Vanport (Or.) -- Photographs

The collection consists of one album containing thirty four images and text produced in 1944 by Oregon Shipbuilding Corp. documenting construction and operation of Vanport City, a shipyard workers' development, in response to a query from an English government official. The town was destroyed by a catastrophic flood in 1948. Although Vanport had a substantial African-American population, only white people appear in the photographs.

The Vanport, Oregon flood photograph album captures the aftermath of the May 1948 flood that destroyed the city of Vanport leaving its largly African-American population homeless. The album contains one hundred images of the aftermath of the flood in both Vanport and Portland.

Vanport was a World War II era public housing city in Multnomah County, Oregon built to accommodate workers of the Kaiser Shipyards in Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington. This collection contains 35 black and white photographs of the flooding of Vanport, Oregon in 1948.