Introduction:
Welcome to the multi-media channel for Wicked Portland! If you're reading this on your Smartphone or tablet, you've scanned the QR code at the front of the book. We think you will find this feature brings the book to life in a totally new way.
How this site works:
As you read the book, each time you get to a photo that's in the book, take a look at this page. You'll find a larger, more detailed and (if applicable) color version of the photograph, which you can zoom in on if you wish. You'll also sometimes find other elements that you might find of interest: additional photos, links to things on other Web sites, even possibly sound files and embedded videos.
All the extra things are indexed with pictures from the book. For example, if you're looking at the picture on page 134, the lithographed panoramic of Portland published in The West Shore in 1888, it will look like this:
You can click it to go to the full-size version, and scroll around to get a closer look.
But with that photo, we can include a number of other things similar to the panoramic, that you might be interested in. Things like this:
That's a hand-tinted postcard image of Mount Hood as seen from the top of Mount Tabor in East Portland in roughly 1900, and it's a picture from the Oregon Historical Society. Click on it, and it takes you to the OHS site, where you can look more closely at it and even buy a copy from OHS if you like.
You may also find something like this:
It's a link to a video from the U.S. GSA's Historic Buildings Series profiling Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square, with plenty of useful background information about the origins and growth of Portland. It's a pretty long one, but you can skip it if you're in a hurry; it'll be there any time you want to watch it.
Care to join the conversation? Got something to contribute to all of our knowledge of early Portland wickedness? It couldn't be easier. Scroll to the bottom of this page and you'll find the Facebook comments box.
So you see, having this information ready to serve up to your iPhone or Android phone dramatically expands the ways in which we can all, as a community of interested historians, explore the story of Wicked Portland.
Welcome! We're glad you're here.
Cover art images:
Variety theater dancers, 1901
Two Vaudeville girls getting ready to go on stage in a variety theater in Alaska during the Yukon Gold Rush. The woman on the left is "Klondike Kate" Rockwell, later a Central Oregon legend.
Jonathan Bourne, Jr.,
in the 1880s:
Jonathan Bourne, Jr., as he appeared in the 1880s, shortly after his arrival in Portland. Art is an oil-on-masonite painting by Leland John of Oregon City.
Portland Harbor in the 1890s
A hand-tinted postcard image of the Portland waterfront after the turn of the century.