SLABTOWN TOUR

This tour weaves through Slabtown’s layered landscape, where every block holds echoes of industry, innovation, and resistance. Along the way, you’ll encounter sites that tell the deeper story of how Portland’s growth collided with and reshaped a working-class neighborhood. The tour highlights cycles of construction and erasure shaped by forces like streetcar expansion, redlining, freeway projects, urban renewal, and grassroots resistance. Rather than a static preservation story, this tour shows how Slabtown has continually reinvented itself—anchored by the spirit of those who lived and labored here.

• Vaughn Street Baseball Park (1901-1953): A beloved hub of community life for nearly six decades, Vaughn Street Park was built in 1901 by streetcar magnate Ida B. Fuller to serve a growing Northwest Portland. From the early days of the Portland Webfooters to the 1946 Rosebuds, where Jesse Owens briefly owned a team, the park was a place where affordable entertainment, civic pride, and the spirit of the working class came together in the grandstands. 

• Guilds Lake Courts War Housing (1942-1951): One of Portland’s most overlooked wartime landmarks, the Guilds Lake Courts were a massive federal housing project built during WWII to accommodate workers in the steel mills and nearby defense industries. Unlike other war housing developments, Guilds Lake Courts was the only one in Portland to house Black residents—marking a critical yet often forgotten chapter in the city’s racial and urban history.

  A rare remnant of this forgotten community still exists: the original site sign, once standing at the entrance to the Courts, was preserved thanks to the tour operator, who sold it to the McMenamin brothers. Today, it hangs proudly in McMenamins Tavern & Pool on NW 23rd, just blocks from its original location.

• Entrance to the 1905 Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition (1905):
  While the original entrance no longer stands, this area once welcomed visitors to the Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition—a massive celebration of westward expansion and industrial growth that drew over 2.5 million attendees to Portland in just four months. Often mistakenly referred to as a “world’s fair,” the event was not officially recognized as one, though it mirrored the scale and spectacle of such expos.

• World’s Largest Log Cabin (1905–1964): Once a towering symbol of pioneer pride, this massive structure greeted visitors to the 1905 Lewis & Clark Exposition. Though the cabin designed by A.E. Doyle burned down in 1964, we explore its role in defining Portland’s frontier image.