Portland in Three Centuries: The Place and the People

Learning About Portland

177 Learning About Portland Sources and Collections The best places to begin diving into Portland history are the Portland City Archives and the Oregon Historical Society, conveniently located a few blocks apart at the southern end of downtown. Other important organizations with collections and exhibits on aspects of Portland include the Oregon Jewish Museum, the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center, the Architectural Heritage Center , and the Special Collections department of the Portland State University library. For regional history, one should also explore the Washington County Museum, the Clackamas County Historical Society and Museum of the Oregon Territory, and other local historical societies and museums. Web sites and blogs maintained by individuals and organizations have become an important source of images, oral histories, and commentary. The continually growing Oregon Encyclopedia at www.oregonencyclopedia.org is an authoritative online source with many articles dealing with Portland and its region. Other examples include the interesting blog www.cafeunknown.com, the extensive photo archive at www.historicphotoarchive.com, the historic photo blog at www.vintageportland.wordpress.com, and topically focused sites such as www.volgagermans.net/portland and http://www.history.pdx. edu/oaks/oakspg1.htm. Some of my own commentary on Portland is at www. theurbanwest.com. General Histories and Descriptions Terrence O’Donnell and Thomas Vaughan, Portland: A Historical Sketch and Guide (2nd edition: Portland, 1984) opens with an extended historical essay that tries to capture the character of Portland. Carl Abbott, Greater Portland: Urban Life and Landscape in the Pacific Northwest (Philadelphia, 178 portland in three centuries 2001) is a more extensive effort to enlist history to illuminate the distinctive characteristics of the Portland metropolitan area. John Trombold and Peter Donahue, Reading Portland: The City in Prose (Portland, 2006) is a fascinating collection of contemporary and retrospective writing about Portland in its several centuries. Harvey Scott’s History of the Oregon Country edited by Leslie Scott (Cambridge, MA, 1924) and Joseph Gaston’s Portland: Its History and Its Builders (Chicago, 1911) are records of the city’s development by active participants in its history. Single-volume histories of Portland include Percy Maddux, City on the Willamette: The Story of Portland, Oregon (Portland, 1952) and Gordon DeMarco, A Short History of Portland (San Francisco, 1990). William Toll’s “Commerce, Climate, & Community: A History of Portland & Its People” is another short history available as a set of Web pages at http://www.ohs. org/education/oregonhistory/narratives/histories.cfm. Larry Price, ed., Portland ’s Changing Landscape (Portland, 1987) is a collection of essays on spatial and economic patterns prepared for an annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Portland. Connie Ozawa, ed., The Portland Edge: Challenges and Successes in Growing Communities (Washington, 2004) is a more recent collection that emphasizes issues of planning and community development. Three recent “tours” of Portland offer vastly different takes on Portland ’s history and character: Michael Munk, The Portland Red Guide: Sites and Stories of Our Radical Past (Portland, 2007); David Oates, City Limits: Walking Portland’s Urban Growth Boundary (Corvallis, OR, 2006); and Chuck Palahniuk, Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon (New York, 2003). The Era of Exploration and Settlement The Native American peoples of western Oregon are treated in Stephen Dow Beckham, The Indians of Western Oregon (Coos Bay, OR, 1977) and Oregon Indians (Corvallis, 2006); Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown, Indians of the Pacific Northwest (Norman, OK, 1981); and Joel V. Berreman’s “Tribal Distribution in Oregon,” Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, 47 (1937) discuss native peoples statewide. The people of the lower Columbia are the subject of Robert Ruby and John Brown, The Chinook Indians: Traders of the Lower Columbia (Norman, OK, 1976) and Rick Rubin, Naked Against the Rain: The People of the Lower Columbia River, 1770–1830 (Portland, 1999). Up-to-date scholarly studies include Yvonne P. Hajda, “Regional Social learning about Portland 179 Organization in the Greater Lower Columbia, 1792–1830” (PhD dissertation, University of Washington, 1984) and Michael Silverstein, “Chinookans of Lower Columbia,” in Wayne Suttles, ed., Northwest Coast, Vol. 7 of William Sturtevant, ed., Handbook of North American Indians (Washington, 1990). For early exploration and pioneering, the journals of Lewis and Clark (various editions) are an invaluable starting point. Also see: Fred William Powell, Hall J. Kelley on Oregon (Princeton, NJ, 1932); Eugene Snyder, Early Portland: Stump-Town Triumphant (Portland, 1970); Malcolm Clark, Jr., The Eden Seekers: The Settlement of Oregon...