CITY TOUR
(WITH PHIL) and each stop named.
1ST...A little about Portland History:
Portland began as a riverside clearing where Multnomah Indians of the Chinook Tribe, occasionally camped about 6 blocks from here at the river. It was called The Clearing.
In 1843, when entrepreneur Asa Lovejoy stopped for lunch in that clearing with a drifter named William Overton, traveling between Fort Vancouver and Oregon City, they offered 25-cents to the provisional government for the 640-acre The Clearing. They marked the site with tomahawk blazes on a tree.
It was the demand for beaver to feed the fashion of the day, that first brought these European traders to Oregon.
Stovetop hats (or Top hats), were usually made of beaver pelts. It seems only a change in style saved the Beaver from extinction.
PICTURE AVAILABLE
Portland began as a riverside clearing where Multnomah Indians of the Chinook Tribe, occasionally camped about 6 blocks from here at the river. It was called The Clearing.
In 1843, when entrepreneur Asa Lovejoy stopped for lunch in that clearing with a drifter named William Overton, traveling between Fort Vancouver and Oregon City, they offered 25-cents to the provisional government for the 640-acre The Clearing. They marked the site with tomahawk blazes on a tree.
It was the demand for beaver to feed the fashion of the day, that first brought these European traders to Oregon.
Stovetop hats (or Top hats), were usually made of beaver pelts. It seems only a change in style saved the Beaver from extinction.
PICTURE AVAILABLE
Tall-crowned hat usually made of Beaver pelt
Overton, a drifter (who borrowed the 25 cent filing fee from Lovejoy in exchange for half his claim), drifted away by eighteen forty four selling his half to Francis Pettygrove for fifty dollars. After "flippin a copper", Pettygrove named the new townsite Portland in 1845, but not until after, like a Deadwood crime boss, spoke of settling a claim dispute by his pistols.
But let's give credit where credit's due. It was William Overton, the man from Missouri, who is 25% Creek Indian, and a member of the eighteen forty one Bidwell party (the 1st on the Oregon Trail) going to California, splintered off to Oregon and had the idea of the Portland townsite.
Unlike the Oregon City location, where the provisional government was located, and the end of the Oregon Trail, the densely wooded site of Portland included a harbor deep enough for ocean going ships and was located on the Willamette River, below the treacherous Clackamas rapids and Willamette Falls. At first ridiculed as Stumptown, it surpassed Oregon City as a port within 6 years.
Willamette Falls, worth mentioning in its own right, is the second biggest falls in the United States by volume, after Niagara Falls, and is fifteen hundred feet across and 4 stories high. Cultures have gathered around that falls for millennium figuring out how best to utilize it.
It's where the future began.
Indians have been fishing for Salmon there at the base of the falls for thousands of years. The Europeans settlers built saw mills there and made a town. And in 1889, the first long distance electrical transmission line in the history of the world strung from Willamette Falls to Portland, a distance of 17 miles, lighting up Portland, and electric trolley tracks within 2 years.
Those falls were formed by geologic chance. It's a story of 2 floods.
One of the greatest volcanic eruptions on the face of the earth, starting about 17 million years ago, the Columbia River Basalt Floods, traveling some 400 miles from North Eastern Oregon, originating from the Yellowstone super-volcano.
Then later, the greatest flood waters on earth, the Missoula Floods, at the end of the last ice age, ripped off cliff faces in the Columbia and Willamette Rivers and scoured the 40 foot plunge.
SEE PICTURES
But let's give credit where credit's due. It was William Overton, the man from Missouri, who is 25% Creek Indian, and a member of the eighteen forty one Bidwell party (the 1st on the Oregon Trail) going to California, splintered off to Oregon and had the idea of the Portland townsite.
Unlike the Oregon City location, where the provisional government was located, and the end of the Oregon Trail, the densely wooded site of Portland included a harbor deep enough for ocean going ships and was located on the Willamette River, below the treacherous Clackamas rapids and Willamette Falls. At first ridiculed as Stumptown, it surpassed Oregon City as a port within 6 years.
Willamette Falls, worth mentioning in its own right, is the second biggest falls in the United States by volume, after Niagara Falls, and is fifteen hundred feet across and 4 stories high. Cultures have gathered around that falls for millennium figuring out how best to utilize it.
It's where the future began.
Indians have been fishing for Salmon there at the base of the falls for thousands of years. The Europeans settlers built saw mills there and made a town. And in 1889, the first long distance electrical transmission line in the history of the world strung from Willamette Falls to Portland, a distance of 17 miles, lighting up Portland, and electric trolley tracks within 2 years.
Those falls were formed by geologic chance. It's a story of 2 floods.
One of the greatest volcanic eruptions on the face of the earth, starting about 17 million years ago, the Columbia River Basalt Floods, traveling some 400 miles from North Eastern Oregon, originating from the Yellowstone super-volcano.
Then later, the greatest flood waters on earth, the Missoula Floods, at the end of the last ice age, ripped off cliff faces in the Columbia and Willamette Rivers and scoured the 40 foot plunge.
SEE PICTURES
Lake Missoula
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Floods through the Gorge
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Floods almost as high as the Space Needle
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Floods overtaking DT Portland
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