Vanport, Oregon.

A city restricted to low income, and black, families. A solution to Portland Housing Authoritys greed. An awful story of natural consequences. The largest disaster in Oregons history. From wasteland to City of Portland Park. A monumental triumph of Human Resolve. Why?

Industrialism and War demanded it, the Federal Government funded it.

A city of 40,000 people, located outside of the Urban areas of Vancouver and Portland.

Visual Timeline: Images of Vanport

1940

Today, at the Water Resources Education Center, pictured to the left, a Staff Gage demonstrates flood water heights. The 1894 high water at the top, and the Vanport flood at 31ft. Image taken January 1, 2006.
(Images from Lyn Topika, columbiariverimages.com)

1942

In 1940, Oregon had a population of only about one million people. Over three hundred thousand of those individuals lived in the Portland area. Wartime employment opportunities fueled a population increase in Portland, the only major west coast city lacking a housing agency. Housing officials and real estate agents continued their efforts to exclude blacks from white neighborhoods. In 1941, city officials fearing federal intervention due to a housing crisis, created the Housing Authority of Portland (HAP). The organization was dominated and controlled by the same group of prominent white businessmen, including Chester A. Moores, as the Portland Real Estate Board. These individuals were focused on maintaining the system of segregation and increasing private housing opportunities, and made no progress toward public housing options. The HAP followed traditional city realty practices that encouraged racial exclusion and in Mooress words, the setting up [of] certain districts for Negroes and Orientals. World War II brought massive change to Portland. The war in the Pacific made Portland an ideal location for naval industries. Henry Keiser saw the Willamete and Columbia rivers as a great place to locate ship building yards. The Keiser Ship Building Company had a large ship building facility in California, building ships for the military. Keiser opened three ship building facilities in the Portland/ Vancouver area. One at Swan Island, one at Johns Landing, and one at Ryan Point. These three facilities would build over 450 liberty ships during the war. Sidestepping the HAP, Kaiser Industries purchased 648 acres of land outside city limits. The company took a plan for worker housing to the Federal Public Housing Authority and with their approval, began construction of Kaiserville in 1942. Vanport represented an amazing accomplishment. In 18 months, between June 1942, and December of 1943, Vanport became the largest public housing project in the United States. Groundbreaking for Vanport occurred on September 12th, 1942. The city was turned over to the HAP on October 15th, 1942. Roads and buildings were constructed from a marsh-like area in the Columbia River Slough. Nearly five thousand workers constructed streets, sidewalks, utilities, public transportation, water and sewer systems, parking lots, housing, hospitals, community centers, and schools. The first people moved in to Vanport in December 1942. Within one year, Vanport City was the second largest town in Oregon. It was the fifth most populous in the Northwest of the United States. In December of 1943, the Post Office (Vanport had its own) registered 40,000 people as living in Vanport. Vanport contained 700 two story apartment buildings, and nearly 10,000 housing units. The city sported over 50 miles of sidewalk. There were 14 schools, one college, a police station, a fire department, child care centers, and even a movie theatre. It was a fully functioning city. The quality of the construction however, left a lot to be desired. Some buildings were built on wood foundations, and building materials were used for temporary wartime housing. Normal (for the time) housing conveniences were left out. While the rest of the country had moved to oil heating systems, Vanport utilize coal heating systems. As the middle class acquired refrigerators and stoves, Vanport residents utilized ice boxes and hot plates. Due to the limited population in Portland, Keiser recruited (mostly unskilled) laborers from around the country. He heavily recruited in the south, resulting in a large black portion of the labor population moving to Oregon. Oregons black population broke 10,000 for the first time and continued to grow as nearly 20,000 blacks followed jobs to Portland. Wartime housing projects located within Portland city limits were reserved for whites only. By 1942, approximately three thousand blacks had migrated to Oregon for employment. For the first time, blacks were the largest minority group in Portland. During wartime Vanport housed over forty-two thousand residents, including around twenty thousand blacks . Housing within Vanport was segregated, and the wait lists for blacks were always longer than those for whites. The HAP had successfully segregated blacks from whites and, with that practice, proliferated Jim Crow in Portland. Postwar Portland was no less racist and discriminatory than in prewar times. While blacks lived in 60 of the 63 census tracts, the HAP continued to hold nearly five thousand blacks in the Vanport housing district, unwilling to allow them to settle in public housing within city limits Whites in Portland struggled to maintain their stranglehold on their communities. There were about five thousand blacks living in Portland in 1947: half of them in Albina, and the rest scattered around the city. While blacks continued to live throughout the city, segregated housing districts continued to encompass the majority of the black population. Segregationists in the HAP were successfully holding more blacks in wartime projects than lived in the city itself. The HAP was also making plans to close these housing projects, making no plans for the blacks in them to be situated inside city limits. The quality of life available in Vanport was not conducive to a happy lifestyle, and it was a very migrant population. During the postwar years, nearly 100 families moved in and out of Vanport daily. In 1948, the dam literally broke. At 4:00pm on May 30th, 1948, the dike holding back the Columbia River broke. A nearly 200 foot section of the dike gave way, resulting in a nearly ten foot tall wave of water invading the community. The Columbia River and entire northwest had experienced heavy snow melt combined with heavy rains, causing an incredible increase in the volume of water. Fire department personnel and other public workers had been reinforcing dikes and flood walls around the area. In Vanport, emergency personnel had been on call for days. Downtown Portland was also flooding, causing jokes about the name of SE Water Ave. However, for Vanport, the burst of water was the beginning of the end. Within one hour, the entire community was submerged in water. Residents were evacuated by emergency personnel, cars abandoned, and the area ruined. The numbers vary from report to report, but the consensus is that around 15 people died from the Vanport flood. In the one hour it took to flood the entire community, nearly 28,000 were made homeless.

1943
Vanport housed 40,000+ people during the war. The community had trees, plants, housing, community centers, roads, a fire department, a police department, schools, and even a college.

then and now.

May 30, 1948
Beginning on May 28th, emergency crews were on watch for flooding. Doing four hour patrols, firemen, police, and volunteers worked on the dikes. Leaks were reported beginning on the 29th. Sandbags and reinforcements were deployed to the dike. A 4pm on the 30th, the dike failed. A two hundred foot section gave out, and the river burst through. Inside of an hour, the entire city of Vanport was filled with water.

Vanport

In the 1960s, the city of Vanport lay in destruction. The city of Portland purchased the property from the Army Corps of Engineers, with no plans for its use. Foundations of previous buildings remained. Streets remained. Buildings had all been removed. A group of car racing enthousiasts, known as the Portland Jaycees, decided the abandoned roads were a great place to encourage car racing. The group encouraged the City of Portland to create a car race to go on during the Citys annual Rose Festival. The Portland Rose Festival Association did just this. This racing event, called the Rose Cup Race, was first run during 1961. The Rose Cup Race has continued every year since then.

June 1st, 1948

On June 1st, 1948, the entire city of Vanport was consumed with water. Along the Columbia river, damage was rampant. the flood destroyed 5,000 homes, forced some 50,000 people to evacuate and caused an estimated $100 million in damage.

After the Rose Cup Race of 1961, the streets of Vanport became a car racing site. Motorcycle enthusiasts, then go-kart enthusiasts, and finally, drag racers, came to utilize the site. The site became known as West Delta Park. It continued to operate on the Vanport pavement until 1970. In 1970, the asphalt had begun to fail. The racing world was developing safety standards. Racers who exited the track had the possibility of running into old building foundations left from Vanport structures. The City of Portland funded a 100,000 dollar re-paving and enhancement of the facility. Portland International Raceway was born. Today, Portland International Raceway is owned and operated by the City of Portland bureau of Parks and Recreation. The site is entirely self funding, through facility use fees, concessions, and advertising. The site has hosted NASCAR and other major racing series as well. In 2004, PIR adopted a ten year plan to remodel the facilities. One of the additions listed in the plan is an interpretive center. The PIR/Vanport City interpretive center is intended to be a community meeting room that honors the history of Vanport City, Portland International Raceway, and will house the administration offices of the facility. The maps above, assembled by Portland State University and Partners with US Department of Education funding, show the site as it existed as the city of Vanport, as well as the site today, home to Portland International Raceway, and a golf course.

June 15th, 1948

On June 11th, 1948, President Harry Truman came to Portland to survey the damage. This is how Vanport looked upon his visit. The flood, Truman said, should reinforce our determination to build the dams and other structures needed to control the nations river basins.