48 Fun Facts About Portland

Portland got its name in an 1845 coin toss; which city's name would it carry if Asa Lovejoy had won?

Boston lost the best-of-three toss: Francis Pettygrove won and named the town after Portland, Maine, and the copper cent the two founders flipped is on display at the Oregon Historical Society.

Portland sits at the confluence of the Columbia River and which other river?

The Willamette cuts the city in two on its way north to the Columbia, which is why Portland needed so many bridges that it is nicknamed Bridgetown.

Portland's nickname 'Stumptown' came from what?

Tree stumps left in its streets gave the name: the 1840s town grew so fast that firs were felled quicker than anyone could clear the stumps away.

Portland planted roses along its streets for a 1905 exposition honoring whose journey west?

Lewis and Clark's centennial was the reason for the planting: the roses were meant to charm the fair's visitors, and the 'City of Roses' name took hold afterwards.

Pioneer Courthouse Square, built in 1984 on the site of a downtown parking lot, is affectionately known as what?

Portland's living room was a parking lot for 30 years after the grand Portland Hotel came down in 1951; locals helped pay for the square by buying bricks inscribed with their names.

Powell's flagship bookstore, which fills a whole Portland block, goes by what name?

City of Books is barely a boast: the flagship covers about 68,000 square feet, and a pillar at its door tells visitors, in Latin, to buy the book, read it, enjoy it and then sell it.

Mill Ends Park, a two-foot circle in a Portland street median, was said to be home to what?

Leprechauns: columnist Dick Fagan planted flowers in a hole left for a light pole in 1948 and wrote that it held the only leprechaun colony west of Ireland; Guinness long listed it as the world's smallest park.

The Portlandia statue is the second-largest hammered-copper sculpture in the US after which one?

Only the Statue of Liberty is a bigger hammered-copper figure, yet Portlandia is rarely seen on souvenirs: sculptor Raymond Kaskey kept the copyright and has threatened to sue over her image.

Which Portland doughnut shop briefly sold NyQuil doughnuts until the health department warned it to stop?

Voodoo Doughnut dropped the cold-medicine doughnuts after the warning but kept its other stunt: couples have been legally married in its Portland shops.

The 'Keep Portland Weird' slogan was borrowed from which other US city?

Austin's slogan began as a buy-local campaign; record-shop owner Terry Currier brought it to Portland in 2003 after a friend at Austin's Waterloo Records urged him to try it.

Which Portland park spans over 5,000 acres and holds most of the Wildwood Trail?

Forest Park stretches along the Tualatin Mountains with more than 80 miles of trails, so hikers can walk from the edge of downtown into native forest without leaving the city.

The International Rose Test Garden in Washington Park was set up to protect what?

European hybrid roses during WWI were at risk from the bombing, so newspaper editor Jesse Currey persuaded Portland to shelter them, and English growers began shipping plants in 1918.

Which children's author set her Ramona Quimby and Henry Huggins books around Portland's Klickitat Street?

Beverly Cleary grew up in the Grant Park neighborhood, where fans raised the money for bronze statues of Ramona, Henry and his dog Ribsy in a sculpture garden.

Which center led the Trail Blazers to their only NBA title?

Bill Walton was Finals MVP in 1977: his team lost the first two games in Philadelphia, then won four straight, in only the franchise's seventh season.

In the 1984 NBA draft the Trail Blazers picked Sam Bowie second overall, one spot ahead of which player?

Portland took Bowie second and Chicago grabbed Michael Jordan third, behind Houston's Hakeem Olajuwon; the Blazers repeated the pattern in 2007, taking Greg Oden ahead of Kevin Durant.

Portland's 'Rip City' nickname began as a Trail Blazers announcer's shout after what?

A long-range shot by Jim Barnett tied the mighty Lakers in the team's first season, and announcer Bill Schonely blurted out 'Rip City!' for reasons he could never explain.

What does the Timbers' mascot Timber Joey do each time the team scores?

Timber Joey chainsaws a slab off a log after every Timbers goal, and the slice is presented to the scorer after the match; he inherited the chainsaw from Timber Jim in 2008.

The Timbers won their first MLS Cup in 2015 by beating which Eastern Conference champion 2-1 on its own field?

Columbus Crew goalkeeper Steve Clark dallied on a back-pass and Diego Valeri charged it down to score after 27 seconds, then the fastest goal in an MLS Cup final; Valeri was named the game's MVP.

The Portland Thorns' recognised supporters' group goes by what name?

The Rose City Riveters began in 2013 when a 13-year-old fan decided the new women's team needed a supporters' group of its own; on match days they take over the stadium's north end.

Portland's Steel Bridge, opened in 1912, is the only US double-deck bridge whose decks can each do what separately?

Lift straight up: the lower rail deck telescopes into the road deck, so small boats can pass without stopping the traffic overhead, and only big ships need both raised.

Tilikum Crossing, opened across the river in 2015, is unusual among big US bridges because it bans what?

Private cars are the one thing barred from Tilikum Crossing, which carries trains, buses, streetcars, bikes and walkers; its name, Chinook Jargon for 'people', honors the region's first inhabitants.

Cathedral Park sits beneath Portland's St. Johns Bridge and is named for the bridge's towers in which style?

David Steinman's 1931 bridge is Gothic revival down to its pointed-arch piers; aviation officials wanted it painted in black and yellow stripes for a nearby airfield, but the county chose green.

The Boring Lava Field beneath Portland takes its name from what?

A nearby town, Boring, gave the volcanic field its name, and one of its extinct cinder cones, Mount Tabor, was already a Portland park when workers dug up the cinders that showed it was a volcano.

Which snow-capped volcano, Oregon's highest peak, forms the backdrop to Portland's eastern skyline?

Mount Hood is no relic: its last major eruptive period began in 1781, and federal scientists rank its threat potential as very high.

Which Oregon mountain lodge supplied the exterior of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining (1980)?

Timberline Lodge asked Stanley Kubrick not to use its real Room 217 in case guests refused to sleep there, so the film's haunted room became 237, a number the lodge does not have.

What destroyed Vanport, briefly Oregon's second-largest city, on Memorial Day 1948?

A river flood burst a railroad embankment hours after officials had told residents 'You will have time to leave. Don't get excited'; 15 people died and the city was never rebuilt.

Which school grew out of the Vanport Extension Center, dubbed 'the college that wouldn't die' after a 1948 disaster?

Portland State University began in 1946 as classes for returning veterans in Vanport; left homeless two years later, it carried on in a disused shipyard before settling downtown.

Which industrialist's wartime shipyards drew so many workers to Portland that he built the city of Vanport to house them?

Henry J. Kaiser's yards needed homes faster than Portland could supply them, so he built his own: begun in 1942, Vanport became the largest public housing project in the country.

Which tech founder dropped out of Portland's Reed College but stayed on to sit in on a calligraphy class?

Steve Jobs said that without that class the first Macintosh would never have had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.

Portland's bronze four-bowl drinking fountains are named after which lumber baron who paid for the first 20?

Simon Benson gave $10,000 in 1912; local lore says the teetotal timber baron wanted to keep loggers out of saloons at lunchtime, though another tale credits a girl crying for water at a parade.

Bud Clark, who flashed a statue in the 'Expose Yourself to Art' poster, later won which office?

Mayor of Portland: the Goose Hollow tavern owner had almost no political experience when he unseated incumbent Frank Ivancie in 1984, and he held the job until 1992.

Portland's Pittock Mansion was nearly demolished after damage from which 1962 event?

The Columbus Day Storm broke roof tiles and windows and let the rain in; when developers eyed the empty estate, residents raised money toward the city's $225,000 purchase in 1964.

Which Sleater-Kinney musician starred in Portlandia with Fred Armisen?

Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen had spent years posting comedy videos online as ThunderAnt before IFC turned the act into Portlandia, which ran from 2011 to 2018.

Which Simpsons character is named after a street in Matt Groening's native Portland?

Flanders Street gave Ned his name, and in 2021 Portland returned the favor by naming a new footbridge over the freeway the Ned Flanders Crossing.

Nike, headquartered near Beaverton in the Portland metro area, was founded in 1964 under what name?

Blue Ribbon Sports made no shoes at first: it was the US distributor for Japan's Onitsuka Tiger runners, which Phil Knight had found on a trip to Kobe, and took the Nike name in 1971.

The famous teal carpet at Portland International Airport, designed in 1987, represents what?

The crossing runways are drawn as controllers see them from the tower; fans mourned the worn carpet on socks and shirts when it was torn out in 2015, and the pattern came back in the rebuilt terminal in 2024.

Portland's zoo began in 1888 with which animals, kept by pharmacist Richard Knight at his downtown drugstore?

Two bears, a grizzly and a brown bear, came from the seafaring friends of Knight, a former sailor; when the pair outgrew his premises he handed them to the city, and its park became their home.

Which Portland band's 1963 recording of 'Louie Louie' was so hard to make out that the FBI investigated its lyrics?

The Kingsmen's mumbled words brought complaints from parents that they were obscene, so the FBI opened an inquiry in 1964, and its lab finally ruled the lyrics unintelligible.

Portland is Oregon's largest city, but which city is the state capital?

Salem took the capital from Oregon City in 1851 and briefly lost it in 1855, when a divided legislature voted to move to Corvallis before returning.

Until August 2023, what were Portland drivers legally not allowed to do at a gas station?

Oregon barred drivers from pumping their own gas from 1951 until House Bill 2426 took effect on August 4, 2023; the new law lets stations offer self-service at up to half their pumps.

Portland, Maine's Latin motto 'Resurgam', 'I will rise again', recalls the city's recovery from what?

Fire destroyed the town more than once: British warships burned it in 1775, and a blaze that began during the Fourth of July celebrations of 1866 left about 10,000 people homeless.

Which writer, born in Portland, Maine, in 1807, remembered it as 'the beautiful town that is seated by the sea'?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the line in 'My Lost Youth', whose refrain 'A boy's will is the wind's will' later gave Robert Frost the title of his first book.

Casco Bay's 'Calendar Islands' off Portland, Maine, are named for their what?

Number: the old claim is that Casco Bay has an island for every day of the year, though a Maine state historian put the real count at little more than 200.

The Portland Building, completed in 1982, is a landmark of which architectural style?

Michael Graves's Postmodern block was treated as groundbreaking when it opened in 1982, yet it has since turned up on lists of the world's ugliest buildings.

Metro, the Portland area's elected regional government, handles land-use planning, garbage and which visitor attraction?

The Oregon Zoo answers to Metro's council rather than to City Hall, so its bosses are chosen by voters across three counties, not only by Portlanders.

Clusters of Portland food carts sharing a single lot are known locally as what?

Pods became such a fixture that one of the city's best known, some 60 carts at its peak on a downtown lot on Alder Street, made headlines in 2019 when it was cleared for a Ritz-Carlton hotel tower.

What was torn up in 1974 to make way for Portland's Tom McCall Waterfront Park?

A riverside highway, Harbor Drive, lost its traffic when Interstate 5 opened across the river, and Governor Tom McCall's task force chose a park over a wider road; the park opened in 1978.

Which Portland mayor became the city's first openly gay mayor in 2009?

Sam Adams, once mayor Vera Katz's chief of staff, won the 2008 race outright in the May primary and became the first openly gay mayor of a large American city.