Vanport Mosaic

Vanport Mosaic is an on-going participatory oral history project capturing, honoring, and preserving the memories of those former Vanport residents.

The Vanport Mosaic initiative is a response to a growing desire to honor the legacy of the Vanport community and the 1948 flood, which started an overwhelmingly homogeneous Portland and Oregon down the path toward interracial progress. We aim to preserve and to document the stories of those who are connected to Vanport and to offer a central point where the diverse community efforts surrounding Vanport can be visible in one place, so that we as a community can begin to see how all the pieces of Portland's past fit together. It is our belief that only a deep knowledge of our history, and a true understanding of how past events shaped our communities create the foundation for the future we all want to be part of.