World of Darkness: Portland

10
The history of Portland is rich and diverse. Lewis
and Clark had traveled across the country to find the
Pacific Ocean, and noted what beauty Oregon beheld.
The Oregon Trail had already begun, with many seeking
the natural resources and wide, uninhabited spaces the
Territory was sure to provide. But it wasn’t until 1843,
when William Overton and Asa Lovejoy beached their
canoe on the bank of the Willamette River. Overcome
by the beauty of the area, Overton saw great potential
for this mountain-ringed, timber-rich land. His only
problem was that he lacked the 25 cents needed to file
a land claim. So, he struck a bargain with Lovejoy: In
return for a quarter, Overton would share his claim to
the 640-acre site known as “The Clearing.”
The sections in italic type indicate historical
information inserted for the World of Darkness
1843-1900
Portland was very nearly Boston. Soon tired of
clearing trees and laying down road foundations,
Overton moved on to other interests. He sold his share
of the land to Francis W. Pettygrove. Now partners,
Lovejoy and Pettygrove could not settle on a name for
their fledgling city. Lovejoy wanted to name it after
his home town of Boston, Massachusetts; Pettygrove
was just as adamant about his own town, Portland,
Maine. Unable to reach an agreement, they decided
to settle the matter by tossing the coin now known as
the “Portland Penny.” Pettygrove won two out of three
tosses.
Lovejoy and Pettygrove were confident that
Portland, with its deep water and abundant natural
resources, would one day become a popular and
prosperous port. They did not suspect, however, how
quickly it would grow in popularity, and for what
activities. Portland developed a dark history beginning
in the late 1800s. Joseph “Bunco” Kelly was a hotelier
notorious for kidnapping young men and selling
them to ship captains. Many bar owners and hotel
operators relied on this shanghai trade to supplement
their businesses, and Kelly was one of the best. Paid
by unscrupulous captains to intoxicate potential crew
members, Kelly would deliver his drunken quarry to
waiting ships. The unfortunate men would wake up
the next day, stranded at sea and forced to work for
indefinite periods of time.
Kelly often bragged that he could gather
a full crew in less than 12 hours. Inevitably a ship
captain would challenge him. One evening, in his
quest to fulfill a boast, Kelly ran across a group who
had stumbled upon the open cellar of a mortuary.
Chapter 1-History
City History
Thinking the cellar was a part of the Snug Harbor
Pub, the men had each consumed cups of embalming
fluid, which they had mistaken for liquor. When Kelly
found them, several had died and others were dying.
Claiming the dead were merely unconscious from too
much drink, Kelly sold all 22 to a captain whose ship
sailed before the truth was discovered. It was said that
even after the captain discarded the bodies, their ghosts could
be seen manning the ships to mock the living crew. The ship’s
cargo always rotted, the wind never caught in the sails, and
soon the captain was ruined. He sold the boat for scrap and
retired on the of the islands in Seattle’s Puget Sound. Some
say the ghost of the boat remains with the betrayed men to
guide it.
“Sweet Mary,” the proprietor of a brothel, is
another interesting figure in Portland’s history of
the late 1800s. In order to elude taxes and city laws,
she operated her bordello on a barge that ran up
and down the Wilamette River. Technically, she was
outside everyone’s jurisdiction. Police were doubly
concerned because many of her clients would turn up missing,
or would refuse to leave the brothel; Sweet Mary, a Daeva,
was building up a small army of Ghouls.
1900-1950
Most of this type of behavior was quelled by the
turn of the century, (at least to mortal eyes). Secure jobs
in lumber mills and wealth from providing goods to the
California Gold Rush helped stabilize the economy,
giving the city’s population more time to regulate the
seedy activities of its busy waterfront. The local vampires
realized that Portland was changing, and began more discreet
operations.
Personifying this shift in attitude was Simon
Benson, a teetotalling lumber baron and philanthropist.
While walking through his mill one day, Benson
noticed the smell of alcohol on his workers’ breath.
When Benson asked these men why they drank in
the middle of the day, they replied there was no
fresh drinking water to be found downtown. Upon
hearing this, Benson proceeded to commissioned 20
elegant freshwater drinking fountains, now known as
the Benson Bubblers. Beer consumption in the city
reportedly decreased 25 percent after the fountains
were installed.
Simon Benson’s water fountains still bubble
invitingly on Portland’s downtown streets. And around
the fountains has grown a city of parks, outdoor
artwork, coffee carts, microbreweries, bridges and
bookstores. Portland’s new attitude was to be a people
town, a pedestrian-friendly city. Blocks were made to