Word: vanport
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Vanport...
Frank C. Worbs Vanport...
Portland State is indeed a modest place. It was started in 1946 as an extension division of the state's higher education system to handle returning veterans who could not get into the established universities. Its site was Vanport, the sprawling federal housing development built for wartime workers on low marshland near the Columbia River. "The U by the slough," it was called. Two years later, the campus was washed into the river by a flood; only the students and 92 books were salvaged. Classes were temporarily housed in the abandoned downtown Portland administration buildings of the Oregon shipyards...
...Vanport...
Last week, as the massive Columbia shouldered against its banks, surged muddily over low-lying farmland and gnawed at its retaining dikes, the people of Vanport got a warning: the Columbia was 15 feet above flood level, highest in 54 years. It might overflow. One afternoon it did. The railroad fill protecting Vanport broke suddenly, and Vanport's jerry-built structures crumpled like matchwood under 15 feet of muddy water. In the wild scramble for safety, wives were separated from husbands, mothers from children. Bewildered and shocked, survivors told of seeing "hundreds" trapped by splintering walls or crushed...