Tommy Walker photographs of the 1948 Columbia River flood

Vanport, Oregon, was a wartime housing development city in northern Multnomah County. It was constructed by the Housing Authority of Portland to house Kaiser Company shipyard employees and their families during World War II. The first residents moved into Vanport in 1942. By 1944, Vanport was the second-largest city in Oregon, with an estimated population of 42,000 residents. These residents included up to 10,000 Black residents, more than triple the population of Black people in Portland just two years prior. After the war ended in 1945, Portland metro leaders debated the fate of the city. It was built with the intention that it serve as temporary housing; however, housing shortages in Portland and racial housing discrimination caused many residents to continue living in Vanport after the war.

On May 30, 1948, following weeks of heavy rain, the Columbia River crested at fifteen feet higher than its floodplain. The event caused widespread flooding throughout the Columbia River watershed. In Vanport, dikes strained to hold the water back from the low-lying areas around Vanport. The Northern Pacific Railway embankment failed at 4:17 p.m., and floodwaters began to rapidly fill the surrounding land. The estimated 18,500 residents still living in Vanport had only 35 minutes to escape before floodwaters lifted the temporary wooden apartment buildings off their foundations and washed them away. The flood effectively destroyed the city of Vanport and resulted in the deaths of fifteen residents.

Sources: “Vanport,” by Carl Abbott, Oregon Encyclopedia (accessed August 2023), https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/vanport/; “The Vanport Flood,” by Michael N. McGregor, Oregon History Project (accessed August 2023), https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/articles/essays/the-vanport-flood/