When Cattle was King: Kenton

Barges came down the Columbia River, up through the dam, all the way from the Blue Mountains where they got the horses. Then they would come down the slough and stop at Schlesser's who slaughtered them for dog food. Earl Stevens, Kenton Resident, Kenton History, 42

In 1906, the Swift Meatpacking Company, recognizing the commercial potential of the Lower Columbia Slough and the Columbia River, purchased 3,400 acres north of Portland along the river. The company quickly built a community in the heart of what is now the Kenton neighborhood -- 2,192 acres bordered by Lombard Street on the south, the Columbia Slough on the north, I-5 to the east, and North Portland Road to the west. Unlike company towns built directly adjacent to factories, electric streetcar service provided by the Kenton Traction Company allowed the community to rise on a hill two miles south of the company's packing plant.

Promoters of the model community claimed that Kenton was laid out "so that the 'prevailing wind tends to blow downward away from the home section thus dispelling and dissipating disagreeable odors attendant with the plant's operation.'" In addition to its role as Company town, Kenton quickly sprouted stores, cafes, saloons, hotels, a post office, and a theater, and became a cultural and shopping center for north Portland.

A factory district, facilitated by construction of the North Bank Railroad in 1907 employed over 2,000 men, with Swift providing over 1,500 jobs. By 1911 Portland was the Pacific Northwest's central livestock market. Cowboys herded cattle from the stockyards on North Marine Drive down Kenton's Derby Street, now Denver Avenue, to slaughter at the plant near the Columbia Slough. For the next fifty years, the Portland Livestock Exchange, established in 1910, brought growers, buyers, judges, and auctioneers to an international livestock exposition, and many recall that the "Slough ran red with blood."

Images courtesy of the Kenton Neighborhood Association

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