In 1913, Portland's population was 276,000 people. The city changed from its mud, blood and beer dominated early days, to the newer, gentler Portland with Benson's Bubbler's and the sweet-smelling Rose Festival. This great city that we know today was a river town whose beginnings we often look upon as being nothing more than a humble Victorian settlement... But this "split-personality" Portland was one of the busiest ports on the globe in the 1890s and early 1900s, and it happened in spite of the colorful types who resided here...
Walking around today you would never know it, but the next time you're having a nice quiet pint at Kelly's Olympian, Dan & Louis's Oyster Bar or Erickson's Saloon, take a look around... the place you're relaxing in was, not too long ago, the most dangerous place in America to go out drinking. Today Portland is amongst the countries most desirous places, but it secretly harbors an underworld darker than you can possibly imagine...
120 years ago, this vice-filled city was a Wild West port town and had more dark places than any medieval dungeon... where gambling, drugs and murder were on every street corner, and you could be kidnapped and sold into slavery. It was easy to find a good time with Speakeasies, brothels and drug dens and you could get anything in one of the edgier neighborhood saloons --including shot, stabbed, clobbered, swindled, stupefied with opium, knocked out with chloroform, infected with syphilis, poisoned with bad moonshine or shanghaied by crimps with trap doors called 'dead-falls' used to kidnap unsuspecting victims.... Today Portland's seedy past is buried beneath its streets.
The shanghaiing trade is over largely because of the disuse of sailing ships and because of an event which caused an international uproar that started an international investigation centering on Portland's crimping practices...
Click on link below to learn of this event:
The Tales of the crimps Bunco Kelly, Jim Turk & Larry Sullivan
-- Tales of Old Shanghai
Walking around today you would never know it, but the next time you're having a nice quiet pint at Kelly's Olympian, Dan & Louis's Oyster Bar or Erickson's Saloon, take a look around... the place you're relaxing in was, not too long ago, the most dangerous place in America to go out drinking. Today Portland is amongst the countries most desirous places, but it secretly harbors an underworld darker than you can possibly imagine...
120 years ago, this vice-filled city was a Wild West port town and had more dark places than any medieval dungeon... where gambling, drugs and murder were on every street corner, and you could be kidnapped and sold into slavery. It was easy to find a good time with Speakeasies, brothels and drug dens and you could get anything in one of the edgier neighborhood saloons --including shot, stabbed, clobbered, swindled, stupefied with opium, knocked out with chloroform, infected with syphilis, poisoned with bad moonshine or shanghaied by crimps with trap doors called 'dead-falls' used to kidnap unsuspecting victims.... Today Portland's seedy past is buried beneath its streets.
The shanghaiing trade is over largely because of the disuse of sailing ships and because of an event which caused an international uproar that started an international investigation centering on Portland's crimping practices...
Click on link below to learn of this event:
The Tales of the crimps Bunco Kelly, Jim Turk & Larry Sullivan
-- Tales of Old Shanghai
