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I am curious why the largest city in Oregon which has a very long coastal line, didn't develop along the coast. Portland is already beautiful with the mountains but if adding the coast scenary to it, it will very likely beat Seattle in terms of natural beauty and might even become larger than Seattle as well. I understand that lots of cities didn't evolve along the coast but in the west coast this has been rare, especially for a whole state without a major city close to a vast area of water.
Last edited by fashionguy; 05-06-2010 at 02:11 AM..
The coasts of WA and OR have harsh climates. The inland areas were more conducive to building large citiies. Another point is the bays on Puget Sound, and even the Columbia River near Portland were better ports for industry due to calmer conditions and easier access to the logging resources of the northwest. The correct decisions were made back in the 19th century.
Portland was meant to serve two purposes - that of an inland port, and that of a convenient processing center for produce that came up from the Willamette Valley.
There isn't much of a natural harbor at the mouth of the Columbia River. That's why the cities which do exist there (Astoria and Warrenton) have modest port facilities, while Portland has much larger ones.
There is little chance of a city in that area becoming very large due to natural constraints. There isn't all that much flat land to build upon. You quickly hit the hills of the Coast Range.
There's a reason that Vancouver, Bellingham, Seattle/Tacoma, Olympia, Portland, Salem, and Eugene are all sort of in a row - they were sited on flat land and valley floors.
My guess is the same as the above. The other two major cities of the Pacific Northwest weren't built around the open ocean either. Seattle is tucked into the Puget Sound while Vancouver is shielded by Victoria Island. The Columbia River doesn't have a particularly good shelter at its mouth (while the better sheltered, but still small inlets along the Oregon Coast weren't host to particularly important rivers), so Portland developed inland. Why it developed in its particular area instead of further up or downriver is probably because it's a good flat-ish piece of land in a very fertile and productive valley where the Columbia meets the Williamette).
Writing that has me thinking about why SF developed in the Bay Area (though its important port was on the bay side of the city) instead of, say, Oakland.
Portland was meant to serve two purposes - that of an inland port, and that of a convenient processing center for produce that came up from the Willamette Valley.
There isn't much of a natural harbor at the mouth of the Columbia River. That's why the cities which do exist there (Astoria and Warrenton) have modest port facilities, while Portland has much larger ones.
There is little chance of a city in that area becoming very large due to natural constraints. There isn't all that much flat land to build upon. You quickly hit the hills of the Coast Range.
There's a reason that Vancouver, Bellingham, Seattle/Tacoma, Olympia, Portland, Salem, and Eugene are all sort of in a row - they were sited on flat land and valley floors.
I'll agree with most of your points. However, Seattle decided to flatten one of its major hills (The Denny Regrade) to make it more conducive to industry. So there is some history with a NW city changing its landscape to build a better city!
Much the same way Pittsburgh is situated at the confluence of three rivers, or St. Louis with two rivers, so too is Portland (Columbia and Willamette rivers).
As others have pointed out the coastline of Oregon is mountainous. The mouth of the Columbia River at Astoria could have been a major port city so I am not sure why Portland was located 70 miles inland. In-fact the entire West Coast has mountains along the coastline. Seattle is well inland on the Puget Sound. San Francisco sits on a large bay and both Los Angeles & San Diego have smaller bays but the West Coast is mostly steep mountains dropping into the Pacific Ocean.
The coasts of WA and OR have harsh climates. The inland areas were more conducive to building large citiies. Another point is the bays on Puget Sound, and even the Columbia River near Portland were better ports for industry due to calmer conditions and easier access to the logging resources of the northwest. The correct decisions were made back in the 19th century.
This exactly.
Newport was thought to become a major city back in the day and was included on a map of the West Coast by a contemporarily famous cartographer back in the late 1800s along with San Francisco and Seattle (Portland wasn't on the map).
It ended up not growing because it was difficult to get over the Coast Range and because the water wasn't deep enough there to put a deep-water port. Same with Astoria--the Coast Range proved formidable when all the resources that were going out were coming from the state's interior, and nowhere on the coast has a large enough harbor that could sustain a lot of shipping. The weather on the coast can also get NASTY any time of the year, but especially in the winter.
Portland was located on the Columbia which is the 4th largest river, by flow, in the U.S., and was highly navigable for ships. So it really just made the most sense for Portland to grow since it was also located on the best east/west pass through the Cascades (the Columbia Gorge), on two major, navigable rivers, and was near the population for imports and resources for exports, and provided a good shelter from the crazy coastal weather.
It's cool to imagine what if Portland were just a smaller town like Tacoma or Eugene, and instead Newport was the major Oregon city with suburbs in Depoe Bay and Waldport instead of Gresham and Beaverton. Actually, those would probably be neighborhoods in the city and it'd have to be long and narrow like South Florida and it'd have to be very, very dense with lots of high-rises too in order to fit along the rocky, mountainous coastline, but it'd be extremely vulnerable to a tsunami and the Cascadia subduction earthquake (the big one).
Take a look at Google Maps' terrain view and look at the Portland and Seattle areas, then look at the coast. You'll see what I mean... These factors are so huge that, even today, the largest city, by far, on the Oregon or Washington coast are the twin cities of North Bend/Coos Bay that have a combined 26,000 residents. Astoria and Newport are next up with about 10,000 residents each. It's a rugged climate and it takes a certain kind of person to live there, and it's pretty isolated geographically by its topography.
Last edited by backdrifter; 05-06-2010 at 05:39 PM..
Good points, but will add one little tweek; Portland is actually mostly on the Willamette, not the Columbia. The north part of town that borders the Columbia is mostly lakes, golf courses, and the airport. The Willamette, and of course, the Columbia, are navigable by ocean going vessels.
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