Nothing’s inevitable. Had it not been for a storm, the Spanish Armada would have beaten up England. Lincoln’s evening may have been more enjoyable had he canceled his theater plans. A better-designed Florida ballot might’ve given us President Al Gore. You get the idea: According to the popular theory, a butterfly flaps its wings, and eventually… typhoon.
Portlanders love complaining about Portland. But what if, for whatever reason, Portland were completely different? What if the people who created (and still create) Portland made totally different choices? We’d now be living in a Portland alternative universe, where things could be so much better! (Or worse. Probably worse? Who knows?)
What follows is an examination of what Portland might look like today… if we’d done things a wee bit differently.
1845: Welcome to Boston, Oregon!
In 1845, city founders Francis Pettygrove and Asa Lovejoy couldn’t decide what to call this place. Pettygrove wanted Portland. Lovejoy wanted Boston. To decide, they flipped a coin. Portland won.
BUT WHAT IF… it had gone the other way? What if Lovejoy had been able to name us after America’s home of tea parties and tricorn hats? This town would forever be known as “Boston, Jr.,” “West Boston,” “Boston the Younger,” or “Boston, Second of Its Name.” We would never crawl out from the influence of our East Coast namesake and comparisons between the two towns would continually give Boston, Oregon, an inferiority complex, as well as fueling an insufferable number of click-baity lists about how to tell the two towns apart. (As it stands now, barely anyone’s even heard of Portland, Maine. Phew! Close one.)
1849: Presenting Governor Abraham Lincoln (R-OR)
In 1849, Abraham Lincoln had a chance to become governor of Oregon. (Really? Wow!) But he turned it down. (Sad trombone sound.) Instead of Lincoln, we got Governor Joseph Lane—a pro-slavery Southern sympathizer who helped shape Oregon’s early history of African American exclusion. So yeah… things could have gone better.
BUT WHAT IF… Lincoln had taken the job?
