Port of Portland (Or.)

With improvements to navigation on the Columbia, Willamette, and Snake rivers and many rail lines converging on Portland, the city’s harbor became an important shipping point, especially for agricultural and lumber producers in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. The Port of Portland and the Commission of Public Docks built and maintained much of the infrastructure that made that possible.

The Port of Portland was created by the Oregon Legislature in 1891, and the Commission of Public Docks (also commonly referred to as the Dock Commission) was established by the City of Portland in 1910, each with similar statutory powers over Portland harbor and shipping channels on the Willamette and Columbia rivers. Until the two merged in 1970, however, they generally operated in tandem, each with a different focus. The Port of Portland took responsibility for deepening and maintaining shipping channels, constructing and operating dry docks, providing towage and pilot services, building airports, and reclaiming lands for industrial use. The Commission of Public Docks focused primarily on construction and operation of docks and terminals.

Less than a decade after the Commission of Public Docks was established, the Portland City Council authorized a study to formulate plans for waterways, public terminals, and water sites. In 1921, the committee suggested consolidation of the Port of Portland and Dock Commission, as well as dredging a new Willamette River shipping channel west of Swan Island to replace the difficult-to-navigate channel east of the island. Voters in Portland and Multnomah County favored the consolidation, but it lost by 2,000 votes in the statewide initiative that would have authorized the Port of Portland to acquire Dock Commission property and assume its bonded indebtedness. One result of the failure to achieve consolidation was sale of the Dock Commission’s newly-completed Municipal Dry Docks to the Port of Portland in 1923. The Port achieved another committee recommendation as it dredged a new shipping channel west of Swan Island during the next decade. Efforts to consolidate the Port and the Dock Commission continued but were torpedoed primarily by inability to agree on which body should absorb the other. Consolidation of the Dock Commission into the Port of Portland finally was achieved in 1970.

The Dock Commission opened Terminal No. 1 on Northwest Front Avenue near Union Station in 1913. With various expansions, notably one completed in 1938, Terminal No. 1 included the main Quay Dock facing the river, Piers A and B, Slips No. 1 and 2, a lumber dock, Warehouse No. 1, a 100-ton sheer leg derrick, and automobile and machine shops. Terminal No. 2 at the foot of Southeast Washington Street on the other side of the river was completed in 1915. Its two-level quay dock generally served riverboat and coastwise traffic. Terminal No. 3 at the foot of North Alta Street on the east bank of the Willamette was constructed by the City of St. Johns in 1910. The Dock Commission obtained it in 1915, when St. Johns was incorporated into the City of Portland. The small terminal facility served the coastal trade for a few years, but it was soon closed and then demolished in 1929 to make way for construction of the St. Johns Bridge.

Construction was completed in 1919 on the first phase of Terminal No. 4 on a 212-acre site on the east bank of the Willamette, located north of the St. Johns Bridge. Under Dock Commission ownership, it grew to include many piers, with deep-water slips, rail trackage for direct transfer to and from ships, a grain elevator with capacity of 2 million bushels, a ventilated fruit storage warehouse and cold storage unit, a bulk vegetable oil/molasses storage plant, coal bunkers, Administration Building, Welfare Building, Lunch Rooms, Power Plant, Repair Shop, and various other facilities. As of 2004, a greatly-expanded Terminal 4 continued to be the international shipping center of Portland harbor.

Initially, the primary purpose for creation of the Port of Portland was dredging and maintaining a 25-foot channel in the Portland harbor on the Willamette north to the Columbia and on the Columbia to the sea, including the Columbia Bar. Later, this became the least of its functions as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers assumed primary responsibility for channel deepening and maintenance, but the Port provided dredging equipment as required by the Corps, leased its dredges for various public and private projects, and conducted dredging and filling projects in the vicinity of Portland. This work moved the shipping channel from the east side to the west side of Swan Island, filled the Rivergate Industrial District at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia, and filled Swan Island for construction of the city’s first municipal airport, which was begun in 1926. As planes increased in size, it soon became inadequate, and the port filled a site along the Columbia River to create the Portland-Columbia Airport, which opened in 1940. With a new 8,800-foot runway in 1951, the airport could handle international flights and became Portland International Airport. The Port acquired the Troutdale and Hillsboro airports and continued to add more industrial districts.

During World War II, the federal government took over the Dock Commission’s terminals and the Port’s dry docks and Swan Island facilities for wartime shipping and shipbuilding needs. It took a few years after the war to return to full peace-time operations under Dock Commission and Port of Portland control.

From the guide to the Port of Portland/Commission of Public Docks Photographs Collection, 1911-1997, 1913-1942, (Oregon Historical Society Research Library)