I've been reading about the Vanport flood which happened in 1948.

See here

Vanport was a city right outside of Portland Oregon that was erased off the map when a dike broke and flooded the entire city, killing several and leaving thousands homeless.

When it happened, it was covered up and kept out of the national news. Now that the same thing has happened in New Orleans (on a much larger scale), it's now being talked about and taught in schools. Ironically, Vanport was mostly a black city just like New Orleans.

The reason I'm so interested in it is because it is rumored that my great grandfather was one of the people that was killed in the Vanport flood. He disappeared right around that time and nobody knows what happened to him.

So, my question is, how would I go about trying to find a roster of the names of people who died in this flood? Every thing I find is just a total number of people.

Anyway, for you history buffs, I highly recommend researching the Vanport flood. It makes for some very entertaining reading!

This is a very interesting story. If you get in touch with the library archives at Portland they should be able to help you. They will have on record(usually on microfiche) the local papers etc for that time. There would probably have been a list of the dead/missing in the paper at the time. They have an email contact. Email them and tell them what you are looking for. Hope this helps.

library contact

That's a good point. Even better, my mother still lives in Portland so I could just tell her to go to the main library building in downtown Portland.

Yes, this is quite an interesting story. I'm sure it's happened quite a bit with entire towns being erased by a flood, but this one I think should stand out because it's 20,000 people (up to 80,000 at one point.) And at the time it was the countries largest public housing project, and the only one complete with public schools. And the fact that they tried to keep it hush hush when the disaster hit. This town is the very reason why there is such a large black community in Portland today.

See, they did the right thing when they bulldozed the remains of this city and designated the land for recreation only. That's what they should be doing with the lowest parts of New Orleans! Why rebuild something that is going to flood again. This area where Vanport once stood has flooded two more times since 1948. I don't even think it has a working dike anymore.

Here is a satellite image of the land as it is now:

Vanport now (area to the left of the marker)


Here is a map of the city from 1948.

Vanport map in (1948)

I had so much time on my hands yesterday that I took the map and overlayed it onto the satellite image. And when you take it away you can still see the scares on the land where the roads and buildings used to be.

You can see that Bayou lake has been filled in and is now where the Portland International Raceway is.

You can still see Force lake, and you can still see Bayou Slough and Mud Slough in the satellite picture. That'll help get a coordnance (sp?). Right between the two sloughs was the main road into the city and there were hundreds of buildings on either side.