History

Parks and gardens proposed for the riverbank.

Albina Rising

After bulldozers, highways and development brought down Portland’s historic cultural hub of the Black community, an innovative path forward emerges Written by Fiona Max On a Friday evening in the ’60s, locals of Northeast Portland’s Albina district could be found in the Hill Block building, an iconic, domed building on the corner of Williams and Russell Street. At the time, the place was home to the Cotton Club, a jazz club which had quickly gained popularity under owner Paul Knauls. Knauls had worked his way into the scene in Spokane, Washington, at the Davenport Hotel, and had gone to Portland in search of a venue of his own. He bought the rundown Cotton Club in 1963, and brought it back to life. Its fall, Knauls said, would come in 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., as tensions between the Black and white community ran high. “People came…

Liberty Bell in Oregon

When the Liberty Bell Came to Oregon

In 1915, the Liberty Bell came to Oregon as part of a patriotism-raising event in the lead up to WWI. Oregonians swooned. he 1915 annual Umatilla Reservation Indian Festival was in full swing on July 12 when it was upstaged by a remarkable sight. Arriving on a specially designed train, the nation’s Liberty Bell, on tour from Philadelphia, chugged into the Cayuse depot. Indians in full regalia, Chinese in native dress, and hundreds of others gaped at the Liberty Bell. Liberty Bell officials and the train crew gaped back. The bell’s official photographers took photos and recorded film. “It is doubtful whether the red people were half as interested in the bell as the Philadelphians were in them,” The Daily East Oregonian reported. As the Liberty Bell Special made its 10,000-mile journey across the United States that summer, stopping at 275 cities, towns and hamlets, a quarter of all Americans…

Tillamook Air Museum shows off jets in a World War II hangar

written by James Sinks In World War II, to help safeguard military and cargo flotillas, the U.S. Navy launched blimps that could spot enemy submarines from above. The airships were housed in garages in strategic spots on both coasts. The northernmost in the West was in Tillamook. Today, you can still stand in the belly of one of the mammoth hangars, known as Hangar B. Its twin, Hangar A, burned to the ground in 1992. Calling the place big is an understatement—visible for miles, it is among the largest free-standing, clear-span wooden structures on the planet. During the war, with steel in high demand, the Navy looked to the forests of the Northwest to frame the architectural marvel, where a latticework of old-growth beams soar 192 feet overhead. Now home to the Tillamook Air Museum, Hangar B shelters fighter jets, including an F-14 Tomcat; a locomotive; a piece of the…

Inside the Lives of Portland’s bridge tenders

All along the watchtowers: Inside the lives of Portland’s bridge tenders written by Scott Latta / photography by Shauna Intelisano Even by the dreary standards of Portland winters, 2017 was especially bleak. At one point, five storms slammed Portland in five weeks. The Weather Channel, stating what everyone in the city was thinking, dubbed it “America’s most winter-fatigued city.”When a foot of snow fell in one twenty-four-hour period in January, the nation gawked as hapless Portlanders abandoned their cars along impossibly glassy hills. But the real trouble started two months later, when the sun came out. Federal guidelines maintain that when the Willamette River rises above 12 feet, all Portland bridges must be staffed twenty-four hours a day. Under normal circumstances, it’s not a problem for the county’s eight full-time bridge operators. But as the snow melted in the Cascades—141 percent of its normal depth—it collected in reservoirs within the…

Hells Canyon Fifty-Year Anniversary

In the late 1960s, a small band of passionate, committed conservationists battled to save Hells Canyon from additional dams on the Snake River.