, “Union Pacific bridge, Portland, Oregon.” This was confusing to me at one time, until I read a little something on the history of the Union Pacific lines in the west, then I became even more confused. The lines were in and out of receivership, leased, sold, given different, but very similar names, and called different names by different levels of railroad hierarchy. When the first Steel Bridge was built in 1888 the company behind the construction was the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company (O. R. & N. Co.), an old and powerful entity that had evolved from the Oregon Steam Navigation Company...

The long and difficult project of making a shipping channel from Portland to the sea involved a lot more than simply dredging. As anyone knows who has played in the mud as a kid, channeling water to go the way you want it to go involves building dikes and dams as well. From the lower Columbia all the way to the Portland harbor the Army Engineers erected these dikes and dams in places where the water could be directed in a way to make the channel deeper, and to insure that the flow of the river would keep the channel from silting up. Before these efforts the charts of the river would change dramatically over the course of several seasons of the rivers fluctuating from the late summer and early autumn low water to the floods of the spring freshet. Sand bars would appear where there were none before and large snags dragged downstream by the current would create barriers and hazards. A dam at the Willamette's mouth The U.S. Army Engineers operated several snag boats to deal wi...

Starting in the mid 1820s it had been Hudson’s Bay Company  (HBC) policy to create “fur deserts” in areas they didn’t want American trappers to venture. Since the lower Columbia River area was one of those “deserts” any poor critter with a pelt was hunted to near or total extinction. By the 1840s the HBC in Fort Vancouver, under the leadership of Dr. John McLoughlin, had gone into the provisioning business supplying outposts as far flung as the Russians in Alaska to the missionaries in Hawaii with articles grown on its farms. Dr. McLoughlin had a perfect solution for the transition from fur trapping to farming. Some miles south of the Willamette falls there was an area of meadowland the natives kept free from brush by seasonal burning. This was to make it easier to hunt game. By this time the native population had sadly declined, leaving this land ready to be turned into wheat fields.   Lt. George F. Emmons Dr. McLoughlin used HBC resources to set up a group ...