The Oregon historical Society has tens of thousands of photos online in the digital collection, with nearly 2,000 photos when you search construction. No pay wall. Portland was in no way abandoned in the 30s and 40s. There are some WILD conclusions in this video. There was a lot of public corruption and racism in Portland, but it is well documented. Oregon Public Broadcasting has a great show called Oregon Experience that tackles some of these topics in a more measured and historically focused approach. A great book about the topic is called Portland Confidential.
Well how did the native Americans make all those metal buildings with lights . When they lived in TeePees most of the time. & this is through out America... i believe perhaps, the Am. Indians were also transplanted here in America along with the settlers etc. Look up the archeologists who found the dig called Kanastoga man. I'm sure that name is miss spelled. But, it is Aledgeally the oldest find of mankind & it is found in the Northwest. They say that in that village they found white man bones with some black man bones but mostly white people.
Born Oregon City 1949, raised in SE Portland. Good job except for a few glaring errors in pronunciation, which is expected (Wil-AM-et, not the suburb of Chicago; Captain John Cooch, not couch like the sofa). But some of the history is a bit shoddy: the railroad arrived in 1883, not the 1890's; and most of all, Oregon City faded and Portland became the big city because of the Ross Island sand bar prohibiting ocean going vessels from getting past. In other words, Portland was the head of navigation. And who stated such? Cpt. John Cooch. And the demolition of cast iron buildings on Front Street coincided with a general movement to "modernize" America after the Depression, through the sixties. Also, for excellent photos of Portland's past check out "Vintage Portland", an entry a day for the last 14 years
I worked with a woman in early 2000's that worked part-time for Portland Historical Society. Remember her telling me how her job was to go through the historical photographs and destroy certain ones. It's always stuck with me as she would periodically bring it up with an urgency, yet never really elaborated. Suspect that was done at many historical societies.
One thing that’s important to remember about Portland as it was plagued by several massive fires and flooding instances that destroyed most of the waterfront development several times. There are books that document the original land claims and the original Street layouts available. I actually have some of those in my home library Powell’s books is an excellent resource for old Portland information.
Surely these replies are joking and not in reference to Earth being flat. I hope people know that the flat earth theory was created to see how many people would be stupid enough to fall for it. It was a social experiment.
My Uncle William Thomas told me that most of all sections of Portland clear to the Sellwood town area, each had its own ethnic people segregated into their own areas. German, Hungarian, English, Irish, Chinese, and many other ethnic groups of peoples too. The early immigrants which came to Portland lived in their own sections of the city. My grandmother used to be a cleaning woman in the huge mansion on the hill ( she called it the castle on the ridge ) which had a hidden stairway and tunnel to the ship docks. People were secretly shanghaied through those tunnels to the ships and used as forced ship labor. During WW2 my grandmother went down those hidden tunnels and found hundreds of very valuable rich paintings which were brought to Portland from Germany for safety. When another country is bombing you, the best place to hide your priceless paintings is in another country which you are at war with. Portland in deed has a big history of secrets.
Growing up in Portland (born in 1988), they made it sound like the camera wasn't invented until the 1900's. Mostly showing only artist renderings and drawings of what early Portland / Oregon looked like. The "Pittock Mansion" was the only piece of Portland history we were taught with real photos and a field trip (no construction photos of course). They mostly focused on the "Oregon Trail" with Lewis and Clark. There's a huge chunk missing from the timeline! Especially the transition between settlement and city. 🤔 It wasn't until after school (until I lived downtown Portland for 5 years) that I learned about the old electric street car lines that were torn out. The underground network of tunnels that ran for miles beneath the city. And honestly just started raising my eyebrows over everything we were taught as locals growing up. Especially when you slow down and look at some of the still standing heavy stone masonry buildings left. "The United States National Bank" - "The Meier and Frank Building" - And "Multnomah County Public Library" are all very old world. And always seemed out of place when walking downtown. Anyway, GREAT video Jared!! Always blowing my mind! 🥹
I forgot abt the central library in my comment. and it was my first real job back in the 70s! it’s been extensively renovated by now and I don’t recall if there were accessible lower levels but it would have been connected by tunnel like everything else in the area. but the thing I notice abt these buildings (M&F, courthouse and PO on 4th, etc) is that by the 70s, marble panels were falling off the walls like they were built in a hurry with poor materials, which always struck me as odd given how beefy the basements are.
Its the same way in Asheville, NC. There was an electric trolley I later found out (and all the same downtown buildings and monuments as now) but in school it was just a settlers in log cabins vs Natives story endlessly.
Well how did the native Americans make all those metal buildings with lights . When they lived in TeePees most of the time. & this is through out America... i believe perhaps, the Am. Indians were also transplanted here in America along with the settlers etc. Look up the archeologists who found the dig called Kanastoga man. I'm sure that name is miss spelled. But, it is Aledgeally the oldest find of mankind & it is found in the Northwest. They say that in that village they found white man bones with some black man bones but mostly white people.
Nah...its the pics people kept private innocently revealing creating questions that deserve truthful answers. maybe hoarders, Pack rats and bag ladies holding the evidence
The transcontinental railroad reached Portland in Sept of 1883, which was an important factor in its growth thereafter. I'm not sure why this guy is saying it didn't reach Portland until the 1890s-1900. Another piece of misinformation here is the assertion the city was empty and abandoned in the late 1930s. It doesn't take but a quick look at the US census for 1930 and 1940 to see that the city was still growing, although the Great Depression had ended the boom period. If we actually look at exactly where the White photos were taken and when, they were primarily the buildings along Front (Naito) from Burnside to Morrison and mostly on the east side of the street just before demolition. The old waterfront was also demolished and all port facilities relocated to Swan Island, the NW Industrial District/Waterfront and the Kelly Point industrial port area east of St. John out on the 'peninsula'. What he doesn't seem to know is those buildings were indeed condemned by the city and demolished (sadly) to create the four lane divided Harbor Drive along the river. The narrator is creating a very false narrative about that situation. The city wasn't in some existential crisis losing population and sections of downtown were abandoned. Total nonsense. The 1940 census had Portland with 305,000 residents, up from 258,000 in 1920, an 18% growth rate in that 20 year period. City politicians decided the city needed some kind of major freeway-like thoroughfare through downtown because of the increase in population and cars. They opted to take out those old buildings along Naito and build Harbor Drive. Once WWII started, shipbuilding became an important part of Portland's economy, and the population increased to 373,000 in 1950 because of the influx of shipyard workers. That still wasn't a 'boom' as in the late 1800s-early 1900s when there was more than 100% growth every ten years. It's also a bit odd that the narrator doesn't examine the 10 year period 1965-1975 when there really was a massive demolition of most of the south end of the downtown area from Clay to Grant and from Naito to 4th Ave. This was the old Italian and Jewish area of the city center. This was also the period in which the city decided not to expand the freeway system but to build light rail transit instead. In fact, Harbor Drive was torn out and replaced with a park all along the river front. If there was ever a 'reset' as the narrator wants to say, then it was this period of time not the late 1930s. 'Old Portland' truly disappeared during the late 60s and early 70s.
Yeah it’s crazy how many old cast iron buildings were decrepit and mostly empty when they started tearing them down in that first big Urban Renewal District in the Auditorium District. Totally different flavor to that part of town. Mom once told me that was the Jewish part of town when she was little (early 1940s). My grandma and her sister worked at Meier & Frank in the 30s and those Kaiser shipyards during the war. Grandpa was on a Merchant Marine ship when the Germans got him in ‘44.
Born & raised here in Portland, Oregon and I'm a child from the 70's. My Mom was born in 1949 in Salem, Oregon and her parents moved the family to Portland in the mid 1950's. My Great-grandparents lived in NE Portland during one of the historic floods (Portland has had about 10 major floods since 1894) and my Mom told me that my Great-grandparents built their bed atop of empty wooden barrels because the flood waters had reached the surrounding neighborhoods from the Willamette River and when they awoke in the morning, the water had flooded the house and their bed was floating in the bedroom by the afternoon of that day!.... I was 21yrs old and attending PSU when we had another devastating flood in 1996 that caused $27 Million in damages and structures were lost back then as well!... I could go on and on about Portland, Oregon, sadly I don't know a whole lot about other States, just the one I've resided in all my life!... Here's the 10 floods ranging from 1894 to 1996, based on the highestlevel of flooding by foot: (1) 33.00 ft on 06/07/1894 (2) 30.00 ft on 06/14/1948 (3) 30.00 ft on 06/01/1948 (4) 29.80 ft on 12/25/1964 (5) 28.70 ft on 02/06/1890 (6) 28.55 ft on 02/09/1996 (7) 28.20 ft on 06/24/1876 (8) 27.30 ft on 07/01/1880 (9) 26.40 ft on 06/04/1956 (10) 26.20 ft on 06/14/1882
Flooding of both the Willamette and Columbia was common. They called the spring freshet. No wonder people fought for the dams in the 1930s. It really held the city back.
With this concept in place it is pretty hard to make the point that the creator is attempting to make that there could be some stolen city left here by natives long before the 1800s If there was no damn there was no way a sophisticated city could have formed.
Well how did the native Americans make all those metal buildings with lights . When they lived in TeePees most of the time. & this is through out America... i believe perhaps, the Am. Indians were also transplanted here in America along with the settlers etc. Look up the archeologists who found the dig called Kanastoga man. I'm sure that name is miss spelled. But, it is Aledgeally the oldest find of mankind & it is found in the Northwest. They say that in that village they found white man bones with some black man bones but mostly white people.
@@alexdaugherty7472it wasn’t the dams, it was the new concrete sea wall they built in the 30s to replace the old wooden wharfs and piers along the waterfront downtown. That alone did most of the work, though as we’ve seen, flooding downtown was still possible. Just not nearly as frequent. Lots of pics available showing the frequent floods pre-1930s as well as the construction of the new sea wall. Very interesting to look at, as those sea wall construction pics show the basements and multi-level docks that were attached to the rear of the Front St buildings along the waterfront, as well as the tunnel openings along the docks to transport goods from the ships into warehouses and stores downtown. I remember the 96 flood. Dad worked downtown at 3rd & Oak and he couldn’t get home to Forest Grove because we were cut off entirely from surrounding towns. So he slept overnight in Hillsboro till the water receded.
Much of the focus of this video is on downtown Portland, however most of the city is east of the Willamette where you’ll see plenty of buildings from the late 1800s up to the 1930s.
I feel like they’re different on the eastside bc the tunnel system doesn’t exist on the east side to my knowledge. idk what they’re built on tho bc I mainly lived and worked downtown.
The Rose Festival grew out of the Portland Rose Society, an organization that was several years older than the festival. Gardening is a big deal in Oregon. Roses even grow wild here. That is why they have the Rose Festival. It has nothing to do with Europe.
I grew up in Portland. When I was young the Huge Wooden Historical Society Log Building Burned to the ground. I believe most historical photos were lost in the fire along with many artifacts. Even the structures floors still showed the marks of the builders hobnail boots on the floors. Also John Couch was pronounced " Cooch" like the street.
I was told by an elderly person who is a part-time employee of both Milwaukee and the Portland historical societies. Her family had been living in Milwaukee since it was patented that around 1910 there was a great fire that destroyed all of the records for Portland and that’s why many of the older buildings an Southeast Portland are labeled on trusts and deeds as being finished in 1912 our home was a pioneer era home built by historic family, it was constructed sometime between 1850 and 1880.
I remember visiting Portland in (around) 2012. We got day passes for the streetcar, etc. for the first time so we could explore the city, and I remember being extremely frustrated by the announcement “Next stop, “COOCH” Street,” when the map clearly showed “COUCH!” I couldn’t figure out why they would so badly mispronounce the phonetics of the word. At some point, we learned the steet was named after a prominent family with that last name, and they were always known as “Cooch” despite the phonetic logic that I have always known. I read the comments for this video solely to find out if anyone addressed this fact in response to the narration. Thank you for pointing it out! As someone unfamiliar with the area and culture of Portland back in 2012, I can tell you there are many things about this area that can only truly be understood and conveyed by those who were, or those who learned from, locals in the area through those transformative years.
How can people use the term “old world” to describe Portland? There are more old buildings there than some people make it sound, but they are late 19th and early 20th century buildings - nothing like what is in Europe, which is what “old world” means to me.
I grew up in Portland in the 80 and 90s. It is not the same place. However the sense of oddness and "offness" has always been there. Spokane has a lot of the same oddness in its history too. You should check that city out as well. Worlds fair, great fire around 1900, underground doorways, etc.
Look into the construction of Harbor Way on the waterfront. Looks like a lot of your "abandoned" building pics are in that area. Pretty much everything from front to 2nd was demolished for that project.
I first visited Portland in 1968, for a family wedding. I lived in L.A. at the time and thought Portland looked like a city stuck in the mid 40's to 50's look. In other words, at least 10 years behind that point. I moved my family to outer Multnomah County, which was much more pastoral then. During the early 1970's, Neil Goldschmidt was elected Mayor of Portland and I credit him with creating a revitalization of the city core that increased the livability of Portland to what it has become today. .
I was raised with my grandparents up on Overton Street which was huge and belonged to the future first governor of Oregon. That house had a spiral stairway with an extra hidden staircase behind the wall of the main staircase. Upstairs behind the main closets was another hidden hallway where servants could laundry and hang the fresh clothes on the backside of the closets. My grandmother which lived in that mansion was Maybelle and Joseph Reid. The dinning room had a huge 12 foot table with draws on the sides of it. My brothers and I would hide not wanted foods in those side drawers of the table. Over the table was a huge glass chandelier like about 4 to 5 foot in diameter. When young my siblings and I would ride card board board boxes down the grand staircase. Our next door neighbor was the Fitzcharlds. I went to the old mans open box funeral - gave me the creeps. My brother and sister went to the grade school a few blocks north, close to the Old Montgomery building - which I had been in many times. My grandmother sold shoes there. Last I knew the old mansion is still there.
Well how did the native Americans make all those metal buildings with lights . When they lived in TeePees most of the time. & this is through out America... i believe perhaps, the Am. Indians were also transplanted here in America along with the settlers etc. Look up the archeologists who found the dig called Kanastoga man. I'm sure that name is miss spelled. But, it is Aledgeally the oldest find of mankind & it is found in the Northwest. They say that in that village they found white man bones with some black man bones but mostly white people.
I can't believe you've done a video about my city, the Rose City! I love Portland. I've lived here over 40 years and there's always something to explore...a lot of mystery here. But it's beautiful and exciting. 🌹
I spent years wandering the streets of Portland high on psychedelics as a youth and it always struck me that there was something older something deeper than what we could see on the street level.
One thing that the author is confused about it is that the westward expansion across the Willamette river to East Portland was well underway by the 1920s there are massive historic neighborhoods in East Portland that were built between 1880 and 1912, so there was a max exodus of residential property from downtown area to the new East Portland. There are still some remnants of residential districts left in WestPortland if you look long and hard and carefully enough in the alphabet district, which was once a huge housing community that was torn down to make room for industrialization.
There is no such city named East Portland. It is merely southeast or northeast Portland. And there is no place called East County either. It's just eastern Multnomah County.
@@cosmo1eleven855 Actually, there was an area east of the Willamette River which was called East Portland. Many Portland neighborhoods were originally suburban developments which, over time, became annexed to Portland.
I would say that almost half of the pictures in this video are from the Lewis & Clark Exposition in 1905. None of that exists today, it was all torn down after the fair. The west was noted for having buildings with false facades. They always looked more grand than what they appeared. Before 1905 Portland was still a wild wilderness town with many undeveloped areas. I have heard it described that before WW2 Portland resembled a medieval city, the city and then the fields. The motto of Portland has never been like most cities to be "Bigger and Better." Livability has always triumphed. Even then they were more interested in the outdoors, clean water and family life.
Not correct. The current old world architecture buildings downtown are 300-400 years old. There was a thriving and bustling city before the 1800s in Portland.
Thank you sharing all of the photos. I enjoy your videos. Maybe some of this happened and happens on a regular basis: earthquakes and tsunami's, cities are beautiful, built up, free electricity via the ether, radio/television, computers, digital photography and videos, movies. The Port Land would have had buoys showing that it was time to evacuate. Everyone in the city or had electricity is evacuated. After this kind of destruction (as in India and elsewhere), people die of Malaria. My Norwegian Grandfather told me he took his sister and got on a ship for America at the age of 12, he ended up in North Dakota. He said when he joined the Army in WWI(clean up America), he had Malaria the entire trip. One trip really. That's where he was sent and stayed. He had ten children. Lots of people in the midwest had lots of children. Somewhere along the way Native Americas died at a higher rate. Maybe that is really when the United States removed their sovereign status, and took title their huge amounts of land. Or maybe they couldn't tell where the land ended up. Maybe this had happened every so often, a result of a changing earth. This horror show went all the way across, covered the plains, the food supply suffered, rationing.... Wisconsin is still wet in the north. Clearly 1906 was a major earthquake probably in Japan, tsunami on the West coast. In San Francisco, that's what happened. I know, I have family records. There was a Marine base there, helping, and government airships taking photos. The coasts would have had access to boats, you would fare better there if you were warned. Look, the trees are gone, not cleared, everything is covered in mud and guck. There are no roads, it takes a long time to build the infrastructure back starting with rail, but that would take a long time as you point out in Port Land with the sidewalks sinking. We see large amounts of people at the beach. It was probably something clean to do, wash your clothes and children, let them swim and play. I have family photos where the "yellow sky" has been cut out. It showed how long the guck stayed in the atmosphere. I have digital photos handed person to person in my family from 1849. Americans came together, helped each other in a way that inspires me. My family got cast to the wind a little bit, but we all manage to find each other usually. Thanks again. Love.
You can date many photos by the clothing. Many of the photos in this video are dated wrong just by looking at the clothes. My grandpa grew up here, working at Meire and Frank department store when he was 8. He worked in the same building that is there today in 1880. It had "high tech" air shoot money and receipt transfer tubes. Your general understanding of society classes seems very limited, not just for Portland but for the country. You haven't been here, take a tour. There are hundreds of photos from early Portland where you can tour Portland and see these same old buildings. There was a national depression, not just in Portland in 1930s. The early lighted photos you show are on the River during the Lewis and Clark expo, which you don't mention. My grandpa worked on those structures. Most were not real buildings. But 'props' like a movie set. The lights came from the new dams on the Clackamas River and PGE. You never mentioned the Forestry Center, the huge wood structure dedicated to Portlands Stump City history. I was in that building when I was a child and have photos. It was destroyed by fire in the 1960s. It was huge taking up several blocks. Portland's Iron industry wasn't a big deal until after 1900. Also see the maps. I have a 1920s map of the city, it indicates where all the business are, with the names. Many of these buildings are still there. I can send you a photo. Portland's primary businesses were shipping, lumber, and Construction. And just because you are bad at research outside the web, doesn't mean there is a conspiracy. My great grandpa came to Portland in 1856. Grandpa was born here before the great 1890 flood. Everything from 1st street to 5th street was flooded. You only mention the Vanport flood. That was on the Columbia, not the Willamette. You also miss the clearing of the River front to build the oil and gas storage near St John's district on both sides of the River. The population boom changed with the nation. The 1890 national depression and the building boom the followed brought thousands of immigrants, Swedes, Finns and Norwegians, to cut the big timber outside of Portland in Clackamas County. At least on of the buildings you show as empty and demolished is on the river front Westside just North of town on hey 30. It's still there. It was the old PG&E building. It's a cool structure and there has been a fight to keep it but the oil and gas folks don't want to deal with a historical building. It's in the flood plain. It's was flooded again in the 1963-4 flood too. Your statements are misleading and need to be updated after you actually visit. As many have mentioned you don't pronounce the River name correctly. Finally, the movie house row, shown several times in your video, was destroyed by development when I was a teenager in the 1960s, the Nordstrom store replaced several. not the 1930s. Downdown Portland is blocked by the westhills. The photo with Mounthood in the ba kground is the eastside of the river. Developed after the westside. Portland decided on many parks. More parks per capita than any other city in the country. Portland isn’t flat, its a series of hills, cinder butts, and volcanos. Shaped geographically by huge floods or both Lava millions of years ago and ice age floods thousands of years ago. Along with rain and snow melt floods more recently. The federal Government built power and flood control dams to reduce the flood impact. Bonneville Dam was built in 1936, followed by a series of dams over the next 30 years. These dams all but destroyed the native salmon runs up river. The salmon still run the River down to the falls and turn up the clackamas river at Oregon City. You need to label your photos better. Please visit Portland, take a tour.
Thanks for bringing this to light. I have thought about this for many years now as a photographer myself I have documented the change in just 20 years and it shows
A lot of these photos are from the Lewis and Clark exposition era and all those building were torn down after the expo was over that is why you see no people in them. It was all built for that then taken down. Also WILL AM IT is how we pronounce Willamette. Family photos from the mid 1800's show mostly wooden buildings in small areas of what is now Portland. Some of the street names are actually the names of small towns that became the city as the city grew out to meet them.
So are you reaching for conspiracies? The depression happened in 1929, in 1936 we see thousands of Portlanders in the local Hooverville. I'm all for questioning history, but come on, the mainstream narrative being that towns should be growing during the Great Depression? Also, photos of "old" Portland are readily available.
@Edna Leed and the timber boom in the 1920s… they cut down the coastal rainforest and floated the logs to the river, so water was a major means of transport.
Some very interesting information in this video on the shady history we are told about Portland. I'll be doing a live look at Portland soon sharing my file. This video definitely adds to my understanding of the area. I always enjoy these thanks for the content!
You’re very welcome my friend. Let me know when you post the video but I will also keep checking your page. I do enjoy any constructive criticism and chances at new looks from other Old World Historians. I’d love to see an even deeper dive on Portland, there’s so much to uncover that I really only was able to touch the surface.
@@FRESHboostersWhere can we send you old pictures that we come across? I just got a volunteer position at a Carnegie museum, and it has thousands of pictures and articles that are not on the internet. They were discovered recently and the curator is in the process of digitizing them.
Nice video, but I'm pretty sure the panorama drawing shown at 1:00, and repeated later, is of early Vancouver, Washington; the walled Fort Vancouver is at right. The image likely predates the 1840s establishment of Portland, perhaps by 20 years or so. Vancouver was within the Oregon Territory until the Washington Territory was created in 1853; Oregon went on to become a state in 1859, Washington in 1889. So it's not outlandish to include this in early Portland history, but these have always been distinct communities.
You hit the nail on the head regarding the construction photo's, i often wondered this as they are ever so proud of themselves not to miss the opportunity ! Great channel Jarid
Well how did the native Americans make all those metal buildings with lights . When they lived in TeePees most of the time. & this is through out America... i believe perhaps, the Am. Indians were also transplanted here in America along with the settlers etc. Look up the archeologists who found the dig called Kanastoga man. I'm sure that name is miss spelled. But, it is Aledgeally the oldest find of mankind & it is found in the Northwest. They say that in that village they found white man bones with some black man bones but mostly white people.
Lifetime Portland resident, and can say I loved the bits of info you were able to find for this. It could be of use to know that much of Portland lies outside of historical downtown. Moreover one of the most important events in Portland history happens with the flooding of Vanport on 1948. This would displace an inordinate amount of POC who had come from across the nation to work at the Kaiser shipyards in WW2, as many of them lived in that community before it's flooding, but had nowhere to go once their homes were gone. Portland, still being a very white city in 1948, had no idea what to do at this point and turned to the Portland Housing Authority who -in one of Portlands most controversial and influential decisions-created a housing district in Albina for all POC. This was the birth of the ghettos of Albina and, more importantly, a massive population shift that took place within the city from there.
At the time of the flood, Vanport was probably the second or third largest city in the state. It was completely destroyed. It's hard to imagine. Although it was mostly prefab buildings which probably made it much worse.
SJW alert no need to use "poc" there was white people living there too, your way of not being racist, is being racist at its core tired of portlandian people making the rest of oregon look like hypocrites standing up for the small guy "poc" at the cost of another race "white" youre a racist, dont segregate people aka white people from a group of people, could be 1 white person or 1000 living there and you completely elimated them being a sjw and trying to get browny points
@@PlatinumIrishrose the levy system had not been constructed in the Columbia River slough area. Vanport was located along the shores of the Columbia River within the tidal zone, in a wetland of sorts. I’m sure people in power were well aware of the risks, but they didn’t care. The people of Vanport had to rescue themselves, walking uphill to higher ground into what is now North Portland and the New Columbia neighborhood (used to be called the ‘Ville).
There is an underground part of the city too. "The Shanghai tunnels". There was an entrance to a section of the underground in a bar my friend owned. I've been down there before but you can only get to a portion of it cuz the rest have been sealed off.
businesses downtown all seemed to own a bit of tunnel. I worked at a store on Broadway that had really good access but metal doors made it impossible to go far. I heard there are entrances under the mansions in the hills.
The northwest is an incredibly mysterious, haunted realm. The way the mist comes off the hills around Portland is so otherworldly. The vast open land of Oregon is immense and overpowering. Try this on for size, Oregon is the ninth largest state by land, bigger than Pennsylvania and upstate New York combined, but seventy five percent of the people live in Portland and it's suburbs. That's less than four percent of the land. There is sooooooooo much backwoods country in Oregon, with enough trees to envelop all of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. The woods here are so deep, vast and dark your mind goes wild just thinking about it. Grizzly bears officially went extinct in Oregon in 1937, but it wouldn't be the least bit surprising if population's of them were found in the deep woods tomorrow. This place is crypitd heaven. We've got Sasquatch, dozens of river, lake and sea shore monsters. And iff that's not enough, alien and UFO sightings are rampant. This part of the country is like living in an X files episode. Can't be a coincidence the creator of that show was from Washington state. For all the mystery and majesty of Oregon and the northwest, it holds a very dark history in many ways that persists into modern times. It was originally founded as a regional safe haven for White, native born Americans, terrified of the country being overrun by Immigrants, slaves and Mexicans in the nineteenth century. Despite the liberal progressive image of Portland and Seattle, the NW has a deep and pervasive history of white supremacist policies dominating the region. The treatment of Indigenous populations here was among the most brutal in all of the America's. While Black people were all but banned from living in either state until the 20th century. Chinese and Japanese immigrants were subjected to near slavery contructing the railroads, and toiling in logging operations. Today, Portland still has an extremely seedy underbelly. Huge amounts of drug trafficking goes through it's ports and harbors, and it's one of the most notorious cities in America for child abduction and sex trafficking. The Vietnamese mafia controls vast swaths of the city, while street gangs from Thailand, Guatemala and Somalia wage shadow gang wars over the drug and sex trade. A dark, mysterious realm of profound but terrible beauty and sinister secrets, quietly gestating under awholesome, mundane veneer.
Interesting theories. There are some holes in your logic, and yet your great video, if rearranged, answers those logic gaps. Also, pronunciation is important to natives here. Two pepper names that messed you up: Couch prounced. "Kooch" Willamette p. "will-AM-it" ...at least you didn't try Glisan, Schuyler, or Tualatin. Logic gap: eg; For the source of money and power in Portland (before the railroad arrived), look at fishing, timber, and shipping. Oregon, and the area were once occupied by the Hudson's Bay Company - establishing Astoria (the oldest European settlement west of the Mississippi. It was interesting that you dismissed the name Portland as ironic, without considering the shipping industry that communicated timber and seafood ask over the world. And brought back what? Steel, bricks, concrete, textiles, etc. Yes, Portland was s lawless corrupt town in the 1800s, but you should probably do more due diligence on your research and conspiracial speculations. * 5th Gen Oregonian and Portlander
Damn nobody is saying anything about the two little kids standing on the logs of the building? Just how damn big is it the logs are friggin huge and looked like gigantic Legos say something aaaaaaahhhh!!! It's at 5:46
They were old growth fir. Look up the history of the Forestry Center building. It was supported by timbers so big that my grade school class couldn't reach all the way around. It was amazing.
You can't make any serious conclusions by just checking one website for digitized photos and wikipedia. You have to hit the stacks and microfiche old-school. Read a few books for context. As far as absent people.. remember Cali. Goldrush in 1849, various others in Colorado, Nevada, Eastern. Oregon in subsequent decades, Klondike in 1890s would empty the streets of Portland at times. Crews would jump ship. Hence the need for shanghaiing. There are great city directories and census records for all those decades. Yes, construction could be fast. Compare San Francisco's growth. Most of the lumber for which, BTW came from Portland.
Images by Minor White, show empty Portland, this area was Japantown, which later became "New Chinatown"/Oldtown. Japantown, located just Southwest of the Steel Bridge, was full of shops, Services, housing, and entertainment for the Japanese-American families that lived there in the 1940s before they were forced into internment camps.
I grew up in pdx and was a galleria brat in the 80s before the oldest buildings downtown were decommissioned. there was and still is an extensive tunnel system throughout downtown to the waterfront but they’ve largely been blocked off. I was in them a few times but don’t recall details beyond the heavy metal gates ppl put up to secure storage space. the old courthouse and the old original main PO on 4th, and the long-gone meier and frank building always struck me as odd. in the area where the tunnels are supposed to originate is all victorian era mansions, but the old apartments bordering that area all have pretty deep basements and it’s all one long slope toward the Willamette. it’s been decades since I been underground here and the tours only show a fraction. Missoula floods destroyed everything in its path, so huge impact on population then, and then again when logging barons arrived. I own property that the barons destroyed. 100 years later the land has barely started to recover. there’s no question in my mind that the first thing colonizers did when they got here is cut down all the old trees. it’s where the lumber to build Sears kit homes came from. they cut down the trees and planted orchards and destroyed swan island with fill on the east side of the river with fill. downtown is on the west side so idk if they just blasted material off the cliffs to fill in the channels around swan island, but there was earth-moving going on from the beginning of white occupation. now I know of your interest I’ll keep my eyes open for photos. the only interesting one I have in my possession is a photo of 10th and Morrison I took from the upper floor of the galleria when light rail construction was going on. pretty sure it cut into the tunnel system but the photo and negative are currently in storage.
I've lived in Portland most of my life. I don't know much about the history. However, I can 100% assure you that the resources to build are local (for the most part). We have plenty of trees. Also, Portland for decades was biggest producers of Concrete in the country. Ross Island in the Willamette River has a HUGE hole in it where they pulled the material for concrete out for decades. Beyond that, I didn't realize that the Starks were some of the original land owners. (I should have though because there is a street named after them.) BTW, they still own a ton of land in the area. Some of it is apartments and they are total slum lords. I lived in a building owned by them (managed by a property manager of course). The place was a slum. Some of us started complaining and next thing we know we are all kicked out with some lame excuse. The building gets gutted and turned into a hotel.
You are correct on the building materials. Also all the iron constructed buildings were built with iron from the smelters in Lake Oswego (not called with the 'lake' then) the material coming from Iron Mountain within the city. There still exists a preserved furnace structure in George Rogers Park by the river in Lake Oswego that has great historical photos and information about that period of time.
My grandparents on both sides moved to the Portland area in the 1940s. I recognized the steel bridge and the Morrison street bridge. So many of the water front buildings you found in pictures def didn’t exist when I was growing up there except the train station. Up in the hills were where the rich people lived. The huge flood of van port destroyed the large population that lived in north Portland around Jantzen beach. But that is a huge delta area otherwise known as delta park. The river front area downtown when I was growing up was the slums of Portland. It was pretty abandoned except by the homeless population. Most industry had relocated to other areas of Portland. The Willamette river was grossly polluted. Nobody wanted to go near it. It was brown and stank as I recall. But with the clean water act of the 70s the river was revitalized. And now the river front is the happening place. Funny how things change. I remember my gramma ran the Portland Hotel. Rooms for rent with a shared bathroom on each floor. It was in a seedy part of town back then. I don’t think that old brick building even exists anymore. Torn down I’m assuming to make nice residences for the richer people who wanted river views without sharing a restroom with their neighbors. Lol. Thanks for sharing old pictures of the town where I grew up.
No they didn’t work on the ships. They moved to escape famine and poverty. They were barely surviving as a family in South Dakota dry farming. They came west looking for jobs. My gramma worked at a cannery for years and my grandpa sold fuller brush and Watkins products door to door
It used to take photographs over 15 minutes to capture a picture the reason you rarely see people in any city not just Portland back in the day, is because no one stood still long enough for the camera to capture them. Again it's an issue with the exposure on the camera if you're trying to take a big wide shot the camera isn't going to be able to pick up all the little stuff moving around.
Oregon City has the same historical gaps. Seems the "unsightly" aspects have been conveniently deleted. For all those who followed the Oregon Trail to get here.... apparently no photographers made the journey. Thank you for your efforts on this!
Hi, thanks for doing amazing work and research and the beautiful photos that you always post I am northwest girl, Eugene and Portland, Seattle have been my home. I don’t care how anyone annunciates or pronounces Willamette. Your research is invaluable and welcome by anyone who has an interest and not biased just because they lived here you can say couch or you can say couch, you can say Willamette or you can say Willamette either or either way you are doing a great job and thank you.
The building @23:23 in your video shows an apartment building, which is presumed empty, at a time when it should be full because of the population spike, their were no ready made homes & subdivisions to move to back in those days, everyone lived in the city, so why is it empty? That's a thread that keeps unraveling, with these cities having empty living quarters when wave after wave of people start to come in and populate these cities after 1860. Like my city had 30 blocks of store front buildings with 4 stories of apartments above them, block after block after block but the apartments are empty, the store fronts look old and gutted themselves back then. You would figure that windows would be up, laundry hanging from a rope above the street, a couple of dudes just hanging out on the corner, for population of 100,00 in 1866 but No, nothing like that. Great Video!!
In homes in Oregon we hang our laundry inside. While we have outdoor lines for summer, we have set ups for indoor drying that lifts lines to high ceilings. You can still buy these at layman's in Ohio.
New sub to your channel. Thank you Jared! We live west of Portland. There's many buildings and areas that are quite curious. The old residential areas that surround the Portland Rose Gardens used to have a castle that was torn down. I always wondered if it may be part of something much bigger than most would imagine.
I first moved to North Portland in ‘91 and then bought a house near Cathedral Park with St John’s Bridge very near me that crossed the Willamette River. Around ‘96 I moved to Vancouver WA located on the other side of the Columbia River until moving away in 2011. Majority of the years I worked for NW Natural Gas Utility Co… I don’t recall any stories about buildings being torn down or streets being swamped or the mob. Many old buildings exist but I don’t recall the ones shown in the photos. Oaks park was still operating when I lived there. I know that there are numerous tunnels under Portland. The early street lights were lit by gas produced from Coal. Portland Gas & Coke Co… There was one old building that I really wanted to snoop around inside but was off limits because the entire area is contaminated from the early days of Portland Gas & Coke Co…
Btw, there's no grand conspiracy about the cities in Oregon not keeping their old architecture. Eugene, Salem and other cities have also mostly destroyed their pre-statehood buildings with little to no photographic evidence. Nobody thought ahead to whether or not anyone would care what these buildings would look like or where they were located. You also mispronounced Willamette. "Wil-AM-et" 3 syllables, not two. Thanks for pronouncing Oregon correctly, though.
I was a part of the big remodel/historical restoration of The Fairmount Hotel in NW, right near Pettigrove St. Itself. Super cool info and great old photos. Thanks for the video 💯❤
Have you reached out to some family's of early residents? My family settled in Portland and Oregon in the 1800's. Seems like you only checked with historical societies and I can tell you there are many pictures hiding in homes!
Yep! I have many. But the early photos are mostly portraits not pictures of the city. My grandma took the train from Estacada to Portland when my grandparent lived there in 1915. I understand the train stopped running sometime in the 1940s. To bad, it would have been a beautiful trip.
In the mid 80's I worked at a deli within that building. To get supplies, we had to take the elevator down to the basement. It was massive. There was a tunnnel, but it was gated off and locked. Always wondered if it was part of the tunnel system
Where were all the photos with empty streets and buildings? The first photo was clearly taken late at night and all of the apartments have windows and some have lights on. And waiting for no one to be in the shot wouldn't be hard. The 2nd is just the front and a small bit of the side of a building. Windows and doors intact. And even easier to get a shot with no unwanted people or things in it. And the 3rd yes does show a small section of a side street with no cars in view or people. Again it could be an intentional early morning shot and a case of patience. You do score some demolished and one in the background that looks like it might not have and windows. That would almost be cool If we didn't already know a bunch of these pics were taken before the entire city was to be demolished. So clearly this is a section of the city were it already started. And the one with one guy and one car were it even says Pre Demolition, u can see the buildings have already begun to be stripped and skeletonized. Which is the literal way you prepare for demolition . And why exactly would people be in a part of the city where all of the buildings are empty and about to be destroyed except someone with a purpose? This just killed any hope I had for you to break free of the fantasy and start searching for the real truth like Awar, Static ,Woody and Wise up. Your better than this kid
Fun fact, they debated calling it Portland vs stumpville! Due to the immense amount of trees cut down! Portland is often referred to as The city of bridges.
@@Nordic_Mechanic You are sooooooo right :(( This mindset seems to be the same kind of condescending hatred from tyranical madness, which we have always dealt with through history. Or, as Einstein said: "Great thoughts are always violently inhibited by mediocre minds". It's as though "THEY" can't stand to have anybody smarter, more creative or more humanitarian (etc.) than those who constantly suppress, erase and lie about everything under the sun. Literally. Including the illogical belief that we are the only life in the entrie freakin' universe - and that there are other beings and life forms out there who are infintiely, more advanced than ourseleves. Heck, how many advanced civilizations have we had on this planet which would clearly show how backwards we are, by today's standards. THEY don't want us to know. THEY 'have to' be the only 'smart people' not only on this world - but, also amongst multiple billions and trillions of other earth-like planets which are out there. These people are the opposite of everything good... makind would be sooooo much different today if morality and integrity were inbred into our make-up. THEY make up their own rules and use nefarious means to enforce them. It's abhorent. Sorry, I gotta pull back here. Your comment kinda 'triggered' me. You already said it in much fewer words
I'm not sure why anyone would find it strange that a city could experience such incredible growth within a 50 year period. Of course, this is very possible and during the turn of the 19th century were driven by events such as the gold rushes (both California and Alaska) as well as the move towards the west. If you want a more recent example of this "phenomenon," just look at Las Vegas, which has grown exponentially within the last 50-60 years. Because if you think about it, Las Vegas, as a town, really shouldn't even have a reason to exist: it is nowhere near a waterway, nor is it on any train tracks. It's in the middle of a desert with nothing more than gambling to keep it up. On the other end of that spectrum, there is Detroit, which is one of the most advanced and richest cities in the country in the 1930s. Then, it experienced a massive exodus out of the city in the late 70's and early 80's, the result of a change of American tastes in automobiles.
Another quick comment: the tunnels were constructed to move product through the city without tearing up the roads. My grandpa helped do that as a child, yes child labor was a thing, to move goods to the Meire and Frank warehouse.
you quoted them saying they used "resources" nearby to build Portland..they literally told the truth..the question is what was the "nearby resources" that they speak of? Old buildings and building materials?
When I see the pictures that show people that basically set up house in an existing large mansion & then hung pictures on almost every square foot that is what I think...they looted the heck out of another building
@@c_hunting hmmm .. I actually read an travel log/manuscript from this woman from those times and she said that they took over the mansions in the south..so I wouldn’t doubt it..smdh.. hidden history for sure
I grew up in Portland in the 60s 70s and some of the 80s that was a blast... The Halloween parties they would throw in Old Town in these ancient buildings was like a dream🎉🎉🎉
Another source of photos are the aerial photos taken by the US government prior to dam building on both the Clackamas river and Columbia rivers. The Corp. Of Engineers has these photos and they need to be archived because the are the last physical evidence of traditional places before they were flooded. Among these are also arial views of Portland, Oregon City and Vancouver, Washinton.
Timberline lodge was actually one area i can say is ours... i worked ther for a year as a hopuseman and saw tons of building plans,pictures of start to finish with tools and well i was a houseman and its a hgotel. beautiful but not old world. It was built by us govt during the depression WPA program... and all stones came from the volcano,Mt Hood. but everything else i question. The forest around provided the trees and if you get a chance its worth looking at they even have old stones cut in half and lots of evidence EVEN videos too!! THX for your work ,,Richard
Another old world town with missing time. They're saying oldest Old World building from the early thirties no way. Definitely from the late 1800s where are all the people that's the question. I've seen on another site a picture of Moscow around 1850 the town was empty. 20 years later there are thousands of bustling people what's going on? Keep up the good work the controllers are definitely screwing with the timeline. No fire it seems like all the other old world cities succumb to Great fire
Nope, Portland never had a great fire. We had a couple of earth quakes but never a big fire. The only significant fire was the destruction of the Forestry Center in 1964. It was heart breaking.
This is a cool video, but it’s missing a major component to explain what happened during the 30s-40s. Human trafficking was the largest export out of portland (and Astoria as well). The city has had a long history of trying to cover it’s dark past, even recently by trying to rebrand 82nd Ave (a place known for prostitution) “Rose ave” and spending millions planting roses up and down the ave to change public perception. The end of WW2 was around the same time that “Shanghai’ing” ended, and the city made great efforts to cover it up. This was done my filling the tunnels that were used to traffic drugged men and women to the docks. Unfortunately the non profit that used to do the historic tours of the tunnels no longer does, and now the tunnel tours are commercial “ghost tour” bs. If you care to do so, you can see for yourself the holding cells of the unfortunate sailors that had been drugged, the boxes they put women in to break them mentally, and the opium dens. It’s all still there for anyone that would like to observe and learn about the Portlands history. The historic society still has prerecorded virtual tours available portlandtunnels.com/index.html
Some of the conclusions made in the latter parts of this video are interesting. I was born in 1942 in old St Vincents Hospital which was on the west side of Portland. My family lived in a small town about thirty miles west of the city, but I had two families of relatives living in Portland proper. I recall making regular visits to those relatives and after WWII ended, going on shopping trips to downtown Portland. At that time the downtown area was a bustling place, the center of commerce as this was prior to any shopping malls being built. I remember being taken to the Forestry Building that remained in use after the Lewis and Clark Exposition. It burned not long after that time. My point is that I have no memories of wide spread renovation of areas of the city. Whenever we drove through Portland, there was the normal mix of old and newer buildings.
I made a post on Facebook book with 80 photos back in December and January lost architecture of Oregon, had a lot of Roman style looking architecture, no way they built any of it especially with the population size
Visit the old neighborhood churches.... Some of these photos and stories can be found in older churches from the era. I loved in the Brooklyn neighborhood & learned abt a unique time during WW1 where residents renamed local streets bearing German names: Rhine& Rhone for instance are now separated by... Lafayette??? That's because one of them was renamed. As well as Bismarck street renamed to Bush, etc. Just an example.
I'm a Portland resident. It's crazy hearing my grandpa's stories about normal flooding over the the river walls back in the 60s and 70s that'd leave entire blocks just swamped
flooding in Portland has always been a thing. it’s what finally tipped us from being a sundown city to allowing Black ppl to live inside the city limits.
@@polyoptika4382 wtf are you talking about black people always were pushed towards the center of the city. That has only changed in recent times with gentrification of downtowns. But that being said. If you are on some racist shit you can go and eat a big black dick
Apparently this flooding was in most towns in Am. But I do know what you are talking about as my spouse as a child lived through one of these floods , it ruined everything. Look up Mud Floods. Very interesting. Also look up old world Tartera.
Well how did the native Americans make all those metal buildings with lights . When they lived in TeePees most of the time. & this is through out America... i believe perhaps, the Am. Indians were also transplanted here in America along with the settlers etc. Look up the archeologists who found the dig called Kanastoga man. I'm sure that name is miss spelled. But, it is Aledgeally the oldest find of mankind & it is found in the Northwest. They say that in that village they found white man bones with some black man bones but mostly white people.
Is was illegal for blacks to come to Oregon until late 1920’s, got 30 lashes if they did & another 30 if they stayed another 30 days. Got to love that Oregon history!
The City had many ornate Movie theaters including the Fox, Music Box, (where our class saw Ben Hur in 1960 as a 6th grade field trip. Also the Orpheum, and my favorite the Oriental. It was a great city to grow up in, safe, and a City where neighbors took care of one another. I rode the bus downtown alone at 7 years old, without ever having a problem. Outside people moved here after destroying Their Home Towns, and now they have ruined My Home Town. Riots and Antifa would have been eradicated instantly in those days. Governor Tom McCall said "Please Don't Californiacate Oregon". Now there are diapers in streams, trash everywhere, and destruction of neighborhoods. Now our State is run by trash that has moved here to Portland that out numbers votes in the rest of the State. All Elected Official should be required to be Native Oregonian's. Not Transplanted Woke Sno-Flakes.
They were busy wrecking those old theatres in Seattle when I was young. Once your eyes are open - they can no longer be closed. So many people question Nothing !
I really question why you were unable to find a many pictures of Portland. I have seen many photos of all kinds. I am sure the Oregonian has a multitude of photos that you could have used. It's my understanding that Portland grew gradually through the 1800s. Much of the building was on the east side of the river. The city grew very rapidly after Lewis & Clark Exposition. At the time of WW2 there was so little housing available, it lead to the creation of Vanport. During the 50s and 60s the city stagnated until the 70s when there were huge changes leading to the city we see today.
as someone who’s gone looking for photos, it’s not that easy to find them. but you’re correct that there were settlements on the east side… several if memory serves. eventually they were all annexed. a lot of neighborhoods are still called by the name of the town they once were.
Well how did the native Americans make all those metal buildings with lights . When they lived in TeePees most of the time. & this is through out America... i believe perhaps, the Am. Indians were also transplanted here in America along with the settlers etc. Look up the archeologists who found the dig called Kanastoga man. I'm sure that name is miss spelled. But, it is Aledgeally the oldest find of mankind & it is found in the Northwest. They say that in that village they found white man bones with some black man bones but mostly white people.
![ไข้ขึ้นเลย! เมื่อแฝดโดนจัดเต็มวัคซีนครบ2เดือน🤒 [cc] แดนแพทตี้ SS2 | EP.54 |](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/z2VHItnyyvY/mqdefault.jpg)
The Oregon historical Society has tens of thousands of photos online in the digital collection, with nearly 2,000 photos when you search construction. No pay wall. Portland was in no way abandoned in the 30s and 40s. There are some WILD conclusions in this video. There was a lot of public corruption and racism in Portland, but it is well documented. Oregon Public Broadcasting has a great show called Oregon Experience that tackles some of these topics in a more measured and historically focused approach. A great book about the topic is called Portland Confidential.
Well how did the native Americans make all those metal buildings with lights . When they lived in TeePees most of the time. & this is through out America... i believe perhaps, the Am. Indians were also transplanted here in America along with the settlers etc. Look up the archeologists who found the dig called Kanastoga man. I'm sure that name is miss spelled. But, it is Aledgeally the oldest find of mankind & it is found in the Northwest. They say that in that village they found white man bones with some black man bones but mostly white people.
One of the comments at the top, talks about someone in the hist. Society told to distroy certain photos. Interesting.
@@keepingthefaith9041 Maybe interesting, but false.
Keepingthe faith...did you mean Kennewick man?
@@keepingthefaith9041 I’m sorry but you need help
Born Oregon City 1949, raised in SE Portland. Good job except for a few glaring errors in pronunciation, which is expected (Wil-AM-et, not the suburb of Chicago; Captain John Cooch, not couch like the sofa). But some of the history is a bit shoddy: the railroad arrived in 1883, not the 1890's; and most of all, Oregon City faded and Portland became the big city because of the Ross Island sand bar prohibiting ocean going vessels from getting past. In other words, Portland was the head of navigation. And who stated such? Cpt. John Cooch. And the demolition of cast iron buildings on Front Street coincided with a general movement to "modernize" America after the Depression, through the sixties. Also, for excellent photos of Portland's past check out "Vintage Portland", an entry a day for the last 14 years
I worked with a woman in early 2000's that worked part-time for Portland Historical Society. Remember her telling me how her job was to go through the historical photographs and destroy certain ones. It's always stuck with me as she would periodically bring it up with an urgency, yet never really elaborated. Suspect that was done at many historical societies.
Fascinating…..
It’s amazing how simply historical records can be disregarded and forgotten.
Its such a crime against humanity to destroy photographs :(
@@Americansikkunt just get an NPV, pay them money and call it their job.
@@AlwaysAskWhy420 what is an NPV?
NPC - Non player Character
One thing that’s important to remember about Portland as it was plagued by several massive fires and flooding instances that destroyed most of the waterfront development several times. There are books that document the original land claims and the original Street layouts available. I actually have some of those in my home library Powell’s books is an excellent resource for old Portland information.
Oh there is always Fires... lol That is part of all of it
With the kindest intention I want you to know Willamette is pronounced "Wil-LAM-ett, not Willa-met. This is a great video about Portland!
thank you. That was making me nutts :-)
Furthermore, John Couch's last name, as well as the street named for him are pronounced as, "Cooch."
Portland is so self important
I would like to thank you for the brilliant work of collections you have accumulated from all around our globe ....cheers
Globe...LOL
@@dveillo36 u beat me to it!!lol very surprised there are still people that believe that!!lmfao
Surely these replies are joking and not in reference to Earth being flat. I hope people know that the flat earth theory was created to see how many people would be stupid enough to fall for it. It was a social experiment.
@@raypratt3611I’m curious what you think happens when you get to the edge of the flat Earth? Do you just fall off? Beyond there be dragons, right?
My Uncle William Thomas told me that most of all sections of Portland clear to the Sellwood town area, each had its own ethnic people segregated into their own areas. German, Hungarian, English, Irish, Chinese, and many other ethnic groups of peoples too. The early immigrants which came to Portland lived in their own sections of the city. My grandmother used to be a cleaning woman in the huge mansion on the hill ( she called it the castle on the ridge ) which had a hidden stairway and tunnel to the ship docks. People were secretly shanghaied through those tunnels to the ships and used as forced ship labor. During WW2 my grandmother went down those hidden tunnels and found hundreds of very valuable rich paintings which were brought to Portland from Germany for safety. When another country is bombing you, the best place to hide your priceless paintings is in another country which you are at war with. Portland in deed has a big history of secrets.
Wow, thanks for sharing that
Pittock mansion. I grew up in those hills. Tunnels.all through them.
Growing up in Portland (born in 1988), they made it sound like the camera wasn't invented until the 1900's. Mostly showing only artist renderings and drawings of what early Portland / Oregon looked like. The "Pittock Mansion" was the only piece of Portland history we were taught with real photos and a field trip (no construction photos of course). They mostly focused on the "Oregon Trail" with Lewis and Clark. There's a huge chunk missing from the timeline! Especially the transition between settlement and city. 🤔
It wasn't until after school (until I lived downtown Portland for 5 years) that I learned about the old electric street car lines that were torn out. The underground network of tunnels that ran for miles beneath the city. And honestly just started raising my eyebrows over everything we were taught as locals growing up. Especially when you slow down and look at some of the still standing heavy stone masonry buildings left. "The United States National Bank" - "The Meier and Frank Building" - And "Multnomah County Public Library" are all very old world. And always seemed out of place when walking downtown. Anyway, GREAT video Jared!! Always blowing my mind! 🥹
I forgot abt the central library in my comment. and it was my first real job back in the 70s! it’s been extensively renovated by now and I don’t recall if there were accessible lower levels but it would have been connected by tunnel like everything else in the area. but the thing I notice abt these buildings (M&F, courthouse and PO on 4th, etc) is that by the 70s, marble panels were falling off the walls like they were built in a hurry with poor materials, which always struck me as odd given how beefy the basements are.
Lois Lane and Clark Kent
Funny even being homeschooled our curriculum was the same. It had to be approved by the state
Its the same way in Asheville, NC.
There was an electric trolley I later found out (and all the same downtown buildings and monuments as now) but in school it was just a settlers in log cabins vs Natives story endlessly.
I would like to know what nationality the people where who built the city up.??? Looks german to me
I think to fully utilize the library at the Oregon Historical Society, you have to go there.
yep. afaik they have not digitized their collections.
Well how did the native Americans make all those metal buildings with lights . When they lived in TeePees most of the time. & this is through out America... i believe perhaps, the Am. Indians were also transplanted here in America along with the settlers etc. Look up the archeologists who found the dig called Kanastoga man. I'm sure that name is miss spelled. But, it is Aledgeally the oldest find of mankind & it is found in the Northwest. They say that in that village they found white man bones with some black man bones but mostly white people.
One of the comments at the top, talks about someone in the history. Society told to distroy certain pictures.
@@keepingthefaith9041 Kennewick Man
Nah...its the pics people kept private innocently revealing
creating questions that deserve truthful answers. maybe hoarders, Pack rats and bag ladies holding the evidence
The transcontinental railroad reached Portland in Sept of 1883, which was an important factor in its growth thereafter. I'm not sure why this guy is saying it didn't reach Portland until the 1890s-1900.
Another piece of misinformation here is the assertion the city was empty and abandoned in the late 1930s. It doesn't take but a quick look at the US census for 1930 and 1940 to see that the city was still growing, although the Great Depression had ended the boom period. If we actually look at exactly where the White photos were taken and when, they were primarily the buildings along Front (Naito) from Burnside to Morrison and mostly on the east side of the street just before demolition. The old waterfront was also demolished and all port facilities relocated to Swan Island, the NW Industrial District/Waterfront and the Kelly Point industrial port area east of St. John out on the 'peninsula'. What he doesn't seem to know is those buildings were indeed condemned by the city and demolished (sadly) to create the four lane divided Harbor Drive along the river. The narrator is creating a very false narrative about that situation. The city wasn't in some existential crisis losing population and sections of downtown were abandoned. Total nonsense. The 1940 census had Portland with 305,000 residents, up from 258,000 in 1920, an 18% growth rate in that 20 year period. City politicians decided the city needed some kind of major freeway-like thoroughfare through downtown because of the increase in population and cars. They opted to take out those old buildings along Naito and build Harbor Drive.
Once WWII started, shipbuilding became an important part of Portland's economy, and the population increased to 373,000 in 1950 because of the influx of shipyard workers. That still wasn't a 'boom' as in the late 1800s-early 1900s when there was more than 100% growth every ten years.
It's also a bit odd that the narrator doesn't examine the 10 year period 1965-1975 when there really was a massive demolition of most of the south end of the downtown area from Clay to Grant and from Naito to 4th Ave. This was the old Italian and Jewish area of the city center. This was also the period in which the city decided not to expand the freeway system but to build light rail transit instead. In fact, Harbor Drive was torn out and replaced with a park all along the river front. If there was ever a 'reset' as the narrator wants to say, then it was this period of time not the late 1930s. 'Old Portland' truly disappeared during the late 60s and early 70s.
Yeah it’s crazy how many old cast iron buildings were decrepit and mostly empty when they started tearing them down in that first big Urban Renewal District in the Auditorium District. Totally different flavor to that part of town. Mom once told me that was the Jewish part of town when she was little (early 1940s).
My grandma and her sister worked at Meier & Frank in the 30s and those Kaiser shipyards during the war. Grandpa was on a Merchant Marine ship when the Germans got him in ‘44.
Born & raised here in Portland, Oregon and I'm a child from the 70's. My Mom was born in 1949 in Salem, Oregon and her parents moved the family to Portland in the mid 1950's. My Great-grandparents lived in NE Portland during one of the historic floods (Portland has had about 10 major floods since 1894) and my Mom told me that my Great-grandparents built their bed atop of empty wooden barrels because the flood waters had reached the surrounding neighborhoods from the Willamette River and when they awoke in the morning, the water had flooded the house and their bed was floating in the bedroom by the afternoon of that day!....
I was 21yrs old and attending PSU when we had another devastating flood in 1996 that caused $27 Million in damages and structures were lost back then as well!... I could go on and on about Portland, Oregon, sadly I don't know a whole lot about other States, just the one I've resided in all my life!...
Here's the 10 floods ranging from 1894 to 1996, based on the highestlevel of flooding by foot:
(1) 33.00 ft on 06/07/1894
(2) 30.00 ft on 06/14/1948
(3) 30.00 ft on 06/01/1948
(4) 29.80 ft on 12/25/1964
(5) 28.70 ft on 02/06/1890
(6) 28.55 ft on 02/09/1996
(7) 28.20 ft on 06/24/1876
(8) 27.30 ft on 07/01/1880
(9) 26.40 ft on 06/04/1956
(10) 26.20 ft on 06/14/1882
Flooding of both the Willamette and Columbia was common. They called the spring freshet. No wonder people fought for the dams in the 1930s. It really held the city back.
With this concept in place it is pretty hard to make the point that the creator is attempting to make that there could be some stolen city left here by natives long before the 1800s
If there was no damn there was no way a sophisticated city could have formed.
Well how did the native Americans make all those metal buildings with lights . When they lived in TeePees most of the time. & this is through out America... i believe perhaps, the Am. Indians were also transplanted here in America along with the settlers etc. Look up the archeologists who found the dig called Kanastoga man. I'm sure that name is miss spelled. But, it is Aledgeally the oldest find of mankind & it is found in the Northwest. They say that in that village they found white man bones with some black man bones but mostly white people.
@@alexdaugherty7472it wasn’t the dams, it was the new concrete sea wall they built in the 30s to replace the old wooden wharfs and piers along the waterfront downtown. That alone did most of the work, though as we’ve seen, flooding downtown was still possible. Just not nearly as frequent.
Lots of pics available showing the frequent floods pre-1930s as well as the construction of the new sea wall.
Very interesting to look at, as those sea wall construction pics show the basements and multi-level docks that were attached to the rear of the Front St buildings along the waterfront, as well as the tunnel openings along the docks to transport goods from the ships into warehouses and stores downtown.
I remember the 96 flood. Dad worked downtown at 3rd & Oak and he couldn’t get home to Forest Grove because we were cut off entirely from surrounding towns. So he slept overnight in Hillsboro till the water receded.
Much of the focus of this video is on downtown Portland, however most of the city is east of the Willamette where you’ll see plenty of buildings from the late 1800s up to the 1930s.
Soo many old brick buildings on the eastside!
I feel like they’re different on the eastside bc the tunnel system doesn’t exist on the east side to my knowledge. idk what they’re built on tho bc I mainly lived and worked downtown.
The Rose Festival grew out of the Portland Rose Society, an organization that was several years older than the festival. Gardening is a big deal in Oregon. Roses even grow wild here. That is why they have the Rose Festival. It has nothing to do with Europe.
I grew up in Portland. When I was young the Huge Wooden Historical Society Log Building Burned to the ground. I believe most historical photos were lost in the fire along with many artifacts. Even the structures floors still showed the marks of the builders hobnail boots on the floors. Also John Couch was pronounced " Cooch" like the street.
I was told by an elderly person who is a part-time employee of both Milwaukee and the Portland historical societies. Her family had been living in Milwaukee since it was patented that around 1910 there was a great fire that destroyed all of the records for Portland and that’s why many of the older buildings an Southeast Portland are labeled on trusts and deeds as being finished in 1912 our home was a pioneer era home built by historic family, it was constructed sometime between 1850 and 1880.
The Oregon Forestry Center
I remember visiting Portland in (around) 2012. We got day passes for the streetcar, etc. for the first time so we could explore the city, and I remember being extremely frustrated by the announcement “Next stop, “COOCH” Street,” when the map clearly showed “COUCH!” I couldn’t figure out why they would so badly mispronounce the phonetics of the word. At some point, we learned the steet was named after a prominent family with that last name, and they were always known as “Cooch” despite the phonetic logic that I have always known.
I read the comments for this video solely to find out if anyone addressed this fact in response to the narration. Thank you for pointing it out!
As someone unfamiliar with the area and culture of Portland back in 2012, I can tell you there are many things about this area that can only truly be understood and conveyed by those who were, or those who learned from, locals in the area through those transformative years.
Lived in Milwaukie,ore during late 50's through 60's it's not the same now.
How can people use the term “old world” to describe Portland? There are more old buildings there than some people make it sound, but they are late 19th and early 20th century buildings - nothing like what is in Europe, which is what “old world” means to me.
Americans don't understand the term really
I grew up in Portland in the 80 and 90s. It is not the same place. However the sense of oddness and "offness" has always been there.
Spokane has a lot of the same oddness in its history too. You should check that city out as well. Worlds fair, great fire around 1900, underground doorways, etc.
Yrah its cursed
Look into the construction of Harbor Way on the waterfront.
Looks like a lot of your "abandoned" building pics are in that area. Pretty much everything from front to 2nd was demolished for that project.
I first visited Portland in 1968, for a family wedding. I lived in L.A. at the time and thought Portland looked like a city stuck in the mid 40's to 50's look. In other words, at least 10 years behind that point. I moved my family to outer Multnomah County, which was much more pastoral then. During the early 1970's, Neil Goldschmidt was elected Mayor of Portland and I credit him with creating a revitalization of the city core that increased the livability of Portland to what it has become today. .
Those were literally the good old days!
Before the liberal democRATS ruined the city (and state)
I was raised with my grandparents up on Overton Street which was huge and belonged to the future first governor of Oregon. That house had a spiral stairway with an extra hidden staircase behind the wall of the main staircase. Upstairs behind the main closets was another hidden hallway where servants could laundry and hang the fresh clothes on the backside of the closets. My grandmother which lived in that mansion was Maybelle and Joseph Reid. The dinning room had a huge 12 foot table with draws on the sides of it. My brothers and I would hide not wanted foods in those side drawers of the table. Over the table was a huge glass chandelier like about 4 to 5 foot in diameter. When young my siblings and I would ride card board board boxes down the grand staircase. Our next door neighbor was the Fitzcharlds. I went to the old mans open box funeral - gave me the creeps. My brother and sister went to the grade school a few blocks north, close to the Old Montgomery building - which I had been in many times. My grandmother sold shoes there. Last I knew the old mansion is still there.
Well how did the native Americans make all those metal buildings with lights . When they lived in TeePees most of the time. & this is through out America... i believe perhaps, the Am. Indians were also transplanted here in America along with the settlers etc. Look up the archeologists who found the dig called Kanastoga man. I'm sure that name is miss spelled. But, it is Aledgeally the oldest find of mankind & it is found in the Northwest. They say that in that village they found white man bones with some black man bones but mostly white people.
you must be old as dirt with stories like these, wow. thank you.
I can't believe you've done a video about my city, the Rose City! I love Portland. I've lived here over 40 years and there's always something to explore...a lot of mystery here. But it's beautiful and exciting. 🌹
I’ve lived here for decades too, but it’s all going to sh*t these days. It WAS a beautiful and inviting city, not anymore.
I've lived here 40 years too . the only difference is im not clueless. Its over now. Totally
" your city ". Lol
I spent years wandering the streets of Portland high on psychedelics as a youth and it always struck me that there was something older something deeper than what we could see on the street level.
15:32 the shining esque group photo. Don't forget Portland is the city one is most likely to get shanghaied. The tunnel system is extensive
One thing that the author is confused about it is that the westward expansion across the Willamette river to East Portland was well underway by the 1920s there are massive historic neighborhoods in East Portland that were built between 1880 and 1912, so there was a max exodus of residential property from downtown area to the new East Portland. There are still some remnants of residential districts left in WestPortland if you look long and hard and carefully enough in the alphabet district, which was once a huge housing community that was torn down to make room for industrialization.
There is no such city named East Portland. It is merely southeast or northeast Portland. And there is no place called East County either. It's just eastern Multnomah County.
@@cosmo1eleven855 Actually, there was an area east of the Willamette River which was called East Portland. Many Portland neighborhoods were originally suburban developments which, over time, became annexed to Portland.
I would say that almost half of the pictures in this video are from the Lewis & Clark Exposition in 1905. None of that exists today, it was all torn down after the fair. The west was noted for having buildings with false facades. They always looked more grand than what they appeared. Before 1905 Portland was still a wild wilderness town with many undeveloped areas. I have heard it described that before WW2 Portland resembled a medieval city, the city and then the fields. The motto of Portland has never been like most cities to be "Bigger and Better." Livability has always triumphed. Even then they were more interested in the outdoors, clean water and family life.
Not correct. The current old world architecture buildings downtown are 300-400 years old. There was a thriving and bustling city before the 1800s in Portland.
@@Kalikikryst how do you know
@kaliklooney ...there are no 300 yr old buildings in North America let alone Portland you kook
Thank you sharing all of the photos. I enjoy your videos. Maybe some of this happened and happens on a regular basis: earthquakes and tsunami's, cities are beautiful, built up, free electricity via the ether, radio/television, computers, digital photography and videos, movies. The Port Land would have had buoys showing that it was time to evacuate. Everyone in the city or had electricity is evacuated. After this kind of destruction (as in India and elsewhere), people die of Malaria. My Norwegian Grandfather told me he took his sister and got on a ship for America at the age of 12, he ended up in North Dakota. He said when he joined the Army in WWI(clean up America), he had Malaria the entire trip. One trip really. That's where he was sent and stayed. He had ten children. Lots of people in the midwest had lots of children. Somewhere along the way Native Americas died at a higher rate. Maybe that is really when the United States removed their sovereign status, and took title their huge amounts of land. Or maybe they couldn't tell where the land ended up. Maybe this had happened every so often, a result of a changing earth. This horror show went all the way across, covered the plains, the food supply suffered, rationing.... Wisconsin is still wet in the north.
Clearly 1906 was a major earthquake probably in Japan, tsunami on the West coast. In San Francisco, that's what happened. I know, I have family records. There was a Marine base there, helping, and government airships taking photos. The coasts would have had access to boats, you would fare better there if you were warned. Look, the trees are gone, not cleared, everything is covered in mud and guck. There are no roads, it takes a long time to build the infrastructure back starting with rail, but that would take a long time as you point out in Port Land with the sidewalks sinking. We see large amounts of people at the beach. It was probably something clean to do, wash your clothes and children, let them swim and play. I have family photos where the "yellow sky" has been cut out. It showed how long the guck stayed in the atmosphere. I have digital photos handed person to person in my family from 1849. Americans came together, helped each other in a way that inspires me. My family got cast to the wind a little bit, but we all manage to find each other usually. Thanks again. Love.
You can date many photos by the clothing. Many of the photos in this video are dated wrong just by looking at the clothes. My grandpa grew up here, working at Meire and Frank department store when he was 8. He worked in the same building that is there today in 1880. It had "high tech" air shoot money and receipt transfer tubes. Your general understanding of society classes seems very limited, not just for Portland but for the country.
You haven't been here, take a tour. There are hundreds of photos from early Portland where you can tour Portland and see these same old buildings. There was a national depression, not just in Portland in 1930s.
The early lighted photos you show are on the River during the Lewis and Clark expo, which you don't mention. My grandpa worked on those structures. Most were not real buildings. But 'props' like a movie set. The lights came from the new dams on the Clackamas River and PGE. You never mentioned the Forestry Center, the huge wood structure dedicated to Portlands Stump City history. I was in that building when I was a child and have photos. It was destroyed by fire in the 1960s. It was huge taking up several blocks. Portland's Iron industry wasn't a big deal until after 1900. Also see the maps. I have a 1920s map of the city, it indicates where all the business are, with the names. Many of these buildings are still there. I can send you a photo. Portland's primary businesses were shipping, lumber, and Construction. And just because you are bad at research outside the web, doesn't mean there is a conspiracy. My great grandpa came to Portland in 1856. Grandpa was born here before the great 1890 flood. Everything from 1st street to 5th street was flooded. You only mention the Vanport flood. That was on the Columbia, not the Willamette. You also miss the clearing of the River front to build the oil and gas storage near St John's district on both sides of the River. The population boom changed with the nation. The 1890 national depression and the building boom the followed brought thousands of immigrants, Swedes, Finns and Norwegians, to cut the big timber outside of Portland in Clackamas County.
At least on of the buildings you show as empty and demolished is on the river front Westside just North of town on hey 30. It's still there. It was the old PG&E building. It's a cool structure and there has been a fight to keep it but the oil and gas folks don't want to deal with a historical building. It's in the flood plain. It's was flooded again in the 1963-4 flood too.
Your statements are misleading and need to be updated after you actually visit. As many have mentioned you don't pronounce the River name correctly.
Finally, the movie house row, shown several times in your video, was destroyed by development when I was a teenager in the 1960s, the Nordstrom store replaced several. not the 1930s.
Downdown Portland is blocked by the westhills. The photo with Mounthood in the ba kground is the eastside of the river. Developed after the westside. Portland decided on many parks. More parks per capita than any other city in the country. Portland isn’t flat, its a series of hills, cinder butts, and volcanos. Shaped geographically by huge floods or both Lava millions of years ago and ice age floods thousands of years ago. Along with rain and snow melt floods more recently. The federal Government built power and flood control dams to reduce the flood impact. Bonneville Dam was built in 1936, followed by a series of dams over the next 30 years. These dams all but destroyed the native salmon runs up river. The salmon still run the River down to the falls and turn up the clackamas river at Oregon City. You need to label your photos better. Please visit Portland, take a tour.
Thank you!
My neighbor is 90 I'll ask him. He's been in Oregon his whole life. His family came in the trail to Linn County. His home was made in 1868.
Thanks for bringing this to light. I have thought about this for many years now as a photographer myself I have documented the change in just 20 years and it shows
A lot of these photos are from the Lewis and Clark exposition era and all those building were torn down after the expo was over that is why you see no people in them. It was all built for that then taken down. Also WILL AM IT is how we pronounce Willamette. Family photos from the mid 1800's show mostly wooden buildings in small areas of what is now Portland. Some of the street names are actually the names of small towns that became the city as the city grew out to meet them.
Awesome work. One of my favorite places 12 years ago.
So are you reaching for conspiracies? The depression happened in 1929, in 1936 we see thousands of Portlanders in the local Hooverville. I'm all for questioning history, but come on, the mainstream narrative being that towns should be growing during the Great Depression? Also, photos of "old" Portland are readily available.
How on earth would Portland get external supplies without a railroad!?!
If only they had some place in PORTland to dock ships.
@Edna Leed and the timber boom in the 1920s… they cut down the coastal rainforest and floated the logs to the river, so water was a major means of transport.
They do have a place to dock ships. Until the railroad came through, shipping down the Columbia and by sea was the primary means of shipping goods.
😂now that was funny. Thank you for making this great point.
Yes, and if only browsing Google images and Wikipedia equated to having a PHD in Portland-studies 🎓 Good grief Charlie Brown...
Some very interesting information in this video on the shady history we are told about Portland. I'll be doing a live look at Portland soon sharing my file. This video definitely adds to my understanding of the area. I always enjoy these thanks for the content!
You’re very welcome my friend. Let me know when you post the video but I will also keep checking your page. I do enjoy any constructive criticism and chances at new looks from other Old World Historians. I’d love to see an even deeper dive on Portland, there’s so much to uncover that I really only was able to touch the surface.
@@FRESHboostersWhere can we send you old pictures that we come across? I just got a volunteer position at a Carnegie museum, and it has thousands of pictures and articles that are not on the internet. They were discovered recently and the curator is in the process of digitizing them.
Nice video, but I'm pretty sure the panorama drawing shown at 1:00, and repeated later, is of early Vancouver, Washington; the walled Fort Vancouver is at right. The image likely predates the 1840s establishment of Portland, perhaps by 20 years or so. Vancouver was within the Oregon Territory until the Washington Territory was created in 1853; Oregon went on to become a state in 1859, Washington in 1889. So it's not outlandish to include this in early Portland history, but these have always been distinct communities.
You hit the nail on the head regarding the construction photo's, i often wondered this as they are ever so proud of themselves not to miss the opportunity ! Great channel Jarid
Well how did the native Americans make all those metal buildings with lights . When they lived in TeePees most of the time. & this is through out America... i believe perhaps, the Am. Indians were also transplanted here in America along with the settlers etc. Look up the archeologists who found the dig called Kanastoga man. I'm sure that name is miss spelled. But, it is Aledgeally the oldest find of mankind & it is found in the Northwest. They say that in that village they found white man bones with some black man bones but mostly white people.
Thank you so much! I was hoping to finally see your research on the Rose City, I always look for evidence whenever we drive through here. Cheers!
Lifetime Portland resident, and can say I loved the bits of info you were able to find for this. It could be of use to know that much of Portland lies outside of historical downtown. Moreover one of the most important events in Portland history happens with the flooding of Vanport on 1948. This would displace an inordinate amount of POC who had come from across the nation to work at the Kaiser shipyards in WW2, as many of them lived in that community before it's flooding, but had nowhere to go once their homes were gone. Portland, still being a very white city in 1948, had no idea what to do at this point and turned to the Portland Housing Authority who -in one of Portlands most controversial and influential decisions-created a housing district in Albina for all POC. This was the birth of the ghettos of Albina and, more importantly, a massive population shift that took place within the city from there.
At the time of the flood, Vanport was probably the second or third largest city in the state. It was completely destroyed. It's hard to imagine. Although it was mostly prefab buildings which probably made it much worse.
Who flooded Vanport? Was it a natural flood or man-made?
SJW alert
no need to use "poc" there was white people living there too, your way of not being racist, is being racist at its core
tired of portlandian people making the rest of oregon look like hypocrites standing up for the small guy "poc" at the cost of another race "white"
youre a racist, dont segregate people aka white people from a group of people, could be 1 white person or 1000 living there and you completely elimated them being a sjw and trying to get browny points
@@PlatinumIrishrose the levy system had not been constructed in the Columbia River slough area. Vanport was located along the shores of the Columbia River within the tidal zone, in a wetland of sorts. I’m sure people in power were well aware of the risks, but they didn’t care. The people of Vanport had to rescue themselves, walking uphill to higher ground into what is now North Portland and the New Columbia neighborhood (used to be called the ‘Ville).
I noticed the basement of pittock mansion had been gutted for an exhibit on vanport..
It always sends shivers down my spine when people pronounce Willamette and Couch incorrectly.
And Chinook.
😄 Willamette goddammit and give ya a smooch on Couch. There's a reason we say Glisan.
And Weidler 😅
Hey get a life
Yeah, obviously he’s not from Portland, or even Oregon.
There is an underground part of the city too. "The Shanghai tunnels". There was an entrance to a section of the underground in a bar my friend owned. I've been down there before but you can only get to a portion of it cuz the rest have been sealed off.
businesses downtown all seemed to own a bit of tunnel. I worked at a store on Broadway that had really good access but metal doors made it impossible to go far. I heard there are entrances under the mansions in the hills.
Ive lived in portland all my life and boy have I seen and heard some unbelievable things.
Do tell.
@@bluefaery1865 look up Oculus Anubis Temple in Damascus Oregon. That place is crazy.
The northwest is an incredibly mysterious, haunted realm. The way the mist comes off the hills around Portland is so otherworldly. The vast open land of Oregon is immense and overpowering. Try this on for size, Oregon is the ninth largest state by land, bigger than Pennsylvania and upstate New York combined, but seventy five percent of the people live in Portland and it's suburbs. That's less than four percent of the land. There is sooooooooo much backwoods country in Oregon, with enough trees to envelop all of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. The woods here are so deep, vast and dark your mind goes wild just thinking about it. Grizzly bears officially went extinct in Oregon in 1937, but it wouldn't be the least bit surprising if population's of them were found in the deep woods tomorrow. This place is crypitd heaven. We've got Sasquatch, dozens of river, lake and sea shore monsters. And iff that's not enough, alien and UFO sightings are rampant. This part of the country is like living in an X files episode. Can't be a coincidence the creator of that show was from Washington state. For all the mystery and majesty of Oregon and the northwest, it holds a very dark history in many ways that persists into modern times. It was originally founded as a regional safe haven for White, native born Americans, terrified of the country being overrun by Immigrants, slaves and Mexicans in the nineteenth century. Despite the liberal progressive image of Portland and Seattle, the NW has a deep and pervasive history of white supremacist policies dominating the region. The treatment of Indigenous populations here was among the most brutal in all of the America's. While Black people were all but banned from living in either state until the 20th century. Chinese and Japanese immigrants were subjected to near slavery contructing the railroads, and toiling in logging operations. Today, Portland still has an extremely seedy underbelly. Huge amounts of drug trafficking goes through it's ports and harbors, and it's one of the most notorious cities in America for child abduction and sex trafficking. The Vietnamese mafia controls vast swaths of the city, while street gangs from Thailand, Guatemala and Somalia wage shadow gang wars over the drug and sex trade. A dark, mysterious realm of profound but terrible beauty and sinister secrets, quietly gestating under awholesome, mundane veneer.
Interesting theories. There are some holes in your logic, and yet your great video, if rearranged, answers those logic gaps.
Also, pronunciation is important to natives here.
Two pepper names that messed you up:
Couch prounced. "Kooch"
Willamette p. "will-AM-it"
...at least you didn't try Glisan, Schuyler, or Tualatin.
Logic gap: eg; For the source of money and power in Portland (before the railroad arrived), look at fishing, timber, and shipping.
Oregon, and the area were once occupied by the Hudson's Bay Company - establishing Astoria (the oldest European settlement west of the Mississippi.
It was interesting that you dismissed the name Portland as ironic, without considering the shipping industry that communicated timber and seafood ask over the world.
And brought back what?
Steel, bricks, concrete, textiles, etc.
Yes, Portland was s lawless corrupt town in the 1800s, but you should probably do more due diligence on your research and conspiracial speculations.
* 5th Gen Oregonian and Portlander
Damn nobody is saying anything about the two little kids standing on the logs of the building? Just how damn big is it the logs are friggin huge and looked like gigantic Legos say something aaaaaaahhhh!!! It's at 5:46
They were old growth fir. Look up the history of the Forestry Center building. It was supported by timbers so big that my grade school class couldn't reach all the way around. It was amazing.
Great presentation JB, mainstream explanation constantly raises more questions wherever you go.. Australia is no different..cheers from down under.
You can't make any serious conclusions by just checking one website for digitized photos and wikipedia. You have to hit the stacks and microfiche old-school. Read a few books for context.
As far as absent people.. remember Cali. Goldrush in 1849, various others in Colorado, Nevada, Eastern. Oregon in subsequent decades, Klondike in 1890s would empty the streets of Portland at times. Crews would jump ship. Hence the need for shanghaiing. There are great city directories and census records for all those decades. Yes, construction could be fast. Compare San Francisco's growth. Most of the lumber for which, BTW came from Portland.
This dudes video is full of sloppy, lazy 'research,' he doesn't know what the hell is even up.
Images by Minor White, show empty Portland, this area was Japantown, which later became "New Chinatown"/Oldtown. Japantown, located just Southwest of the Steel Bridge, was full of shops, Services, housing, and entertainment for the Japanese-American families that lived there in the 1940s before they were forced into internment camps.
I grew up in pdx and was a galleria brat in the 80s before the oldest buildings downtown were decommissioned. there was and still is an extensive tunnel system throughout downtown to the waterfront but they’ve largely been blocked off. I was in them a few times but don’t recall details beyond the heavy metal gates ppl put up to secure storage space. the old courthouse and the old original main PO on 4th, and the long-gone meier and frank building always struck me as odd. in the area where the tunnels are supposed to originate is all victorian era mansions, but the old apartments bordering that area all have pretty deep basements and it’s all one long slope toward the Willamette. it’s been decades since I been underground here and the tours only show a fraction. Missoula floods destroyed everything in its path, so huge impact on population then, and then again when logging barons arrived. I own property that the barons destroyed. 100 years later the land has barely started to recover. there’s no question in my mind that the first thing colonizers did when they got here is cut down all the old trees. it’s where the lumber to build Sears kit homes came from. they cut down the trees and planted orchards and destroyed swan island with fill on the east side of the river with fill. downtown is on the west side so idk if they just blasted material off the cliffs to fill in the channels around swan island, but there was earth-moving going on from the beginning of white occupation. now I know of your interest I’ll keep my eyes open for photos. the only interesting one I have in my possession is a photo of 10th and Morrison I took from the upper floor of the galleria when light rail construction was going on. pretty sure it cut into the tunnel system but the photo and negative are currently in storage.
Missoula floods were in prehistoric times
😂
You hit a historical jackpot indeed
I've lived in Portland most of my life. I don't know much about the history.
However, I can 100% assure you that the resources to build are local (for the most part). We have plenty of trees. Also, Portland for decades was biggest producers of Concrete in the country.
Ross Island in the Willamette River has a HUGE hole in it where they pulled the material for concrete out for decades.
Beyond that, I didn't realize that the Starks were some of the original land owners. (I should have though because there is a street named after them.) BTW, they still own a ton of land in the area. Some of it is apartments and they are total slum lords.
I lived in a building owned by them (managed by a property manager of course). The place was a slum. Some of us started complaining and next thing we know we are all kicked out with some lame excuse. The building gets gutted and turned into a hotel.
The Starks started by running the Stark St.ferry across the Willamette.
You are correct on the building materials. Also all the iron constructed buildings were built with iron from the smelters in Lake Oswego (not called with the 'lake' then) the material coming from Iron Mountain within the city. There still exists a preserved furnace structure in George Rogers Park by the river in Lake Oswego that has great historical photos and information about that period of time.
have you considered checking newspapers of the day?
My grandparents on both sides moved to the Portland area in the 1940s. I recognized the steel bridge and the Morrison street bridge. So many of the water front buildings you found in pictures def didn’t exist when I was growing up there except the train station. Up in the hills were where the rich people lived. The huge flood of van port destroyed the large population that lived in north Portland around Jantzen beach. But that is a huge delta area otherwise known as delta park. The river front area downtown when I was growing up was the slums of Portland. It was pretty abandoned except by the homeless population. Most industry had relocated to other areas of Portland. The Willamette river was grossly polluted. Nobody wanted to go near it. It was brown and stank as I recall. But with the clean water act of the 70s the river was revitalized. And now the river front is the happening place. Funny how things change. I remember my gramma ran the Portland Hotel. Rooms for rent with a shared bathroom on each floor. It was in a seedy part of town back then. I don’t think that old brick building even exists anymore. Torn down I’m assuming to make nice residences for the richer people who wanted river views without sharing a restroom with their neighbors. Lol. Thanks for sharing old pictures of the town where I grew up.
Moved here in the 1940's?
I'm guessing they moved here for work building 'liberty ships' for Kaiser on Swan island.
No they didn’t work on the ships. They moved to escape famine and poverty. They were barely surviving as a family in South Dakota dry farming. They came west looking for jobs. My gramma worked at a cannery for years and my grandpa sold fuller brush and Watkins products door to door
It used to take photographs over 15 minutes to capture a picture the reason you rarely see people in any city not just Portland back in the day, is because no one stood still long enough for the camera to capture them. Again it's an issue with the exposure on the camera if you're trying to take a big wide shot the camera isn't going to be able to pick up all the little stuff moving around.
I have to make some time to catch up on your videos. I appreciate all your work.
Oregon City has the same historical gaps. Seems the "unsightly" aspects have been conveniently deleted. For all those who followed the Oregon Trail to get here.... apparently no photographers made the journey. Thank you for your efforts on this!
Photography wasnt really available let alone mainstream until the early 1900's
Hi, thanks for doing amazing work and research and the beautiful photos that you always post I am northwest girl, Eugene and Portland, Seattle have been my home. I don’t care how anyone annunciates or pronounces Willamette. Your research is invaluable and welcome by anyone who has an interest and not biased just because they lived here you can say couch or you can say couch, you can say Willamette or you can say Willamette either or either way you are doing a great job and thank you.
Thanks, I’ve been waiting for someone to do this city.
The building @23:23 in your video shows an apartment building, which is presumed empty, at a time when it should be full because of the population spike, their were no ready made homes & subdivisions to move to back in those days, everyone lived in the city, so why is it empty? That's a thread that keeps unraveling, with these cities having empty living quarters when wave after wave of people start to come in and populate these cities after 1860. Like my city had 30 blocks of store front buildings with 4 stories of apartments above them, block after block after block but the apartments are empty, the store fronts look old and gutted themselves back then. You would figure that windows would be up, laundry hanging from a rope above the street, a couple of dudes just hanging out on the corner, for population of 100,00 in 1866 but No, nothing like that. Great Video!!
In homes in Oregon we hang our laundry inside. While we have outdoor lines for summer, we have set ups for indoor drying that lifts lines to high ceilings. You can still buy these at layman's in Ohio.
Lived there when I was 3 and 4. Thanks for recovering this stuff!
Thank you for your search for knowledge and helping humanity to know there routes keep up your journey 👍
New sub to your channel. Thank you Jared! We live west of Portland. There's many buildings and areas that are quite curious. The old residential areas that surround the Portland Rose Gardens used to have a castle that was torn down. I always wondered if it may be part of something much bigger than most would imagine.
I first moved to North Portland in ‘91 and then bought a house near Cathedral Park with St John’s Bridge very near me that crossed the Willamette River. Around ‘96 I moved to Vancouver WA located on the other side of the Columbia River until moving away in 2011.
Majority of the years I worked for NW Natural Gas Utility Co… I don’t recall any stories about buildings being torn down or streets being swamped or the mob. Many old buildings exist but I don’t recall the ones shown in the photos. Oaks park was still operating when I lived there. I know that there are numerous tunnels under Portland. The early street lights were lit by gas produced from Coal. Portland Gas & Coke Co… There was one old building that I really wanted to snoop around inside but was off limits because the entire area is contaminated from the early days of Portland Gas & Coke Co…
Oaks Park is still going.. with a brand new mini purple roller coaster with a loop.
I was gone during the 90s and I can tell you not much changed during that time.
My people! Waving home from the flip side. Great to see these old photos, thanks Jerid!
Maybe you could do a video on what really happen to the red man and their land just a thought. thank you. great videos
Btw, there's no grand conspiracy about the cities in Oregon not keeping their old architecture. Eugene, Salem and other cities have also mostly destroyed their pre-statehood buildings with little to no photographic evidence. Nobody thought ahead to whether or not anyone would care what these buildings would look like or where they were located. You also mispronounced Willamette. "Wil-AM-et" 3 syllables, not two. Thanks for pronouncing Oregon correctly, though.
I was a part of the big remodel/historical restoration of The Fairmount Hotel in NW, right near Pettigrove St. Itself.
Super cool info and great old photos. Thanks for the video 💯❤
One of your best. Awesome!
The Great Terrain Robbery ! Gutted then photographed ?
Wow awesome Jared. Cheers.
Have you reached out to some family's of early residents? My family settled in Portland and Oregon in the 1800's. Seems like you only checked with historical societies and I can tell you there are many pictures hiding in homes!
Yep! I have many. But the early photos are mostly portraits not pictures of the city. My grandma took the train from Estacada to Portland when my grandparent lived there in 1915. I understand the train stopped running sometime in the 1940s. To bad, it would have been a beautiful trip.
The Scottish rites Freemason temple downtown is made of nearly megalithic blocks of rock. It looks way older than any other buildings.
In the mid 80's I worked at a deli within that building. To get supplies, we had to take the elevator down to the basement. It was massive. There was a tunnnel, but it was gated off and locked. Always wondered if it was part of the tunnel system
@@carylshawver Shanghai tunnels.
@@tiredironrepair Yep
From destroyed city with modest buildings to 150 operating streetcars in less than 20 years... impossible
And pretty soon back to destroyed city. The cycle continues
Where were all the photos with empty streets and buildings? The first photo was clearly taken late at night and all of the apartments have windows and some have lights on. And waiting for no one to be in the shot wouldn't be hard. The 2nd is just the front and a small bit of the side of a building. Windows and doors intact. And even easier to get a shot with no unwanted people or things in it. And the 3rd yes does show a small section of a side street with no cars in view or people. Again it could be an intentional early morning shot and a case of patience. You do score some demolished and one in the background that looks like it might not have and windows. That would almost be cool If we didn't already know a bunch of these pics were taken before the entire city was to be demolished. So clearly this is a section of the city were it already started. And the one with one guy and one car were it even says Pre Demolition, u can see the buildings have already begun to be stripped and skeletonized. Which is the literal way you prepare for demolition . And why exactly would people be in a part of the city where all of the buildings are empty and about to be destroyed except someone with a purpose? This just killed any hope I had for you to break free of the fantasy and start searching for the real truth like Awar, Static ,Woody and Wise up. Your better than this kid
Fun fact, they debated calling it Portland vs stumpville! Due to the immense amount of trees cut down! Portland is often referred to as The city of bridges.
Thankyou for your research you are a bright spot.
That last picture is mind blowing. why would anyone demolish that?
because it's beautiful and inspiring. THEY have to keep morales low
@@Nordic_Mechanic You are sooooooo right :(( This mindset seems to be the same kind of condescending hatred from tyranical madness, which we have always dealt with through history. Or, as Einstein said: "Great thoughts are always violently inhibited by mediocre minds".
It's as though "THEY" can't stand to have anybody smarter, more creative or more humanitarian (etc.) than those who constantly suppress, erase and lie about everything under the sun. Literally. Including the illogical belief that we are the only life in the entrie freakin' universe - and that there are other beings and life forms out there who are infintiely, more advanced than ourseleves.
Heck, how many advanced civilizations have we had on this planet which would clearly show how backwards we are, by today's standards. THEY don't want us to know. THEY 'have to' be the only 'smart people' not only on this world - but, also amongst multiple billions and trillions of other earth-like planets which are out there.
These people are the opposite of everything good... makind would be sooooo much different today if morality and integrity were inbred into our make-up. THEY make up their own rules and use nefarious means to enforce them. It's abhorent.
Sorry, I gotta pull back here. Your comment kinda 'triggered' me. You already said it in much fewer words
@@ZooxMaze There is definitely another intelligent lifeform out there. Us and them thats 2. These "people" are not humans.
Heartbreaking. They've destroyed beautiful structures everywhere and replaced them with ugly, poorly made buildings. It breaks my heart.
For "public safety "
Great video Jarid, just one thing the river is pronounced Wil (rhymes with bill) - Am (rhymes with Pam) - It
Also, Couch, being someone’s name, isn’t pronounced as it’s spelled, it’s pronounced “Cooch”.
Have you done anything on Oregon City?
Thanks for finding these pictures of my home state of Oregon. All roads in Oregon let to Portland here
I'm not sure why anyone would find it strange that a city could experience such incredible growth within a 50 year period. Of course, this is very possible and during the turn of the 19th century were driven by events such as the gold rushes (both California and Alaska) as well as the move towards the west. If you want a more recent example of this "phenomenon," just look at Las Vegas, which has grown exponentially within the last 50-60 years. Because if you think about it, Las Vegas, as a town, really shouldn't even have a reason to exist: it is nowhere near a waterway, nor is it on any train tracks. It's in the middle of a desert with nothing more than gambling to keep it up.
On the other end of that spectrum, there is Detroit, which is one of the most advanced and richest cities in the country in the 1930s. Then, it experienced a massive exodus out of the city in the late 70's and early 80's, the result of a change of American tastes in automobiles.
Another quick comment: the tunnels were constructed to move product through the city without tearing up the roads. My grandpa helped do that as a child, yes child labor was a thing, to move goods to the Meire and Frank warehouse.
dude this is amazin will watch this later!
you quoted them saying they used "resources" nearby to build Portland..they literally told the truth..the question is what was the "nearby resources" that they speak of? Old buildings and building materials?
When I see the pictures that show people that basically set up house in an existing large mansion & then hung pictures on almost every square foot that is what I think...they looted the heck out of another building
@@c_hunting hmmm .. I actually read an travel log/manuscript from this woman from those times and she said that they took over the mansions in the south..so I wouldn’t doubt it..smdh.. hidden history for sure
Iron from Oregon Iron Works in nearby Oswego (now Lake Oswego), wood from... well it's Oregon, sand/cement/asphalt from Ross Island.
I grew up in Portland in the 60s 70s and some of the 80s that was a blast... The Halloween parties they would throw in Old Town in these ancient buildings was like a dream🎉🎉🎉
Another source of photos are the aerial photos taken by the US government prior to dam building on both the Clackamas river and Columbia rivers. The Corp. Of Engineers has these photos and they need to be archived because the are the last physical evidence of traditional places before they were flooded. Among these are also arial views of Portland, Oregon City and Vancouver, Washinton.
Grew up here and still live here have always thought Portland is a weird and mysterious place
You are weird and mysterious.
@@no1ded nah thanks tho
Portland is creepy af. huge human trafficking hub.
Timberline lodge was actually one area i can say is ours... i worked ther for a year as a hopuseman and saw tons of building plans,pictures of start to finish with tools and well i was a houseman and its a hgotel. beautiful but not old world. It was built by us govt during the depression WPA program... and all stones came from the volcano,Mt Hood. but everything else i question. The forest around provided the trees and if you get a chance its worth looking at they even have old stones cut in half and lots of evidence EVEN videos too!! THX for your work ,,Richard
This is excellent. Keep it up!
Another old world town with missing time. They're saying oldest Old World building from the early thirties no way. Definitely from the late 1800s where are all the people that's the question. I've seen on another site a picture of Moscow around 1850 the town was empty. 20 years later there are thousands of bustling people what's going on? Keep up the good work the controllers are definitely screwing with the timeline. No fire it seems like all the other old world cities succumb to Great fire
Nope, Portland never had a great fire. We had a couple of earth quakes but never a big fire. The only significant fire was the destruction of the Forestry Center in 1964. It was heart breaking.
This is a cool video, but it’s missing a major component to explain what happened during the 30s-40s. Human trafficking was the largest export out of portland (and Astoria as well). The city has had a long history of trying to cover it’s dark past, even recently by trying to rebrand 82nd Ave (a place known for prostitution) “Rose ave” and spending millions planting roses up and down the ave to change public perception.
The end of WW2 was around the same time that “Shanghai’ing” ended, and the city made great efforts to cover it up. This was done my filling the tunnels that were used to traffic drugged men and women to the docks.
Unfortunately the non profit that used to do the historic tours of the tunnels no longer does, and now the tunnel tours are commercial “ghost tour” bs.
If you care to do so, you can see for yourself the holding cells of the unfortunate sailors that had been drugged, the boxes they put women in to break them mentally, and the opium dens. It’s all still there for anyone that would like to observe and learn about the Portlands history. The historic society still has prerecorded virtual tours available
portlandtunnels.com/index.html
...do not forget the Iong history of *racism* dating back to Oregon's statehood in 1859.
Portland was helped a lot by the nearby Ross Island sand &gravel concrete supplier. right?
Another great one Jarid.
Some of the conclusions made in the latter parts of this video are interesting. I was born in 1942 in old St Vincents Hospital which was on the west side of Portland. My family lived in a small town about thirty miles west of the city, but I had two families of relatives living in Portland proper. I recall making regular visits to those relatives and after WWII ended, going on shopping trips to downtown Portland. At that time the downtown area was a bustling place, the center of commerce as this was prior to any shopping malls being built. I remember being taken to the Forestry Building that remained in use after the Lewis and Clark Exposition. It burned not long after that time. My point is that I have no memories of wide spread renovation of areas of the city. Whenever we drove through Portland, there was the normal mix of old and newer buildings.
I made a post on Facebook book with 80 photos back in December and January lost architecture of Oregon, had a lot of Roman style looking architecture, no way they built any of it especially with the population size
Ancient Roman Empire ruled the world. This is the reason why
Read some comments but what exactly is the theory about Portland? What are you saying happened?
Visit the old neighborhood churches....
Some of these photos and stories can be found in older churches from the era. I loved in the Brooklyn neighborhood & learned abt a unique time during WW1 where residents renamed local streets bearing German names: Rhine& Rhone for instance are now separated by... Lafayette??? That's because one of them was renamed. As well as Bismarck street renamed to Bush, etc. Just an example.
I'm a Portland resident. It's crazy hearing my grandpa's stories about normal flooding over the the river walls back in the 60s and 70s that'd leave entire blocks just swamped
flooding in Portland has always been a thing. it’s what finally tipped us from being a sundown city to allowing Black ppl to live inside the city limits.
@@polyoptika4382 wtf are you talking about black people always were pushed towards the center of the city. That has only changed in recent times with gentrification of downtowns. But that being said. If you are on some racist shit you can go and eat a big black dick
@@polyoptika4382 but if you aren't on some racist shit and you are just making a point. Ignore all of that and you chil lmao lmao
Apparently this flooding was in most towns in Am. But I do know what you are talking about as my spouse as a child lived through one of these floods , it ruined everything. Look up Mud Floods. Very interesting. Also look up old world Tartera.
Well how did the native Americans make all those metal buildings with lights . When they lived in TeePees most of the time. & this is through out America... i believe perhaps, the Am. Indians were also transplanted here in America along with the settlers etc. Look up the archeologists who found the dig called Kanastoga man. I'm sure that name is miss spelled. But, it is Aledgeally the oldest find of mankind & it is found in the Northwest. They say that in that village they found white man bones with some black man bones but mostly white people.
Is was illegal for blacks to come to Oregon until late 1920’s, got 30 lashes if they did & another 30 if they stayed another 30 days. Got to love that Oregon history!
Important that this part be told! I grew up here and wasn't aware of Oregon's true history until a few years ago.
Bullshit
@@jasonhand7334 argue with history not me.
@@jasonhand7334 Good one. Read a book.
wish it was still illegal.
The City had many ornate Movie theaters including the Fox, Music Box, (where our class saw Ben Hur in 1960 as a 6th grade field trip. Also the Orpheum, and my favorite the Oriental. It was a great city to grow up in, safe, and a City where neighbors took care of one another. I rode the bus downtown alone at 7 years old, without ever having a problem. Outside people moved here after destroying Their Home Towns, and now they have ruined My Home Town. Riots and Antifa would have been eradicated instantly in those days. Governor Tom McCall said "Please Don't Californiacate Oregon". Now there are diapers in streams, trash everywhere, and destruction of neighborhoods. Now our State is run by trash that has moved here to Portland that out numbers votes in the rest of the State. All Elected Official should be required to be Native Oregonian's. Not Transplanted Woke Sno-Flakes.
They were busy wrecking those old theatres in Seattle when I was young.
Once your eyes are open - they can no longer be closed.
So many people question
Nothing !
Great work, thank you.
Strategic compartmentalization is an appropriate description of how we are slowly force fed mis information until it is accepted as common fact
Jaw dropping revelations, thank you
I really question why you were unable to find a many pictures of Portland. I have seen many photos of all kinds. I am sure the Oregonian has a multitude of photos that you could have used. It's my understanding that Portland grew gradually through the 1800s. Much of the building was on the east side of the river. The city grew very rapidly after Lewis & Clark Exposition. At the time of WW2 there was so little housing available, it lead to the creation of Vanport. During the 50s and 60s the city stagnated until the 70s when there were huge changes leading to the city we see today.
as someone who’s gone looking for photos, it’s not that easy to find them. but you’re correct that there were settlements on the east side… several if memory serves. eventually they were all annexed. a lot of neighborhoods are still called by the name of the town they once were.
Well how did the native Americans make all those metal buildings with lights . When they lived in TeePees most of the time. & this is through out America... i believe perhaps, the Am. Indians were also transplanted here in America along with the settlers etc. Look up the archeologists who found the dig called Kanastoga man. I'm sure that name is miss spelled. But, it is Aledgeally the oldest find of mankind & it is found in the Northwest. They say that in that village they found white man bones with some black man bones but mostly white people.