Nearly half the manufacturing of the State is concentrated at Portland. In 1933 the aggregate output of the 549 manufactur ing establishments within the city was valued at $69,756,814. Lumber and lumber products in wide variety (shingles, sash, doors, windows, boxes, staves, shooks, furniture, ready-cut houses, portable churches, barns and garages, and many smaller articles made of wood) are the leading manufactures. Others of impor tance are flour, cereals, bran and feeds ; meat products and canned and dried fish, fruits and vegetables ; machinery, logging equip ment, logging locomotives, structural steel, gas engines, stoves, furnaces and other metal products; woollen textiles and clothing; paper and paper products; leather and rubber goods. Debits to in dividual accounts in the local banking institutions amounted to $1,700,000,000 in 1935.
Portland was founded in 1845 by Francis W. Pettygrove from Maine and Amos L. Lovejoy from Massachusetts, who owned jointly a government land claim. They tossed a coin to decide whether the site should be named Portland or Boston, and Petty grove won. By 1849 the new town was a thriving community.
The city was chartered in 1851. In the year 186o, just before the Civil War, it had a population of 2,874, which increased to 8,293 in 1870 and (despite a destructive fire in 1873) to 17,577 in 1880. In 1883 railway communication with the east was es tablished by the Northern Pacific, and in 1885 the Federal Gov ernment began to improve the mouth of the Columbia. By 1890 the population was 46,385, and in 1900, after annexations of territory, 90,426. Since 1900 the area within the corporate limits has increased 5o% and the population about fourfold. Since the World War the traffic of the port has more than doubled, and the foreign commerce has increased even more. Building permits in the years 1931-35 represented values aggregating $18,423,000. In 1905 an exposition and fair was held in Portland to celebrate the centennial of the expedition of Meriwether Lewis and Wil liam Clark to the region. The forestry building erected for the fair, built of logs of Oregon fir 6ft. or more in diameter and 54ft. long, is now maintained as a museum and permanent exhi bition hall for the timber resources of the State.