History of Portland OR

1843, William Overton saw great commercial potential for this land but lacked the funds required to file a land claim. He struck a bargain with his partner, Asa Lovejoy of Boston, Massachusetts: for 25¢, Overton would share his claim to the 640-acre (2.6 km) site. Overton later sold his half of the claim to Francis W. Petty grove of Portland, Maine. Petty grove and Lovejoy each wished to name the new city after his respective home town. In 1845, this controversy was settled with a coin toss, which Petty grove won in a series of two out of three tosses. The coin used for this decision, now known as the Portland Penny, is on display in the headquarters of the Oregon Historical Society.

At the time of its incorporation on February 8, 1851, Portland had over 800 inhabitants, a steam sawmill, a log cabin hotel, and a newspaper, the Weekly Oregonian. By 1879, the population had grown to 17,500. The city merged with Albina and East Portland in 1891, and annexed the cities of Linnton and St. Johns in 1915.

Portland's location, with access both to the Pacific Ocean via the Willamette and the Columbia rivers and to the agricultural Tualatin Valley via the "Great Plank Road" through a canyon in the West Hills (the route of current-day U.S. Route 26), gave it an advantage over nearby ports, and it grew very quickly. It remained the major port in the Pacific Northwest for much of the 19th century, until the 1890s, when Seattle's deepwater harbor was connected to the rest of the mainland by rail, affording an inland route without the treacherous navigation of the Columbia River.

The most common nickname for Portland is The City of Roses, the city's official nickname since 2003. Other nicknames include the