Yesterday’s water-level view of the Sellwood Bridge showed quite a bit of industrial development on the east shore. This 1948 photo shows that area from the air. It appears most of the large buildings to the north of the bridge had been removed by 1948. The photo also shows the flooded Oaks Amusement Park area and Sellwood-Moreland neighborhood.
Vintage Portland 
Wow … look at those house boats just west of Oaks Park. Can you image carrying groceries out on that dock?
You can see the Sellwood Pool a tad right-of-center. Spent a couple of summers in the ’90s lifeguarding and teaching swimming lessons there. At that time it was still using the old (and dangerous) gas form of chlorine as the sanitizer.
You can see the big, white wall from the back of the Portland Mausoleum near the top, right corner where the bluff overlooking Oak’s Bottom is (that’s the completely flooded, roundish part). However I don’t see The Old Church. Am I missing it or was it brought in later from somewhere else?
If it is the same church you are referring to the church near Oaks Park was brought to its current location in 1960.
See this history of the Oaks Pioneer Church. http://www.oakspioneerchurch.org/history.html
Even today an aerial view only shows you the church lot, it is hard to see for all the trees. It would be in that clump of trees directly north of the water tower and east of the train tracks.
Oh, sorry, left this part out, it wasn’t moved there until 1961. Was built in 1851 but I don’t know where it was moved here from.
Here’s a link to a photo of them moving the church on a barge to the landing near it’s current location.
http://www.oakspioneerchurch.org/
Thank you, very much!
In the photo the brushy land north of the bridge, between the interurban tracks and the river, had a pile of rotted sawdust left from the mill, mostly overgrown with blackberry thickets. In about 1948, when I was a child, my neighbor took me along when he drove his pickup there, got out a shovel, and took a load of free sawdust home for his garden. Later, in the 1950s, the sawdust pile was exploited by a business that sold rotted sawdust to gardeners by the truckload.
My ancestral homeland! Well, at least in June ’48, my dad was just out of the photo to the right. He lived across the street from Sellwood School on Sherrett. To me, it’s bittersweet that this aerial doesn’t go quite that far to the right. My dad’s side came to Sellwood in the 1880s.
I see Portland Memorial, in this photo, only 4 years after my paternal grandfather died (1900-1944), and my great grandparents who owned Gottschalk Cafe / Gottschalk Tavern (now the Sellwood Inn) on 17th, were just buried in ’42.
My dad’s side owned the Poole Grocery and Meat Market on 17th at that time too. .
Maybe I’m off-topic a bit here…but, wouldn’t it be fun to get a bunch of us 45+ crowd together in a park (Kenilworth would be a great fit) some spring or summer weekend to shoot the breeze, brown bag it, and share our stories of what our memories of town, ‘overtown’, the old roads, businesses, eating haunts, etc.
Wouldn’t it be fun to bring any photos and other memorabilia from times past, i.e. Portland Buckaroos, Rose Festival, Mister Duffy, Rose City Transit, etc., etc., etc.?
With so many new from out of area arrivals, I’m starting to feel like a has-been. Does anyone else think this would be fun? Even if only once or twice a year?