(This is part 1 of a series on the fine Portland neighborhood of Sellwood)
In the year 1848, Henderson Luelling, his wife, and nine children, having just completed a long arduous journey along the Oregon Trail, purchased land along the east bank of the Willamette River from a one Mr. Wilson and proceeded to slash out a 5 acre plot in order to settle down. Soon Luelling was joined by friend William Meek and the two men set to work establishing a commercial fruit tree nursery, building a saw mill, and raising a damn on the nearby Johnson Creek. Eighteen years later, 321 acres of the land would pass in a sale to East Portland resident Reverend John Sellwood. Sellwood himself has an interesting history, having first emigrated from England and settled in Illinois, he came to Oregon by land over the Panama isthmus under heavy duress as his group came under attack by Darlen Indians. The Indians killed the majority of the travelers and left the reverend shot, beaten, mutilated, and near death. “His nose was broken in with a club, one hand was burnt with powder, the other grazed with a ball, and through his body a bullet passed so near his heart that but for its contraction just at that instant would have touched it”. Following a long life preaching the bible on the west coast, he would die on August 27th, 1892 at the age of 84.
In 1882, 7 years after a freak Memorial Day horse and buggy accident resulted in him being dragged through the streets by a terror stricken horse, Sellwood would sell the 320 acre plot to the Sellwood Real Estate Company. The plot of land would come to be known as the town of Sellwood, stretching from the eastern bank of the Willamette about a mile east to (then) 10th Avenue near the border of the Oregon and California railroad line, with points north extending to Miller Street near what was then City View Park and Race Course, then south to the border of Clackamas county at Ochoco Street.
The land that passed to the Sellwood Real Estate Company was described by quasi-advertisements/articles at the time as still very much in its natural form, untouched by man, thick with centuries old fir trees and dense thickets, though several apple farms had already been established in the area as early back as 1859. A brief 1882 article within the Oregonian raises the possibility of Sellwood as a destination: “There is no more pleasant spot for family picnics near Portland, nor so free from intrusion, than under the oaks and in the groves of Sellwood”. The articles continued on to recommend that travelers go by dolly, but within a year Sellwood would replace the dolly with a steam propeller. By that year, 1883, nearly all of the 800 lots within the townsite had sold in just 9 months. In little short of 5 years over half of the townsite would be cleared with 3,000 cords of wood sold. From the start, challenges for the city included fire protection and the securing of a volunteer firefighter force; locating and securing a reliable source for drinking water; establishing an affordable means of transportation to surrounding towns; and the steady improvement of city streets, which included removing stumps, grading the streets, and installing sidewalks.
At that time Umatilla Ave, running east to west, served as the town’s main business thoroughfare. Residences were built on parallel streets, with names that you can still see to this day, including Nethalem St, Tacoma St, and Tenino St. Running north to south were avenues numbered 1st to 11th. This would change in 1891 when Portland underwent a full renaming and renumbering of streets, including the establishment of the 5 city sections: North, Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, and Northwest. Sellwood would sit in the Southeast and its north to south streets would all be bumped up by increments between 5 and 11 (e.g. 1st was changed to 6th, 6th to 13th, and 11th to 21st).
Sellwood was incorporated as a town in 1887 with an estimated population of 560, and in such a short time much progress had been made. One contemporary writer noted that “few who have never visited Sellwood can form an idea of what capital and enterprise combined have accomplished within a few years, and those who do take a stroll through the nascent town are filled with astonishment”. Storefronts would develop along 13th Avenue, centering at Umatilla, some of which remain there to this day. The Sorenson & Young Saw and Planing Mill (later the East Side Lumber Mill), built in 1895 on Spokane Street, served as an important place of employment for the town, as did other factories including a wool mill and door fabricator. By the end of 1887 a church, a school, a post office, several businesses, and almost 100 homes were constructed. In three more years the number of businesses had more than tripled, to include a blacksmith, a couple of hotels, two saloons, and a brewery (which, today, Sellwood is sadly lacking). Some of the more service-based establishments were still missing, like dentists, doctors and banks, which increased the residents’ desire for better transportation to the surrounding cities of Portland and Milwaukee.
As the population increased and travel to Sellwood gained in public interest, businesses grappled with a better way to connect Sellwood to Portland proper across the Willamette River to the West and points north to Mount Tabor and Vancouver—a struggle that in many ways continues to today. At the time one could access Sellwood by steamboat, ferry, or launch. The initial improvement plan in 1887 called for a line of horse, steam and engine cars expanding out from the city center across the Morrison Bridge and then branching out to points east, north, and, of course, south to Sellwood. The following year a one Mr. H. C. Campbell stepped forward with an offer to build a street railway from East Portland to Sellwood for $12,000 by fall of 1889, which residents considered but did not pursue. For many years after there were periodic rumblings of a coming electric railway from Portland through Sellwood to Oregon City, but none of these were backed up by action. Then, with the East Side Railway Company having purchased a franchise to extend through town land, a 16 mile line was finally extended to Sellwood along 13th street in 1892, and fully built through to Oregon City by 1893, servicing both freight and passengers. The East Side Railway Company, through a long line of consolidations and mergers, would later become TriMet, thus making the Sellwood line the trailblazer in what would soon become a wide net of long distance interurban electrical train transport from Portland to surrounding towns and cities.
With the streetcar now in place and prosperity continuing, population growth exploded. In 1890, the population was at 800, but by 1893 it had more than doubled to 1,800. Rumors of a pending incorporation of Sellwood into the larger city of Portland shortly followed. The sudden fiery demise of Sellwood’s electrical station in November of 1892 may have precipitated this movement towards annexation, as Sellwood was left in the dark for months without electric street lighting and one of the promised first measures upon incorporation was for Portland to furnish electric lights back to the town. Sellwood was incorporated into the larger city of Portland in 1893 and by May the electric company announced plans to extend power lines down to Sellwood. The next year residents would petition for other benefits that came with being city tax payers, including coming under jurisdiction of the city pound, the extension of city water to the neighborhood to the benefit of about 1500 people, a reduction in street car fares from 10-cents to 5 (the going rate for other Portland residents), and better fire protection via a chemical engine (as well as the added fire protection that would come with the city water line extension). By January of 1895 progress on these fronts was rapidly moving forward, including about 20 volunteers secured for the fire department, a promise of Bull Run water (the watershed that serves Portland) arriving to the neighborhood by spring, and a litigation case under development in order to reduce the 10-cent fare.
Events quickly developed from there. In February a building was secured on 5th street near Umatilla for housing the fire department along with a wagon, some fire extinguishers, ladders, axes, other tools, and even their first live fire drill, which involved extinguishing a small chimney fire. By late May the Portland water committee agreed to extend five miles of 10 inch wrought iron pipe from 20th and Division Street, down Milwaukee Street, to Sellwood at the cost of about $27,000 and the projected revenue of between $2,500 and $5,000 a year. Along with the pipe, fire hydrants would be installed along the length of Milwaukee and across Sellwood. The pipe arrived by the end of August, ground broke on September 9th, and work completed in less than 2 months. By that time in 1895 the fire department held about 100 volunteers and had just been promised delivery of a new wagon with a hose reel and hose. And though I cannot confirm the actual date, a historic ticket stub from the early 1900’s for a 5-cent fare to Sellwood confirms that at some point residents were successful in reducing the 10-cent fare.
In the next several years other advances would fail and succeed. In 1897 talks of a free Sellwood ferry sputtered to life then were quickly squashed. Then again in 1898. But this public service, as a free service, was seen by some Portland officials as one that was “not essential to the public interests nor one which it is incumbent upon the taxpayers, as a duty, to provide”. By the end of 1898 a new golf course was under construction on the old Luelling fruit orchard land adjoining the South border of town. Improvements included ground clearing, the extension of water from Sellwood pipes, and construction of a clubhouse “with every convenience used in a modern clubhouse”. Originally chartered in August of 1896, the Waverly Golf Club, now Waverley Country Club (note the added ‘e’ to the name), was originally located near 39th and Powell and moved to its current location along the Willamette River starting May of 1897.
Finally, in what now could be considered a quaint scandal, in the summer of 1898 a group of residents in town petitioned to remove Sellwood from Portland city pound jurisdiction. This action would in effect eliminate the policing of Sellwood pounds by pound officials, which residents found to be molesting in nature, resulting in “thinned flanks”, the ruin of the “pastoral beauty” of the city, and “thinned ranks of the bovine population…to an extent that threatened to stamp out the dairy industry in [Sellwood]”. The pound council acquiesced to the delight of Sellwood residents, but by early 1899 events turned foul. It seemed that without enforcement of pound law the cows ran amuck, due to the fact that the cows, which owners…
“had hitherto kept…within reasonable bounds through fear of the majesty of the law, issued forth into the streets and overran the place like the rats in the ancient village of Hamelin. They invaded gardens and feasted on vegetables that were intended for the dinners of their betters; they trampled up lawns like plumbers; they broke down fences, and made themselves unbidden guests of other and reputable cows, whose feed they devoured, like pour relations”
This poor bovine behavior lead to a quick reversal of the petition and a plea by some residents (mostly non-cow owners) to pound officials to visit Sellwood and maintain order once again. One writer in the Oregonian reflected that “a pound man came to Sellwood to see what he could do in the way of suppressing the lawlessness of the hobo element among the cows”. The cows were placed on 60 day notice, following which they would need to obey pound ordinance or risk the repercussions of the pound man—that is, they would be impounded.
By the end of the 19th century Sellwood had indeed grown, in just 18 years, from a forested unpopulated picnic destination to a thriving and fully serviced town. In the next 111 years the neighborhood would experience more opportunities and challenges, many of which echo those experienced in its infancy, while following a similar trajectory of other towns and neighborhoods across America during this time, as the automobile gained favor, competing neighborhoods developed, a series of wars rocked the world, and the shadow of the Great Depression descended upon the United States.