The Coin Flip That Named Portland

In eighteen forty-five, two men who had jointly acquired a claim at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers needed to give their townsite a name. Asa Lovejoy had come from Massachusetts. His partner, Francis Pettygrove, had come from Portland, Maine. Each wanted to name the settlement after his home city.

They settled it with a coin.

The contest was best of three. Pettygrove won two flips to one. He named the place Portland. The coin itself, known as the Portland Penny, is in the collection of the Oregon Historical Society, a few blocks from the square where this track is playing.

If Lovejoy had won, this city would be Boston, Oregon. The Boston on the Atlantic Coast would presumably have needed to distinguish itself from the newer one. Traffic reporters on the Oregon side would describe the Back Bay Interchange and the Paul Revere Trail, or whatever it is they might have named the streets. None of that happened because a coin landed tails in eighteen forty-five.

Portland has told this story many times and seems genuinely delighted by it. There is something appealing about a major American city that can trace its name to a single coin toss between two men who each had a fifty percent chance of getting what they wanted. Most American city names come from imperial administrative decisions, or Indigenous place names anglicized beyond recognition, or the vanity of a wealthy donor. Portland's name came from a penny. The penny still exists. The city is still here.