Louisville Magazine

MAR 2013

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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so Close & so By Cary Stemle Photos by Chris Witzke & Gail Kamenish I f you want to a get a decent idea of Portland from a step-back vantage point, you could stand on the Mill Creek Bridge along the Clarksville shoreline and peer across the Ohio River on a gentle southwest diagonal. You can���t really see Portland, but it���s hiding right behind Shippingport Island, whose downriver end included a former town that had residents until the 1950s. Tat bridge you see is the K&I.; Portland was settled around 1820 and has as much backstory as pretty much any part of Louisville, and though it���s often told, it bears repeating, if only because in Portland, as in so many neighborhoods that have been kicked by the vagaries of historical events, past is prologue. Whatever happens in the future will play out amid larger themes. In the early 19th century, riverboats traveling up or down the Ohio River could not get 50 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 3.13 FAR Founded as a competitor to Louisville, once-bustling Portland is battling what it perceives to be City Hall���s indifference by plotting a rebirth on its own. past the Falls of the Ohio, so they had to stop and unload their cargo, haul it by wagon to Louisville or Portland, then reload it on the boat and continue on their journey. If the river was too low to risk climbing or shooting the falls on the lighter boat, the captains had to wait out the river until it rose, creating a brisk warehousing ��� and entertainment ��� business, mostly in Louisville because early freight trafc moved downstream more often than up. But Portland, at the northwestern tip of Jeferson County, also became a bustling burg. Te frst sign of trouble came in 1830 with the opening of the Louisville and Portland Canal, which provided a shortcut to bypass the falls, allowing riverboats to continue on through the locks without a hitch and negating Portland���s geographic advantages altogether. Kentucky allowed Portland a town charter in 1834 in anticipation of a Lexington-toPortland railway, but the smaller town ended up compromising with Louisville businessmen who wanted the line to stop there, agreeing to be annexed in 1837 in exchange for Louisville laying track between the two wharves. Tat didn���t happen, and by 1842 Portland demanded and regained its independence, which it kept for another decade before voting to become part of Louisville again. A century after the frst annexation, the 1937 food gave Portland its next kick in the teeth, prompting an out-migration of businesses and people who, as neighborhood historian Rick Bell quipped, ���found those potato felds out in St. Matthews a preferable place to live.��� Far-inland Shively, which avoided annexation by incorporating in 1938, took on so many Portlanders, says Bell, whose family

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