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Grab your mouse and let your fingers do the clicking as we journey into the past. You will see and experience a slice of life from early in the 20th Century. Unfortunately, many of the icons that shaped our lives so much are only a fading memory.
Post cards as we know them, were first published about 1901. Prior to that time, there were trade cards and postal cards which usually carried advertising or printed messages. Trade cards became popular with the enterprising merchants who distributed them from the 1870’s to the 1890’s. With the advent of the camera, which was developed in the mid-1800’s, and later the post card, history would be forever immortalized in print.
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The new art of photography spawned the inexpensive post cards and stereoscopic view cards which enabled many people at home a glimpse of the places where friends and family members lived, worked and visited across the world.
Post cards were a standard-sized medium for communication, advertising and promotion. Having been mass-produced in Germany using highly advanced methods of lithography, post cards became very popular at Coney Island in New York, where over 200,000 post cards were postmarked on a single day in 1906. Post cards became the calling card for cities, towns, businesses and roadside attractions. Souvenir shops sprang up all over the country to sell post cards that extolled the virtues of their corner of the world.
Nearly all of the lithographed post cards were made from a photograph. To produce a lithographed card, the image was enlarged and by using a process known as color separation, the photographic image was converted into many thousands of tiny dots which were used to shade in the varying colors of ink as they were printed.
You can explore some of my favorite post cards, Amusement Parks, Trains and Department Stores. You can take a tour of North American Train Depots and Ripley Odditoriums. You can also view a glimpse of historic Seattle. If you like a good scary story, don’t miss the Haunted Light by the Sea. You can also visit New York’s Rockefeller Center, Subways and Amusement Parks.
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Portland lies at the foot of Mt. Hood and at the confluence of the beautiful Columbia and Willamette Rivers. Some of the most beautiful views in the world are found 20 miles to the east of Portland along the Columbia River.
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Lewis & Clark scouted and mapped the Oregon Country after leaving St. Louis in 1804. They spent a couple winters in the Pacific Northwest and they returned to Washington D.C. in 1806 to extol the virtues of the New World. Great interest developed after their glowing reports of the mild climate, the lush green forests and the fertile farming land as well as the abundance of pure rivers lakes and streams.
In 1843, Tennessee drifter William Overton and his friend, Boston lawyer Asa Lovejoy were floating down the Willamette River in a canoe when they came upon the beauty of the place we now call Portland. They beached their canoe and they marveled at the beautiful mountains and the rich potential of the many trees they saw.
Overton didn’t have the quarter that was required to file a land claim, so he sold half of his 640-acre share to Lovejoy for 25 cents. They began to clear the many trees, build roads and build the first buildings. After a while, Overton decided to move on and sold his half of the share to Francis Pettygrove.
Portland got its name when Asa Lovejoy and Francis Pettygrove flipped a coin in 1845. Lovejoy was from Massachusetts and he wanted to name the new settlement Boston. Pettygrove was from Maine and wanted to name the new town Portland. Pettygrove won the coin toss two out of three times and the rest as they say is history. Portland’s first Post Office opened in 1849, and the steam sawmill’s whistle could be heard as far away as Fort Vancouver.
By 1850, about 800 residents called Portland home. There was a log-cabin hotel and a newspaper, the Weekly Oregonian. Congress passed the Oregon Land Act, which entitled every man or woman to 320 acres. Portland was incorporated in 1851 and it has grown into the second largest city in the Northwest. People who settled in the region made their living catching and selling fish, cutting timber and producing lumber, growing and harvesting wheat and raising cattle for market. Portland became a major transportation center because of its proximity to Railroads and Rivers.
Oregon became the 33rd state to join the Union in 1859. Prior to that time, it was known as the Oregon Territory and it stretched from California to Canada along the Pacific Coast. The Oregon Territory stretched east to the Rocky Mountains from the Pacific Ocean. The Territory encompassed what are now the states of Washington, Idaho and Montana.
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Portland began to grow fairly rapidly after the Civil War, building docks for shipping lumber, fish, wheat and produce to San Francisco and the rest of the world. Farmers were demanding better roads to haul their goods to Portland for shipment. Railroad history in Oregon began when Ben Holladay started building the Oregon & California Railroad in 1869. After Holladay ran short of funds in 1872, Henry Villard took control of the project and got as far as Ashland. In 1887, the line was finally opened to California, after Southern Pacific took over construction.
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By the end of the 19th Century, Portland had 90,000 residents and it was the largest metropolis in the Northwest. Portland had the busiest port up the coast from San Francisco. The Alaska Gold Rush and the Railroads began to make Seattle boom. Portland’s leaders took a bold step to promote growth by holding a World’s Fair in Portland in 1905. The Lewis & Clark Exposition took up residence along the Willamette River Waterfront in Northwest Portland,
Coney Island’s Dreamland was barely open a year when Portland’s Leaders summoned some of the cutting edge amusements of the day to come west to Portland. Luna Park had only been open a couple years; Steeplechase Park had been open seven years and it was attracting the masses. Three million people came to Portland’s Party and many of them decided to stay. Portland’s population doubled in the next five years.
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Portland Railway Company Car at the end of the line on 16th Street in what is now Northwest Portland
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The resourceful Ben Holladay’s horsecars began plying the rails in Portland on September 12, 1871. In 1892, Portland began electrifying it’s streetcar system. By 1905, there were 150 streetcars per hour shuffling passengers to the Lewis & Clark Exposition. Portland’s Council Crest Line was the most scenic and spectacular streetcar line in the Northwest. Portland boasted one of the most efficient streetcar systems on the West Coast and the third largest system in the world. Very little remains of Portland’s extensive streetcar system.
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Portland’s unique four-corner arched lamp posts lined Third Street until the 1930’s
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In the 1890’s and early 1900’s, electricity was a new phenomenon. It was the key to many “modern conveniences”. Electricity provided the energy to transport the masses and light our world. It changed life as we know it. Several power plants were built to generate the power that was used to electrify the Trolley Lines and to light Portland’s streets. It also ushered in a new era that brought us air conditioning, hot and cold running water, toasters, stoves, refrigerators, hair dryers, radios and everything we couldn’t live without today.
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Broadway Anchored Portland’s Theatre District
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Royal Bakery wagons lined up as they began their daily deliveries
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Portland’s Jantzen Beach Amusement Park was known far and wide for the huge Dipper, the biggest coaster in the West. Join the movement to keep the Carousel at Hayden Island.
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Portland was home for a number of department stores over the years. But sadly, they only exist in memory. There was Lipman & Wolfe Company and Olds, Wortman & King, as well as Roberts Brothers, Holtz, and Eastern Outfitting Company to name a few. When Macy’s absorbed Meier & Frank in 2006, Portland lost its largest and most wonderful department store ever to claim Portland as its home.
After 149 years, Meier & Frank closed and a grand legacy of Northwest Style and Tradition faded into history. The same can be said for Chicago’s Marshall Field’s and nearly 30 other regional department stores that ceased to exist on that fateful day in September 2006. Macy’s became a nationwide powerhouse with 850 stores from coast-to-coast.
Seattle was home to two very powerful department stores that couldn’t operate profitably in recent years and have faded into memory: Frederick & Nelson, which became a Premier Division of Marshall Field’s in 1928 and closed in 1992 after 100 years with two decades of local ownership which failed to keep the Northwest’s Premier Store alive; and The Bon Marche’ became Macy’s Northwest in 2005. Today, there are only a couple handfuls of Department Stores still in business. The Store of Stores, Bloomingdale’s, which is owned by Macy’s, is gradually expanding Westward from New York with 40 stores.
Macy’s recently reopened their Flagship Store at Meier & Frank Square in the first five floors above ground and one below. Santa Land is back after a year’s hiatus for remodeling where they have moved to the lower level with Furniture, Mattresses and the sparkling new rest rooms. Beyond the rambunctious Reindeer in their stalls, Santa greets the kids and poses in photos with them. Two of the Cars from the Monorail are the centerpiece of the Monorail Memories room that is a tribute to Meier & Frank. Parents take pictures of their kids in the cars. There are a number of pictures on the walls with views of Meier & Frank through the years. The ten remaining upper floors are being renovated for the new The Nines Luxury Suites Hotel which is expected to open in August 2008.
Brooks Brothers has opened a new store in The Galleria’s southeast corner. Abercrombie & Fitch has opened an expanded store on Morrison & Broadway. Ikea recently opened at Cascade Station off Airport Way where other stores continue to open. Bridgeport Village has had a few new openings as well.
Watch for big changes at Jantzen Beach. Plans call for moving the C.W. Parker Carousel off Hayden Island in 2008 as the Shopping Center takes on a new design and removes all remnants of Jantzen Beach Park. The Carousel is supposed to be moved off the Island to the Children’s Museum by The Zoo to the old OMSI building.
In Cincinnati, Ohio, the Krazy City Indoor Amusement Park, a $7 million undertaking that will include carnival rides, a miniature golf course, a 300-seat restaurant and a sand pit seeded with fossils among other attractions, will open in the second and third floors of the former J.C. Penney store at the Tri-County Mall in late December. They are bringing in European-built rides to the 50,000 square foot space. Could you imagine Jantzen Beach having a Krazy City? They’ve already got the seasonal Scream at the Beach.
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Portland’s roots can be traced to its neighborhoods and surrounding communities. As each settlement or town was established, a Post Office would be built there and cancellation stamps were issued to identify the sending post office. For a few years, around the beginning of the 20th century, the sending and the receiving post offices would each stamp a cancellation or postmark on every piece of mail. See Hollywood for our newest chapter. Lents was added recently.
Most of these towns grew up along the streetcar and rail lines. Towns such as Bull Run and Estacada were built so the workers who built and maintained the power generating facilities could live near the dams and power houses. Sellwood had a large blue-collar district; it was home to several mills and manufacturing plants as well as the Sellwood Car Barn where Portland’s Interurban Streetcars were housed and maintained.
Agricultural enterprises were plentiful in Gresham. There were many berry growers, fruit and vegetable truck gardeners, nut farmers and nurserymen. There were dairymen and cattle ranchers as well. They utilized the streetcars and later freight trains to ship their goods and bring them their fertilizer, feed and supplies.
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St. Johns was site of many manufacturing plants and mills. There was easy access for marine traffic and exceptional railroad facilities. The Portland Woolen Mills had originally been located at Sellwood, but after a disastrous fire in February 1904, they moved to St. Johns and built a new plant.
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Early view of the newly opened Hotel Kenton as streetcar tracks were being laid in 1908
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Kenton’s Rail Yards helped to make the town an industrial area. It became even more famous as Cowtown when Swift Packing Company set up shop opposite Hayden Island on the Columbia Slough in 1909. Swift employed over 600 workers and they butchered more beef in Kenton than in any other town in the Northwest. When the cattlemen brought their herd to market, they lived it up in Kenton. As Portland grew and expanded, it annexed many of the smaller towns into the city limits.
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When the unpaved Columbia River Highway opened in 1915, it provided a way to drive to to the popular | |
