Portland is the largest city in Oregon and the seat of Multnomah County. During the 1840s, settlers who traveled down the Oregon Trail into the Willamette Valley settled in the area, which was originally known as "Stumptown" and "The Clearing" before its 1845 renaming to "Portland" was decided by a coin toss. Portland was incorporated as a city in 1851, by which point it had 800 inhabitants. A major fire wrought havoc on Portland in August 1873, but the city was quickly rebuilt, and the population grew to 17,500 by 1879 and 46,385 by 1890. Portland's quick growth was due to its status as a port on the Willamette and Columbia Rivers, and it was originally governed by a conservative New Englander elite which let the rest of the city be defined by unsanitary sewers and gutters, a large number of saloons, bordellos, and gambling dens, and as a violent and dangerous city by the turn of the 20th century. From 1900 to 1930, the population further increased from 100,000 to 301,815, and all of its Japanese residents were sent to internment camps during World War II. During the 1940s and 1950s, Portland became a notorious hub of organized crime, run by Jim Elkins, but the city enjoyed an economic and industrial surge in the years following the war. During the 1960s, Portland experienced an influx of hippie counterculture as the city acquired a psychedelic culture, food cooperatives, listener-funded media and radio stations, and activists for Native American and gay rights. By the 1970s, Portland had become known as a progressive city. The slowing of the housing market in 1979 led to a decline in Oregon's timber industry, but Portland became a center of the high-tech industry during the 1990s. By 2021, Portland had a population of 641,162 people; 68.8% were white, 10.3% Hispanic, 8.5% Asian, 8% multiracial, 5.6% Black, .9% Native American, and .5% Pacific Islander.
Gallery[]
