Remember the path to quick wealth is to seize land on the cheap. When the War was over, most of the farms were sold or stolen. Some farms were saved by neighbors, but mostly the once fertile land was claimed by a post-war industrial society, systemic prejudices, zoning changes, and ghways.

When did growing, gathering, and producing food in the North Reach stop being a core component of the economy? Agriculture is a category worth tracking in Portland’s economic reports instead of the quantity “shovel-ready land” available to be paved and made barren.

Why did the Market Gardens and Orchards tended by the Japanese farmers along Columbia Blvd disappear? Where are the farms of Skyline Blvd and the Chinese farms that lined Guild’s Lake? When did growing, gathering, and producing food in the North Reach stop being a core component of the economy?

That “grey-lined” North Portland as an inevitable place for the CEI Hub's aging oil tanks and the newest warehouse industry. The legacy of post-World War II industry lives on in the North Reach and in an EOA that refuses to acknowledge its past. 🧵 3 of 3

It was not the ship building industry that wounded the North Reach, but what came after, what is still happening today. It is the city’s long history of classism that placed workers’ homes on wetlands and riverbanks in North Portland and red-lined neighborhoods for decades later. 🧵 2 of 3

It is not the ship building that determined the North Reach’s problems, but rather what came after. It was what they did with the ships, and even more importantly what they did with the people, and how the city government strove to keep the wartime wealth a forever benefit of the few. 🧵 4 of 4

They worked around the clock to build Liberty ships in record time. Henry Kasier supplied housing, daycare, food and healthcare so that they could work hard. Then World War II was over and Vanport City was destroyed in a 1948 flood. Portland “proper” did not want the workers to stay. 🧵 3 of 4

Women made up 30% of the workforce. The Black population, in Portland, went from 2,000 to 22,000. An estimated 40,000 Indigenous people from all over the country left reservations and to work. 🧵 2 of 4

In Richmond, California a historical park was dedicated to the women who worked in the shipyards, The Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Park.

Highly dangerous materials were used in the construction and deconstruction of these ships. Thousands of people would die over the subsequent decades, mostly from asbestos. The thousands of people who came to work in the shipyards and decided to stay, faced discrimination

the freight train cut through north Portland before I wiped the rain off my phone

The farmer, who had a wood lot and brought a few trees to the mill, was displaced by large forest exporters. The city created the Commission of Public Docks in 1910, which later merged with the Port of Portland in 1970. Docks became terminals with large cranes and fences. 🧵 3 of 3

The Port of Portland was given the power of eminent domain and could force the sale of any riverside land they felt they needed for their purposes. Small docks and a market economy gave way to larger and larger industries along the river. 🧵 2 of 3

Despite the fact that the majority of the North Reach is owned by the city and Port of Portland, the docks and “public beaches” are reserved for deserted docks and empty pilings. Saved for the romanticized past when influential families made their fortunes on the back of the North Reach residents.