About the Portland, Beaverton, and Tigard, Oregon Area 

Everything You Wanted to Know About Portland! 

Portland itself was founded by two Easterners, Francis Pettygrove and Asa Lovejoy. Pettygrove was from Portland, Maine. He came to Oregon in 1842 by ship with his sister, Mary, and Mary's husband, Philip Foster. Mary Foster brought with her a lilac start which survived the journey and is still growing in front of the Foster House on the Barlow Road in Eagle Creek. Lovejoy was an overlander from Boston. He came to Oregon with the Elijah White party of 1842, guided Marcus Whitman east that winter, and returned to Oregon with the Great Migration of 1843, the wagon train that is generally considered to have opened the Oregon Trail.  

The original inhabitant of what was to become Portland was William Johnson. He settled there in 1842, but he had no intent to establish a city and soon moved across the river to start a sawmill on Johnson Creek. On their way to Fort Vancouver in November 1843, William Overton and Asa Lovejoy pulled their canoes ashore on the western bank of the Willamette long enough to claim 640 acres in Lovejoy's name. Overton became the proprietor for Lovejoy, who remained an absentee owner. He took half the claim as his payment and promptly sold it to Pettygrove for $50. Pettygrove had been a successful merchant in Maine and was enjoying similar success in the Oregon Country running the Red House Store in Oregon City and a warehouse in Champoeg. In 1844, he built a log house on what would become the Portland waterfront.  

Lovejoy and Pettygrove platted their new city in 1845. Both men wanted to name it for their respective hometowns. Following a dinner in the Oregon City home of Francis Ermatinger, an HBC employee and Treasurer of the Oregon Provisional Government, a penny was flipped. Pettygrove won and saved future Portlanders from being known as New Bostonians. Portland's first settler was Captain John Couch, who built a wharf and allowed the young city to begin to live up to its name.  

Lovejoy remained in Oregon City and sold his half of the town site to Benjamin Stark in 1845. Daniel Lownsdale, who had built a tannery in 1847 where Civic Stadium is located today, bought out Pettygrove for $5000. Lownsdale eventually owned all of Portland. Pettygrove moved north into present-day Washington and founded Port Townsend.  

In its early years, Portland existed in the shadow of Oregon City, the territorial capital 12 miles (19 km) upstream on the falls of the Willamette. However, Portland was located at the Willamette's head of navigation, giving it a key advantage over its older peer. It also triumphed over early rivals like Milwaukie and Sellwood. By 1850 Portland had approximately 800 inhabitants, a steam sawmill, a log cabin hotel, and a newspaper, called the Weekly Oregonian.

In 1853, a corduroy road was completed up Canyon Creek to tap the growing populations in the Tualatin and Yamhill Valleys. This access to prime farmland was key to Portland's success, as it allowed the town to become the hub of transport and commerce in the area. In 1855, a fruit peddler from Yamhill by the name of Aaron Meier brought his merchandise over the road. Twelve years later he teamed with Sigmund Frank to create Oregon's oldest retail house, Meier and Frank.  

Portland was the major port in the Pacific Northwest for much of the 19th century, until the 1890s when direct railroad access between the deepwater harbor in Seattle and points east by way of Stampede Pass were built. Goods could then be transported from the northwest coast to inland cities without needing to navigate the dangerous bar at the mouth of the Columbia River.  

Like other west coast ports, Portland was home to frequent acts of shanghaiing. Tunnels under city blocks stretching for blocks from the Willamette River, although built for legitimate business reasons, became known as shanghai tunnels because of their purported use in such kidnappings. Tours of them are now given.  

From its original one square mile along the Willamette's west shore, Portland spread south across Marquam Creek and Palatine Hill and west up Marquam Hill and into the West Hills. Judge Philip Marquam, builder of the Grand Opera House, earned a reputation as "the father of good roads" in Oregon. Marquam Hill was originally the property of the Oregon-California Railroad, but a land swap brought the University of Oregon Medical School to the hill and made room trackside to build Union Station.

Portland really began to boom when it started to annex settlements on the east side of the river. In 1891, East Portland and Albina were added. A real estate development named for Reverend Sellwood was annexed in 1893, and further east was Ladd's Addition. North of Portland came St. Johns in 1915 and Linnton in 1917.  

The expansion to the east side of the river soon overwhelmed the capacity of the ferries that had been established, necessitating the construction of bridges to connect the two halves of the growing city. The first was built in 1887, and there are today no fewer than eleven spans crossing the Willamette between Oregon City and the Columbia River. One has two separate lift spans, one for highway traffic and another for railroads. Another was so artfully designed that San Francisco copied it to build the Golden Gate Bridge.  

The crowning glories of Portland's boom years were two adjacent structures built of the same rock as the Willamette Falls Locks. Pioneer Post Office replaced the original log post office built in 1849, and next door was the Queen Anne Chateau-style Portland Hotel, considered a minor masterpiece when it was finished in 1890. Sadly, it fell into disrepair and was razed to make room for Pioneer Courthouse Square, a public space greatly beloved of modern Portlanders.
 

The city and the region 

Portland is often cited as an example of a well-planned city. The credit for this starts with Oregon's proactive land-use policies, particularly the establishment of an urban growth boundary in 1974. The boundary preserved agricultural land in the mold of 19th-century farming techniques. This was atypical in an era when automobile use led many areas to neglect their core cities in favor of development along interstate highways, in suburbs, and satellite cities.  

Some developers and real estate investors dislike the urban growth boundary, and argue that it has brought not only benefits but the burden of high housing costs. Still, housing costs are lower than most urban areas in California and Washington, and residents enjoy many benefits of a more compact urban area, including efficient public transportation and less traffic than similarly sized cities. The Portland Development Commission also plays a role in keeping the city livable; it was created by city voters in 1958 to serve as the city’s urban renewal agency. It provides housing and economic development programs within the city. 

The more densely populated parts of the city proper are somewhat asymmetrical, with the west side hemmed in by the West Hills, while the flatter east side stretches on for about 170 blocks, until it meets Gresham. They extend from the beginning of East Portland, at the Willamette River, to the outer fringes of the suburbs of Gresham. Further east lies rural Multnomah County.  

Downtown Portland and many other parts of inner Portland have compact city blocks and narrow streets. Each block is 200 ft (60 m) square; by comparison, Seattle's city blocks are 240 by 320 feet (70 by 100 m), and Manhattan's east-west streets are divided into blocks that are from 600 to 800 feet (180 to 240 m) long. In addition, most streets are 64 feet (20 m) wide, so the combination of compact blocks and narrow streets make the downtown more pedestrian friendly. The 264 foot (80 m) long combined blocks divide one mile (1.6 km) of road into exactly 20 separate blocks.  

Government 

The city of Portland is governed by a mayor, four city commissioners and an auditor, who are each elected citywide to serve four-year terms. The city council consists of the mayor (Tom Potter as of 2005) and commissioners. The auditor does not have a vote on the city council or direct city operations, but provides checks and balances in the commission form of government and accountability for the use of public resources. In addition, the auditor gives access to information for all Council members and the public and issues reports on various matters of city government.  

Portland and its surrounding metropolitan area are also served the Metropolitan Service District, the nation's only directly elected regional government. Metro's charter includes land use and transportation planning, solid waste management, and map development. It also owns and operates the Oregon Convention Center, Oregon Zoo, Portland Center for Performing Arts, and Portland Metropolitan Exposition Center.
 

Transportation 

The Portland metropolitan area has the typical transportation services common to major U.S. cities, though Oregon's emphasis on proactive land-use planning and transit-oriented development within the urban growth boundary means that commuters have multiple well-developed options.  

In fact, Portland is well-known for its comprehensive public transportation system. TriMet operates most of the region's buses and the Metropolitan Area Express, or MAX, light rail system, which connects the city and suburbs. 5th and 6th avenues are the Portland Transit Mall, an exclusive bus-only right of way running north/south through downtown.
For the most part, Portland's streets are arranged in a traditional grid-like pattern, with a few diagonal streets connecting various sections of the city and suburbs, and numerous bridges across the Willamette and Columbia rivers.  

I-5 connects Portland to Sacramento, California, in the south and Seattle, Washington, in the north. I-405 forms a loop with I-5 around the central downtown area of the city and I-205 is a beltway on the east side which connects to the airport. US 26 supports commuting within the metro area and continues to the Pacific Ocean westward and Mount Hood and beyond eastward. US 30 travels to the east of the city, through Gresham, Oregon, and eastern suburbs, and connects to I-84, traveling towards Boise, Idaho.  

Portland's main airport is Portland International Airport, located twenty minutes by car or light rail northeast of downtown.
Portlanders have other transportation alternatives. The Portland Streetcar operates from the southern waterfront, through Portland State University north to nearby homes and shopping districts. The city is particularly supportive of urban bicycling and has been recognized by the League of American Bicyclists among others for its network of paths and other bicycle-friendly services. Car sharing through Flexcar is also available to residents of downtown and nearby neighborhoods. Commuter rail planning is being finalized, and an aerial tram connecting the southwest waterfront and Oregon Health Science University (OHSU) is currently under construction. 

Media 

The Oregonian is the major daily newspaper in Portland. The Willamette Week is a major alternative weekly publication distributed throughout the metro area. Other local weekly papers in the area include the Portland Tribune (a twice-weekly), The Portland Mercury, the Oregon Herald, and the The Asian Reporter, a weekly newspaper covering both international and local Asian news. Portland Monthly is a monthly news and news and culture magazine. The Business Journal of Portland also covers many business-news-related stories. BarFly Magazine is a popular weekly periodical covering the city's nightlife and bar scene. 

Portland is well served by television and radio. The metro area is the 23rd largest Designated Market Area (DMA) in the U.S., consisting of 1,086,900 homes and 0.992% of the U.S. market. The major network television affiliates include KOIN 6 (CBS), KATU 2 (ABC), KGW 8 (NBC), KPTV 12 (FOX), KWBP 32 (WB), and KPDX 49 (UPN).  

Sports 

Portland has one major league, professional sports team, as well as several minor league teams. The Portland Trail Blazers are the basketball team that plays in Rose Garden Arena. The Trail Blazers won their only NBA Championship in 1977. The team has several players in the Basketball Hall of Fame, including Draþen Petroviã, Bill Walton, Lenny Wilkens, and Clyde Drexler ("The Glide"). The city considered bidding for the Montreal Expos Major League Baseball team when they needed to relocate, but governmental reasons and the lack of a monetary backer made the city withdraw.
The city is also home to the Portland Beavers, a Triple-AAA team for the San Diego Padres; the Portland Winter Hawks, an ice hockey team in the Western Hockey League; and the Portland Timbers, of the United Soccer Leagues, a second-tier professional soccer team in the U.S. The Portland Beavers and Portland Timbers play in PGE Park (formerly Civic Stadium), and the Winter Hawks play in Rose Garden Arena. The Portland Lumberjax is also a professional lacrosse team, scheduled to begin play in 2006 in the National Lacrosse League. Portland is also an annual circuit on the Champ Car World Series.  

Skiing is particularly popular with Portlanders. The area is served by a number of resorts located on nearby Mount Hood, including Timberline, which allows skiing year round. The only other resort in North America with summer skiing is Whistler in British Columbia. 

Local Alpenrose Dairy is host to the yearly Little League Softball World Series.  

Geography  

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 376.5 km² (145.4 mi²). 347.9 km² (134.3 mi²) of it is land and 28.6 km² (11.1 mi²), or 7.6%, is water.
The Portland metropolitan area is located within the Willamette Valley, which follows the Willamette River and the I-5 Corridor. The valley consists of suburban municipalities sprawled around patches of farmland farther south. The further north you travel, towards Portland, the thicker the population density becomes. The vast majority of Oregon's population lives in the Willamette Valley. Interstate 5 bisects the valley and a significant number of commuters travel the I-5 Corridor daily.  

Portland lies on top of an extinct Plio-Pleistocene volcanic field. The Boring Lava Field includes at least 32 cinder cones and small shield volcanoes lying within a radius of 13 miles of Kelly Butte, which is approximately 4 miles east of downtown Portland.  

Sister cities 

Portland has ten sister cities, as designated by Sister Cities International: Ashkelon (Israel), Bologna (Italy), Kaohsiung (Taiwan), Khabarovsk (Russia), Mutare (Zimbabwe), Sapporo (Japan), Suzhou (China), Ulsan (South Korea), Guadalajara (Mexico), and Corinto (Nicaragua).
 

Beaverton 

The Tualatin Valley and Beaverton area was originally the home of native people who referred to themselves as "Atfalati". Westerners later mispronounced the name as Tualatin. The tribe was a hunter-gatherer group which relied more on plants than animals for their food. In the spring of 1847, the first land claim (comprising 640 acres of beaverdam) located in what is now Beaverton was taken up by Lawrence Hall. He and his brother built a grist mill near present-day Walker Road. Spurred on by a railroad into town built in 1868, the small farming community west of Portland began to grow. By 1893 the City of Beaverton was formally incorporated with a population of 400. 

Beaverton is nestled between the vibrant city of Portland and the verdant farm fields of Western Washington County. The city offers a strong business environment and the attractions of a large metropolitan area, but still has a home-town feel. Its business core is growing and its urban population is increasingly diverse. Residents enjoy a wide variety of cultural and recreational opportunities, an award-winning parks district, high-achieving schools and a community-oriented government. Headquarters of global companies like Nike and Tektronix support the local economy along with many small and medium sized businesses.  

Beaverton lies seven miles west of downtown Portland in the heart of the “Silicon Forest,” the economic lifeblood of the region. Some 300 high tech companies are located there.  

It is the fifth largest city in the state and the second largest suburb in the metro area. There is a wide variety of housing stock, ranging from single-family houses on quiet cul-de-sacs to urban-core condominiums near shops and light rail transit stations.  

Beaverton offers a variety of family activities and amenities including the region’s largest farmers market, a new library, more than 100 parks, bike paths and hiking trails. It is also conveniently located within an hour’s drive of popular natural resources, including the Oregon coast, Mt. Hood and the Columbia River Gorge.
 

Tigard
Wilson and Polly Tigard settled the area in the 1850’s. After coming to Oregon by wagon train in 1852, the Tigards staked out a 320 acre claim near Bull Mountain. The family cleared two acres for their home site, first building a log cabin and later a frame house. Soon, the Tigards had constructed the community’s first general store, which also served as a community post office, voting place and home for Tigard’s first telephone. A Victorian style house built in 1880 for Wilson Tigard’s eldest son, John, is now a historic landmark located on SW Canterbury Lane. 

Another monument to Tigard’s community spirit and past is the Tigard Windmill at SW 121st Avenue and Katherine Street. Built by Chris Christensen circa 1900 to supply well water for two residences on the Wood-Christensen farm established in 1866, it is all that remains of the once active 160 acre Wood-Christensen farm complex. Standing three stories high, the water tower supports a fully intact windmill which neighborhood residents restored in 1983. 

Tigard was incorporated in 1961 and today, is a beautiful and vibrant community located just minutes southwest of Portland in Washington County. The city is home to more than 47,000. As a community, Tigard strives to manage this growth and blend the amenities of a modern city with the friendliness and community spirit of a small town. 

A modern Tigard Civic Center which borders the Fanno Creek Greenway was completed in 1986 and houses city offices and the police department. Tigard's new library, which opened the Summer of 2004, is located at 13500 SW Hall Blvd.
 

The City's "open door" policy encourages citizens to attend weekly city council meetings and observe the four-member council and mayor make important decisions. Tigard is a community building for today and its future. Local government and school leaders, citizen groups, businesses and individuals work hard to build upon Tigard's significant community attributes. The City promotes citizen participation through Citizen Involvement Teams that represent the community's four geographic areas. The teams allow citizens to become part of the decision-making process. 

Request our Free Tigard, Beaverton and Portland Relocation Package. It's packed full of useful and important information about the Beaverton, Portland and Tigard, Oregon area. Don't move here without it! Remember: we'll send it to you for free and without obligation. Just fill out the form and we will send it right out...
 

It's our job to know EVERYTHING about Beaverton, Portland and Tigard! Ask us any question. Or request a FREE information package. There's no obligation, and we promise to get back to you quickly...