Vanport Oregon was a city (currently Delta Park) that was constructed in 1943 to house the workers for the wartime shipyards in Stumptown & Vancouver. Vanport became the home of 40,000 people, about 40% African American, making it Oregon's second largest city at the time. After the War,Vanport lost more than half of it's population, dropping to 18,000, as many war time workers left to build their American dream elsewhere.
Vanport was destroyed at 4:05 on this very day in 1948, when a 200 ft section of the dike holding back the mighty Columbia River collapsed during the flood, killing 2,000. The entire city was underwater by nightfall leaving everyone homeless. The Vanport Extension Center refused to close after the disaster and quickly re-opened in downtown Portland. The college became Portland State University.
Vanport was never rebuilt. Most of the black flood victims were given temporary housing in dilapidated was surplus mobile buildings trucked to vacant land by Guilds Lake. After a little over a month of living in these circumstances, the residents organized a caravan to Salem and protest their living style at the State Capitol. This happened on July 7th 1948 and made the front page story in the Oregonian. (photo above blog)
My parents moved our family from Vanport to Columbia Villa just a year or two before the Vanport flood. I heard lots of stories about it as a young boy.
I love this blog! Keep it up.
Posted by: Bill in Boise | May 31, 2009 at 03:56 PM
Just a small correction -- while it was initially feared that there would be hundreds or thousands of deaths from the tragedy at Vanport, most of the sources I have seen have placed the death toll at as few as 3 people and as many as 15. Based on other reports, I would tend toward a relatively few deaths instead of 2,000.
Nevertheless, the loss of people's homes so quickly was truly a tragic event.
Other than that, though, thank you very much for your recollections of Portland history. I'm enjoying the ride!
Posted by: BryanK | June 01, 2009 at 05:23 AM
An even more picky correction. The VEC moved to St. Johns before it moved downtown. It was housed in another Kaiser building called the Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation from the Fall of 1948 until 1952 (longer then it was in Vanport even) before moving downtown. I'm not sure if it was there that it became the Portland Extension Center or once it obtained the Lincoln High School building however. And just a little extra trivia: The 1948 Summer session was located at Grant High School.
Keep up the great work!
Posted by: Bryce Henry | July 02, 2010 at 02:05 PM
My late grandfather John William Fields, African American, told the story that he had water up to his knees in his car as he escaped the flood.
Posted by: GerettaGeretta | October 26, 2012 at 04:08 PM