Portland, OR news and local guide

As Oregon Trail settlers arrived in the 1840s, a settlement called Stumptown or The Clearing grew up on the Willamette between Oregon City and Fort Vancouver. In 1843 William Overton, who could not afford the filing fee, agreed to share the 640-acre claim with Asa Lovejoy of Boston for 25 cents. In 1844 he sold his half to Francis W. Pettygrove of Portland, Maine. Lovejoy and Pettygrove each wanted to name the town after his hometown, and Pettygrove won two out of three coin tosses. The coin, known as the Portland Penny, is kept by the Oregon Historical Society. When Portland was incorporated on February 8, 1851, it had more than 800 people, a steam sawmill, a log-cabin hotel and the Weekly Oregonian. A fire in August 1873 destroyed twenty blocks downtown. The population reached 17,500 by 1879 and 46,385 by 1890, and in 1888 the first steel bridge on the West Coast opened there. Georgiana Pittock founded the Portland Rose Society in 1889, and the push to make Portland the Rose City came with the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. River access to the Pacific made Portland the leading port of the Northwest until the 1890s, when the railroad reached Seattle's deepwater harbor. Sources Wikipedia: Portland, Oregon