Multnomah Village

Multnomah Village began as a railroad whistle stop. In nineteen oh eight the newly completed Oregon Electric Railway, running between Portland and Salem, opened a freight and passenger station here, on the corner of Thirty-Fifth and Multnomah Boulevard.

Planners named the stop Multnomah after the Indigenous people of the region, and that name stuck to the whole community. When the trains first arrived there was little more than a ticket office, an electrical substation, and dairy farms all around. A post office opened in the early nineteen tens inside the Nelson Thomas store, and the village grew up around the depot.

Passenger service ended in nineteen thirty-three and freight stopped in nineteen forty-five. The old rail bed became Multnomah Boulevard itself, and the little commercial cluster the railroad created survives today as one of Portland's most beloved village shopping districts.