Welcome To Portland SAFeDATA

TriMet operates most of the region`s buses and the MAX (short for Metropolitan Area Express) light rail system, which connects the city and suburbs. 5th and 6th avenues used to be the Portland Transit Mall, devoted primarily to bus traffic with limited automobile access, running N/south through downtown. During construction of the new Portland Transit Mall, which will include light rail, buses have been moved to 3rd and 4th avenues, and 5th and 6th avenues have been closed for construction between Northwest Hoyt Street and about Southwest Clay.

Portland is a city located near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. With a populus of 537,081 it is Oregon`s most thickly settled city, and the third most thickly settled city in the Pacific Northwest, after Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia. Approximately two 1,000,000 people live in Portland metropolitan area (MSA), the 23rd most thickly settled in the US as of July 2006.

Portland was incorporated in 1851 and is the seat of Multnomah County. The city extends slightly into Washington County to the west and Clackamas County to the south. It is governed by a commission based government headed by a mayor and four other commissioners. Portland`s first mayor was Hugh O`Bryant who served for one year.

Portland started as a spot known as "the clearing", which was on the banks of the Willamette about halfway between Oregon City and Fort Vancouver. In 1843, William Overton saw great commercial potential for this land, but lacked the funds required to file a land claim. He struck a bargain with his partner Asa Lovejoy of Boston, Massachusetts: for 25¢, Overton would share his claim to the 640 acre (2.6 km²) site. Overton later sold his half of the claim to Francis W. Pettygrove of Portland, Maine. Pettygrove and Lovejoy each wished to name the new city after his respective home town; this was decided with a coin toss, which Pettygrove won.

At the time of its incorporation on February 8, 1851 Portland had over 800 inhabitants, a steam sawmill, a log cabin hotel, and a newspaper, the Weekly Oregonian. By 1879, the populus had grown to 17,500.

The first known reference to Portland as "The City of Roses" was made by visitors to an 1888 Episcopal Church convention, the nickname growing in popularity after the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition where Mayor Harry Lane suggested that the city needed a "celebration of roses". The first Portland Rose Festival was held two years later and remains the city`s major annual celebration a century later.