American Map and Reproducing Company’s Map of Portland and Vicinity from 1912. The map shows neighborhood/addition names, railroads, street car lines, parks and meadows, rivers, creeks, lakes, and city limits.
City of Portland Archives, Map of Portland and Vicinity, A2011-007, 1912
Vintage Portland 
Way cool. If I squint I can see where Madrona St in Woodlawn, before the park was was established and where one of the many trolley lines were.
Fantastic map! Looking at the river downtown it seems to show a bridge south of the current Steel bridge, perhaps extending from NW Everett St to today’s convention center area. Was this an actual bridge or simply a ferry dock extending into the river? As this is 1912, there should be further documentation of it being located there?
Can someone explain what’s happening on the west side? Where’s Canyon Rd? Looks like Burnside going through Arlington Hts, and the next one south of that is…Patton? Wasn’t there a plank road down the canyon from Sylvan?
In fact, the one that comes out from south “Zion Town” (cute name for Beaverton), with the little bump, which is West Slope apparently– looking at a road map, that’s supposed to turn NE and skirt the south edge of that little green park on its way into town– if 26 is really built over the old plank road. Is it?
Also, there’s been a rail line to Washington County along TV Hwy since whenever. I think I see Farmington Rd, and Cornell coming out of “Base Line”, but nothing between. Were they added after 1912?
…oh wait…it’s so small I got fouled up on the scale. Beaverton’s not even in the map.
Mike G.: I think the “extra” bridge is the old (1888) Steel bridge. The current Steel bridge opened in 1912, so it’s certainly possible that the old one was still around when the map was drawn.
If you copy the map into a paint program and enlarge it and then open Google maps Portland and compare them, you can see how the “Plank\Old Canyon Road” are overlaid by Hwy 26. Took me a minute to figure them out too. The only original part of Canyon east of Sylvan hill is the part from the underpass to the two way road that connects to SW Jefferson, mainly the curve ending up under the Vista Bridge. It is like going through a time warp to me, it is still the same as I remember 60 years ago
There was a bridge there before the current steel bridge. Can’t remember whether it was iron or steel.
Last summer some construction workers unearthed some of the old wood planks from that road. Written up in the Oregonian if I remember right. Also I noticed the old Rose city race track in this view/map.
Dan Faulkner and scribe9 are correct, the pair are the old and new Steel Bridge. The northern of the two is the original and the southern is the current one. The old one connected NE Holladay to NW Hoyt.
A pair of original concrete piers can be still be seen under water near the west bank of the Willamette (I believe they may sometimes be at or above the surface during low water levels). You can see them in this image from Google Maps (one is easier to see but if you look closely you’ll see two). They are much more visible on Google Earth if you have that.
Also, I believe someone once posted about a bit of old rail still visible near a parking lot on the east side of the river extended from Holladay St. that was once part of the street car tracks crossing the old bridge from Holladay, but I can’t recall where I saw that.
Before light rail was built, there were remnants of a couple of old ramps to the steel bridge at its west end.
Is there a way to download a hi-res version of this map?
brian, the track remnants are between the interstate/rose quarter MAX, and the grain elevator. there is a road leading down to the elevator (end of thunderbird way) , and the tracks are near it – can’t remember the exact spot, but they are easy to see.
Hi Res version. You can see details like Slavin and Boones/Taylor/Scholls Ferry Roads. “Nicholas St.” is an oddity in West Portland, it seems to have been broken up later into Oleson and Shattuck Roads. It terminates at Mt. Zion/Green Hills at what is surely Patton Road, which still features an odd ^ dogleg in its alignment. The road below it, like a few others, is simply labeled “County Road,” this is Farmington I’d imagine.
A lot of streets around Taylors Ferry west of Greenwood Hill Cemetery seemed to have their names recycled later into numbered avenues, but I found Hume, Carson, and a few others. West Portland Park is now a park per se, instead of the residential development shown here; Dickinson St. is still there but the rest of the names seem to have changed. Its south and east borders would be the modern Stephenson St. and 35th Ave. Fascinating stuff.
You can also see the cemetery across from Lone Fir where Central Catholic High School now sits. While most of the remains were relocated to make room for the school, I heard stories — perhaps apocryphal — of misplaced bones being dug up by contractors as the school and its grounds have been remodeled over the years.
Zion town was named by Nathan Jones who had his DLC (donation land claim) there. He donated about 1/2 acre of the the very SE corner of his DLC to the county for a cenetery which is still there and he’s there too. The two roads that angle SE from Ziontown (now Sylvan) are Humphry (sp?) and Hewett bvld. Mt. Zion and Green Hills is where St. Thomas More church is. In the very SW corner of section 6, between the red arc and the red county line is now Raab Rd. The original Canyon road wound around through the gullys on it’s way to West Slope. When Canyon was straightened, one of the left over chunks was named Raab Rd. because my family had been there since 1872. Another original section is Canyon Dr. to the west. Also when they straightened out Canyon Rd. they had to move a house in the way owned by the Prince family, located next to my G Great grandparents on the north side of the new road. It was moved to the south side of the new road and they created a new driveway for it to Raab Rd. It’s still there. The Prince family sold it to my parents, and my brother lives there now. The hill where Sunset Mortuary is used to be called Pointer Mt. My G grandfather used to hunt elk there. There’s also an old indian burial ground up one of the gullys to the east and “indian caves” on Pointer Mt. that we kids used to play in. Sorry for the rambling, my roots are deep there…