Published about 1911 Once upon a time, about a century ago, the country’s towns and cities and counties and states were wild for self-promotion, goofy on boosterism. The Pacific Northwest was particularly afflicted. One of the syndrome’s manifestations was the impulse to characterize a place in a snappy slogan, and some of these have stuck:…
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Recipe leaflet, ca. 1894 There’s a lengthy history of food-related imagery depicting African Americans. The legacy of black American women and men as good cooks is evident in Uncle Ben’s rice and Aunt Jemima’s syrup. The Pacific Northwest’s history of discouraging black residency is brightly reflected in its historically small black population. But by the…
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We’ve written before on fusion food offerings of the early twentieth century in the Pacific Northwest. Here’s another example, this one a little less chaotic than the Spanish-Mexican-Italian-Chinese-French-Texan-Aztec menu of Cook’s Tamale Grotto. A postcard from about 1912 The Castillian Grill first appears in the Portland Oregonian in an advertisement on December 27, 1908:…
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I can’t resist posting the entire piece: the one-page article on Coalca’s Pillar and its “legend.” Published in the Southern Pacific Company’s travel-and-booster magazine Sunset in March 1900, “Coalca’s Pillar” is the only telling I have ever seen of this tale, which features a Clackamas chief called Chelko, his daughter Nawalla, and a Molalla chief named…
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A few years ago when I was on the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission, a long-hoped-for proposal came to us, to renovate the Cornelius, a downtown hostelry on Park Avenue that had long been vacant and neglected. The Cornelius has something of a mansard roof, and huge, heavy, openable double-hung windows, and is located right in…
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Oregon Historical Society, OrHi 101742 Here is what collectors call a RPPC–a “real photo postcard”–depicting a street scene in Stanford, Montana, postmarked June 9, 1913. It looks a little funny, doesn’t it? The streetcar seems to be kind of disproportionally large, and the trolley pole appears to be drawn in with heavy ink. Yes, the…
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Here’s a picture postcard of dining on the train, circa 1930. That’s the year that the Union Pacific Railroad introduced the Portland Rose as its premier through train from Chicago and Omaha to Baker City, Pendleton, The Dalles, and Portland. Although this was white-linen-tablecloth dining, the car’s décor, as well as the diners’…
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Talk about Oregon oddities: these are odd. What are they? They are three postcards created ca. 1955 by S. Dave Babbett on the occasion of the sesquicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition, in particular their over-wintering at Fort Clatsop in 1805-1806. While I have three cards, there may have been more in the series.…
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“Below we give a fine view of the town of St. Helen’s, in Oregon Territory, situated on the Columbia river, about fifty miles from its mouth. It was settled and named by Mr. Wm. H. Tappan, artist, formerly of Boston, in 1849. The river is rather more than a mile wide opposite the town. The…
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It’s a long-standing exercise to characterize American cities. We debate today just how “weird” is the city of Portland (of course, it’s about as weird as Akron or Omaha or Pensacola, which is to say it’s not). It might be better if we looked for what is distinctive about Portland (Akron, Omaha, Pensacola). A century…
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