PORTLAND DIRT IS JUST LIKE YOUR DIRTY TOWN

To know Portland Oregon you better like dirt.

I’m not talking about pioneering farmers, either.

It started with the first native canoe stopping on the Willamette.

Paddling against the current takes as much energy now as it did then, so if you’re into historical reenactment you’d better be in shape.

Like you, they needed a rest.

More native people used the rest stop. Trails and paths soon followed. They liked the clearing.

They probably did some trading when they met others.

It still happens today down on the river front, but the goods have changed.

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Before two land speculators to flipped a coin for a name, Portland Oregon was dirty.

By the time Europeans made contact with these inhabitants in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the area we now call Portland was one of the most densely populated of the North American Pacific Coast. Most of the Portland Basin was inhabited by Upper Chinookan speakers, including the Clackamas and Multnomah peoples. The area known as Washington County was inhabited by Kalapuyan-speaking Tualatins and Salish-speaking groups clustered near St. Helens.

The Clearing grew more famous as a trapper’s rest stop. I’m thinking The Revenant.

Good dirt and bad, it’s history, and fills a need in people, people like you, so get ready.

Portland was incorporated in 1851 and it has grown into the second largest city in the Northwest. People who settled in this region made their living from fish, lumber, wheat and cattle, and Portland became a major transportation center because of its proximity to Railroads and Rivers.

In spite of streets that were deep mud in the winter and deep in dust in summer, Portland began to grow rapidly. Board walks were laid around them.

You can find good dirt in every urban excavation

Walk down a Portland street most days and you’ll find a hole big enough to tip a skyscraper into.

The deeper the better. Just get there before they pour the vault.

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 decided they needed to do something to promote growth so they decided to hold the World’s Fair here in 1905, when the Lewis & Clark Exposition took up residence along the waterfront in Northwest Portland. Three million people came to Portland’s Party and many of them decided to stay. Portland’s population doubled in the next five years.

The tower behind the Nordstom Store on Broadway took a long time growing, but it’s up.

Find a new hole in the ground

This is the best dirt, a hidden Portland Oregon pressed into the strata like cards in an unshuffled deck.

Portland life grew between the dirt paths, plank roads, the macadam, and concrete.

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On one hand an excavation is like the Grand Canyon with fossil comparisons defining eras, except here it’s pipes and wires.

At least in Europe they still dig up surprises.

Still, Portland has so many fine grades of dirt to sift through: The Refined River City.

Old Portland dirt shows city fathers building a One-Stop-On-The-Willamette, instead of St.Johns or Milwaukie. Even then it was all about location.

New dirt targets Portland as the best city to set a Personal Record for the most strip clubs in one night. Everyone has goals, right?

Most of the dirt covers everyone equally. Dust, dirt, debris, and a headache that won’t go away.

For instance, who swung the first hammer on the Portland Hotel?

Once it was the Empress Hotel of Victoria, B.C. set in downtown Portland Oregon.

It was a landmark, a destination, old school elegance with tons of Portland Hotel gear stamped and engraved and embossed.

Now it’s level dirt and brick and called a living room.

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Who threw the first shovel of dirt for the KOIN Center?

Instead of an Alpine view from the Hwy 26 tunnels coming into town on the right day, you get a reminder of civic vs commerce.

And commerce won.

The longer you live in Portland Oregon, the more dirt you find.

Shanghai tunnels for dragging drugged loners into sea duty? Deep kidnapper dirt.

Light rail tunnels? Deeper graveyard dirt. Brush it off and move along.

That’s how it works for adults. Probably for everyone thinking about it.

But what happens when fresh eyes see the dirt for the first time, new people learning their city and where they fit in the mix?

Some must feel like a dump truck just dropped a load on them.

How do they interpret exclusion laws of early Oregon, the image of KKK Portland early in the last century?

Without any context it’ll leave a stain, not just dirt. They’ll break out the boar bristles and scrub to the bone to no avail.

They need a context cushion, like a soil conditioner for packed clay.

The Portland Dirt Future

Sometime in the near future a kid, a tourist, or some gawky transplant from North Carolina, will walk by an urban hole in the ground in downtown Portland.

They’ll see the extra layers of streets, ours included, pressed together like rings in a tree.

Will they feel the modern street level and sense the paths buried below; wonder at time peeling away what man adds on?

If you have ever wondered why some of the major arterials in the area such as Foster Road, Sandy Boulevard, Cully Boulevard and parts of Powell Boulevard don’t fit the normal grid in traffic patterns, they all follow the routes of major Indian paths established prior to White settlement. It is believed that the Grotto, a natural rock formation near present-day Sandy Boulevard and 85th Avenue, served as a rock shelter.

With some perspective they’ll grasp the roads of history, the super highways of science, and understand why anyone joins the turbulent social mix that produces a culture.

All it takes is the right dirt for the wonder to grow stronger.

What if the exceptionally motivated, the people who go all in, are denied the chance to sift enough dirt to see what holds meaning for them?

In spite of what you hear, there’s a huge wave of detail obsessed millennials about to demand more dirt.

It happens when you buy a particular house. You’ll need the old house plans, the area map, street history. You feel like breaking into a library when the urge to know everything hits.

And it’s normal.

Give people what they need when they look at a hole in the ground a city block wide and a city block deep.

Give them the Portland dirt.