Multnomah: The Tumultuous Story of Oregon's Most Populous County

Preface

vii PrefaCe Multnomah covers the first 156 years of Multnomah County’s existence and is the first such history ever written.the book is in many ways a companion volume to Jewel Lansing’s Portland: People, Politics, and Power, 1851-2001, published in 2003, and to Fred Leeson’s Rose City Justice, published in 1998. the research for both those books provided valuable background for our present work. As Oregon’s smallest county in geographic size and largest in population, Multnomah County has always faced problems related to an urban-rural divide in its relationship to the rest of the state, to the unincorporated portion of Multnomah County, and to the cities within its boundaries, especially Portland. Physically, the county stretches along fifty riverfront miles on the south bank of the Columbia river, from nearly sea level at Sauvie Island to towering mountaintops in the Columbia Gorge. the wide disparity between those elevations has been reflected in the political and financial fortunes of Multnomah County government , which, although it is often invisible, has attracted a goodly amount of public criticism along the way. Public works projects have appeared on county commission agendas regularly throughout the past 160 years. ranging from a network of roads and bridges in the county to the majestic Justice Center in downtown Portland, these undertakings have included the building of two courthouses; the burnside, Sellwood, ross Island, St. Johns, and Morrison bridges; the Inverness Jail; the oft-reviled rocky butte Jail; the old Multnomah County Corrections Facility, which was cutting-edge in its day; the Donald e. Long Juvenile home; the Multnomah County hospital (now a part of Oregon health and Science University); edgefield Manor; the Yeon Maintenance Shops; the magnificent Central Library in downtown Portland and eighteen neighborhood libraries; remodeling of the Multnomah County building; the completed-but-not-yetopened Wapato Jail; and construction of the west end of the incomparable Columbia river highway. A few words of caution about the book’s contents: this book is primarily a political history of Multnomah County, not a comprehensive social one. readers viii preface expecting to learn about Multnomah County jurisprudence or district attorney actions will find only brief mentions here. the Oregon judicial system and its elected officials are governed by state law and the Oregon Supreme Court, rather than by county charter. Judges and district attorneys are included in the text only when their activities overlap with other county government history.Additionally, a number of important county functions are touched on only lightly—aging services, animal control, assessments, bridges, probation and parole, juvenile justice, other social and health programs. All are worthy of further research. the reader should also be aware that author Jewel Lansing served for eight years, from 1975 through 1982, as the elected Multnomah County auditor, and for four years, from 1983 through 1986, as the City of Portland auditor. In both those jurisdictions, she introduced performance auditing to help make government more efficient and accountable to its citizens. For thirty-five years, author Fred Leeson was a reporter for Oregon’s leading daily newspapers—at the former Oregon Journal from 1972 to 1982, and at the Oregonian from 1982 until his retirement in 2007—where he frequently covered local government issues. he currently teaches journalism at Concordia University in Portland. As President harry truman famously said: “the only thing new in this world is the history that we don’t know.” We wrote this book to help fill that gap and to offer lessons for the future. ...