Uniquely different yet connected, find out about the other Portland.
At a dinner party in 1845, an argument arose between two men, Francis Pettygrove and Asa Lovejoy. Co-founders of a new settlement on the west bank of the Oregon Country’s Willamette River known as “The Clearing,” each man wanted to name the settlement after his respective hometown. Pettygrove was from Boston, Massachusetts, and Lovejoy from Portland, Maine. They settled their disagreement with a coin toss, which Lovejoy won, and named the new town Portland, Oregon.