Portland: People, Politics, and Power, 1851-2001

This is the definitive book on Portlands political history beginning in 1845 when a 16-lot townsite was laid out on the bank of the Willamette River and continuing through the sesquicentennial of Portland city government. Lansing shows that Portlands path to its present place as the twenty-eighth largest city in the United States with a deserved reputation as one of the nations most livable cities has not always been smooth. Corruption profiteering and wide-open vice characterized the City of Roses at the turn of the twentieth century and every era has had its own controversies and rivalries: disputes over railroad franchises and rights-of-way womens suffrage public versus private power the Chinese Exclusion Act Prohibition and the siting of freeways to name just a few.