Portland is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated in the northwestern area of the state at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous county in Oregon. As of 2020, Portland had a population of 652,503, making it the 26th-most populated city in the United States, the sixth-most populous on the West Coast, and the second-most populous in the Pacific Northwest, after Seattle. Approximately 2.5 million people live in the Portland–Vancouver–Hillsboro, OR–WA metropolitan statistical area, making it the 25th most populous in the United States. About half of Oregon's population resides within the Portland metropolitan area.
The Metropolitan Area Express (MAX) is a light rail system serving the Portland metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Oregon. Owned and operated by TriMet, it consists of five lines that together connect the six sections of Portland; the communities of Beaverton, Clackamas, Gresham, Hillsboro, Milwaukie, and Oak Grove; and Portland International Airport to Portland City Center. Trains run seven days a week with headways of between 30 minutes off-peak and three minutes during rush hours. In 2019, MAX had an average daily ridership of 120,900, or 38.8 million annually. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which impacted public transit use globally, annual ridership plummeted, with only 14.8 million riders recorded in 2021.
Milwaukie is a city mostly in Clackamas County, Oregon, United States; a very small portion of the city extends into Multnomah County. The population was 21,119 at the 2020 census. Founded in 1847 on the banks of the Willamette River, the city, known as the Dogwood City of the West, was incorporated in 1903 and is the birthplace of the Bing cherry. The city is now a suburb of Portland and also adjoins the unincorporated areas of Clackamas and Oak Grove.
Neil Edward Goldschmidt is an American businessman and Democratic politician from the state of Oregon who held local, state and federal offices over three decades. After serving as the United States Secretary of Transportation under President Jimmy Carter and governor of Oregon, Goldschmidt was at one time considered the most powerful and influential figure in Oregon's politics. His career and legacy were severely damaged by revelations he raped a young teenage girl in 1973, during his first term as mayor of Portland.
The Hawthorne Bridge is a truss bridge with a vertical lift that spans the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, joining Hawthorne Boulevard and Madison Street. It is the oldest vertical-lift bridge in operation in the United States and the oldest highway bridge in Portland. It is also the busiest bicycle and transit bridge in Oregon, with over 8,000 cyclists and 800 TriMet buses daily. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in November 2012.
Vera Katz was an American Democratic politician in the state of Oregon. She was the first woman to serve as Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives and was the 49th mayor of Portland, Oregon's most populous city. She grew up in New York City, moving to Portland in 1962, and was elected to the Oregon House in 1972. She served as mayor from 1993 to 2005.
John Elwood "Bud" Clark Jr. was an American politician and businessman who served as the 48th mayor of Portland, Oregon, from 1985 to 1992. A left-leaning populist with little political experience before his mayoral bid, he was one of Portland's most colorful political figures.
The MAX Yellow Line is a light rail service in Portland, Oregon, United States, operated by TriMet as part of the MAX Light Rail system. It connects North Portland to Portland City Center and Portland State University (PSU) with 17 stops from Expo Center station to PSU South/Southwest 6th and College station. The line travels from Portland Expo Center in the north, south to the Rose Quarter through a 5.8-mile (9.3 km) light rail segment along the median of Interstate Avenue. From the Rose Quarter, it crosses the Willamette River via the Steel Bridge and enters downtown Portland, where it operates as a northbound-only service of the Portland Transit Mall on 6th Avenue. Service runs for approximately 21 hours daily with a headway of 15 minutes during most of the day.
The MAX Green Line is a light rail service in Portland, Oregon, United States, operated by TriMet as part of the MAX Light Rail system. It is 15 miles (24.1 km) long and serves 30 stations from the PSU South stations to Clackamas Town Center Transit Center; it connects Portland State University (PSU), Portland City Center, Northeast Portland, Southeast Portland, and Clackamas. The Green Line is the only service that shares parts of its route with the four other MAX services, sharing the Portland Transit Mall with the Orange and Yellow lines and the Banfield segment of the Eastside MAX with the Blue and Red lines. Southbound from Gateway/Northeast 99th Avenue Transit Center, it operates the Interstate 205 (I-205) segment through to Clackamas Town Center. Service runs for approximately 211⁄2 hours daily with a headway of 15 minutes during most of the day. It is the third-busiest line in the system, carrying an average of 19,160 riders per day on weekdays in September 2019.
The MAX Orange Line is a light rail service in Portland, Oregon, United States, operated by TriMet as part of the MAX Light Rail system. It connects Portland City Center, Portland State University (PSU), Southeast Portland, Milwaukie, and Oak Grove. The line serves 17 stations from Union Station/Northwest 5th & Glisan to Southeast Park Avenue and runs for 201⁄2 hours daily with a minimum headway of 15 minutes during most of the day. It averaged 3,480 daily weekday riders in September 2020.
"Diamond" Jim Purcell was an officer, chief detective, and then the Chief of Police in Portland, Oregon from January 1, 1953 to December 31, 1956.
Keith Hunter Jesperson is a Canadian-American serial killer who murdered at least eight women in the United States during the early 1990s. He was known as the "Happy Face Killer" because he drew smiley faces on his many letters to the media and authorities. Many of his victims were sex workers and transients who had no connection to him. Strangulation was Jesperson's preferred method of murdering, the same method he often used to kill animals as a child.
James Michael Francke was a New Mexico judge and director of the state's Corrections Department, the governmental bureau which manages prisons, inmates and parolees. He was later appointed by then-Oregon governor Neil Goldschmidt to oversee a plan to double the state's inmate capacity as director of Oregon's Department of Corrections. On January 18, 1989, his body was discovered outside the department's office building in Salem; an autopsy determined he had been murdered the night before. A local petty criminal was eventually tried and convicted for the crime, and sentenced to life in prison without parole. However, the convicted killer maintains his innocence, and several conspiracy theories have been advocated, claiming that the killing was a murder for hire conducted by corrupt state prison officials threatened by an investigation Francke was conducting into prison mismanagement.
The Pamplin Media Group (PMG) is a media conglomerate owned by Robert B. Pamplin, Jr. and operating primarily in the Portland metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of 2019, the company owns 25 newspapers and employs 200 people.
Tilikum Crossing, Bridge of the People is a cable-stayed bridge across the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, United States. It was designed by TriMet, the Portland metropolitan area's regional transit authority, for its MAX Orange Line light rail passenger trains. The bridge also serves city buses and the Portland Streetcar, as well as bicycles, pedestrians, and emergency vehicles. Private cars and trucks are not permitted on the bridge. It is the first major bridge in the U.S. that was designed to allow access to transit vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians but not cars.
This article refers to crime in the U.S. state of Oregon.
The Roseland Theater, sometimes called the Roseland Theater and Grill, is a music venue located at 8 Northwest Sixth Avenue in the Old Town Chinatown neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, in the United States. The building was originally a church, constructed by the Apostolic Faith Church in 1922. In 1982, Larry Hurwitz converted the building to a music venue called Starry Night. In 1990, the club's 21-year-old publicity agent was murdered in one of the theater's hallways; Hurwitz was convicted for this murder ten years later. Hurwitz sold the club in 1991, claiming he had lost support from the local music industry. The venue was given its current name during the 1991 ownership transfer. During the 1990s, Double Tee acquired control of the hall's operations, then purchased and renovated the building.
The A and B Loop is a streetcar circle route of the Portland Streetcar system in Portland, Oregon, United States. Operated by Portland Streetcar, Inc. and TriMet, it is made up of two separate services: the 6.1-mile (9.8 km) A Loop, which runs clockwise, and the 6.6-mile (10.6 km) B Loop, which runs counterclockwise. The route travels a loop between the east and west sides of the Willamette River by crossing the Broadway Bridge in the north and Tilikum Crossing in the south.
On the evening of November 26, 1960, Larry Ralph Peyton and his girlfriend, Beverly Ann Allan, disappeared after having made plans to shop at the Lloyd Center shopping mall in Portland, Oregon, United States. The following day, November 27, Peyton's Ford coupe was found in Forest Park, with his mutilated body inside. Allan was missing from the scene, though her purse and coat were still inside the car. A widespread manhunt ensued over the following two months. In January 1961, a highway crew 30 miles (48 km) outside Portland discovered Allan's partially nude body in a ravine, and it was determined she had been raped and strangled to death.
