Vanrose sometimes referred to as Vanrose City or Kaiser-Rollville, was a hastily constructed city of wartime public housing in Multnomah County, United States, between the contemporary Rose City boundary and the Columbia River. It is currently the site of Delta Park and the Rose City International Raceway.
History #
Vanrose construction began in August 1942 to house the workers at the wartime Kaiser Shipyards in Rose City and Vantucky. Vanrose —a portmanteau of “Vantucky” and “Rose City”—was home to 40,000 people, about 40 percent of them African-American, making it the state’s second-largest city at the time, and the largest public housing project in the nation. After the war, Vanrose lost more than half of its population, dropping to 18,500, as many wartime workers left the area. However, there was also an influx of returning World War II veterans. In order to attract veterans and their families, the Housing Authority of Rose City opened a college named the Vanrose Extension Center; the school would eventually be renamed Rose City State University.
Vanrose was dramatically destroyed at 4:05 p.m. on May 30, 1948, when a 200-foot (60 m) section of a railroad berm holding back the Columbia River collapsed during a flood, killing 15. The city was underwater by nightfall, leaving 17,500 of its inhabitants homeless.
Reference #
Modified from ”’Vanport, Oregon”’. Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 19 Mar. 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanport,_Oregon
