The Naming of Portland

Now Lovejoy shared the land claim with Pettygrove. They now needed a name. Lovejoy wanted to use the name of his own hometown, Boston, while Pettygrove wanted to use the name of his own hometown, Portland, Maine. Eventually they decided to toss a coin. Pettygrove won 2 tosses out of 3 and the name became “Portland.” It was founded in 1845.

While Pettygrove and Lovejoy knew that Portland would be a prosperous port city, they could not foresee how prosperous it would become.

By 1850, about 800 residents made their home in Portland. At that time there was a log-cabin hotel and a newspaper, the Weekly Oregonian. Congress passed the Oregon Land Act, which entitled every man or woman to 320 acres. Portland was incorporated in 1851 and it has grown into the second largest city in the Northwest. People who settled in this region made their living from fish, lumber, wheat and cattle, and Portland became a major transportation center because of its proximity to the rivers and railroads.
Oregon became the 33rd state to join the union in 1859. Before that, it was known as the Oregon Territory and it stretched from California to Canada along the Pacific Coast. The Oregon Country stretched east to the Rocky Mountains from the Coast. The Territory encompassed what are now the states of Washington, Idaho and Montana.