I’m going to start a tour of Portland, Oregon, where I bring tourists to this fair city historically incorrect anecdotes regarding the creation and formation of Portland.
The story is that the two competing founders of the city — Lovejoy and Pettygrove, however, couldn’t decide on a name. Lovejoy was determined to name the site after his hometown of Boston, while Pettygrove was equally adamant about his native Providence, Rhode Island. After several drinks of whiskey and ale, where their verbal spat escalated , they decided to duke it out in a good old fashioned bar fight. Several friends stood by to determine who won the thing. Unfortunately, after both men beat the other to a bloody pulp, it was discovered that all of them were partisan to either Lovejoy or Pettygrove, and the stalement on whether the new name for the township would be Boston or Providence continued as their friends duked it out and ended up sore and bloodied. The man who brewed the ales and whiskey, and whose home the scene was taking place at, Samuel Thunkington, had stayed out of the dispute, but now wanting everyone to go home announced then and there that the city was named after his homestead, Portland, Maine, and asked everyone to leave.
Thus was born the name of Portland, Oregon.
