[PLUG-TALK] For Portland natives

[Keith Lofstrom]

> On Sun, 11 Jul 2021 15:23:53 -0700 (PDT) Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> dijo:
>I'm curious why businesses southwest of Portland frequently have
>Portland as their city. There's a company in Tigard with a Portland
>address and I've seen others in Milwaukie and similar cities with
>Portland addresses.

On Sun, Jul 11, 2021 at 05:22:25PM -0700, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> Maps used by the post office do not always conform to maps drawn by
> political entities. For example, the zip code 97223 covers areas that
> are within the city limits of Tigard as well as areas within the
> boundaries of Portland.

The post office sorts and delivers mail hierarchically. 
All "972.." zip codes are sorted in Portland, and for
many years all "970.." zip codes were sorted in Beaverton.

Today, most of western Oregon's mail is sorted at the giant
automated sorting center on Cornfoot Road near PDX, so a
letter from Eugene to Cottage Grove goes through that
center.

I live right at the eastern edge of the 97005 "Beaverton"
zip code, with 97225 "Portland/WestSlope" on the other
side of my back fence.  The eastern third of the foliage
on five of my douglas firs are in "Portland".

Both my property and my eastern neighbors are politically
in unincorporated (eastern) Washington County.  We are
surrounded by Beaverton, which annexes roads with tax-paying
businesses on them, but no voters.  Thus, some businesses
with Portland mail addresses pay Beaverton property tax.

Gets even more interesting if you look at the original 
land plats registered in territory capital Oregon City
in the mid 1800's.  320 acre tracts of land for $2/acre,
some registered before the 1851 designation of the 
"Willamette Meridian", so they didn't quite line up.
Then railroads divided things differently, and most
towns and cities grew around rail stations.

Beaverton's rail station was named after the beaver
ponds in the nearby swamp.  There were still a few beaver
lodges in the swamp nearby when I was a toddler.

Portland was named in 1845 by three coin tosses - Francis
Pettygrove from Portland Maine won two out of three tosses
against Asa Lovejoy from Boston MA.  Lovejoy kept the
penny as a consolation prize, and we get to keep our
airline luggage, rather than half of it getting misrouted
to BOS on the east coast.

In another 50 years, Beaverton will be renamed "Nike",
and Portland will be officially renamed "Peediyex".

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com