PORTLAND (Steam Tug)

About this property

Portland is a sternwheel steamboat built in 1947 for the Port of Portland in the U.S. state of Oregon. Portland was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. It presently hosts the Oregon Maritime Museum, which owns the vessel. The vessel is moored at the Willamette River seawall next to Tom McCall Waterfront Park in downtown Portland. The Portland was built in 1947 by Northwest Marine Iron Works and delivered to the Port of Portland on August 29 of that year. She was operated as a tug by both Willamette Tug & Barge and Shaver Transportation until she was retired in 1981. By that time, the Port of Portland was serving oil supertankers from Alaska that were too large for Portland to assist, and container ships with bow thrusting capabilities that reduced the need for tug assistance. Built at a time when steam paddlewheels were giving way to more modern propulsion systems, the Portland was originally proposed as a diesel-powered screw-driven vessel, but at the request of the Columbia River Pilots Association she was built with more traditional propulsion. As a result, she was the last steam-powered, sternwheel tugboat built in the United States. She was also the last such vessel still in service in the U.S. by at least 1972 and at the time of her retirement in 1981. For these reasons, she is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as "an outstanding representative of her type and method of construction." The Portland was built to replace her predecessor of the same name, built in 1919. Unlike her predecessor, the present Portland is built with a steel hull, and a wooden superstructure. In 1991, nearly ten years after the Portland was retired, ownership was transferred to the Oregon Maritime Museum for $1, where restoration work began with the intent of turning her into a stationary museum ship. Interest and fundraising for the project exceeded expectations, and $700,000 in donations allowed Portland to be restored to a functioning, seaworthy condition. Restoration work was completed in 1993, with occasional passenger trips until the Coast Guard inspected the vessel in 2001 and shut passenger operations down until the ship could pass inspection. The museum raised an additional $480,000 in funds, volunteers put in an additional million dollars in labor over seven years, and the ship was cleared for passenger service in 2008. In 1994, the Portland was moved to her present location, at Tom McCall Waterfront Park in downtown Portland, where she is available most days for tours. In 2002, the static displays for the Oregon Maritime Museum – called the Oregon Maritime Center and Museum until 2004 – were brought on board and are now a part of the tour.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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