Miracle Town

Rome was not built in a day, but if Henry Kaiser had been around he probably would have tried it. Right now, fabulous Henry Kaiser is engaged on an undertaking only slightly more modest: building Oregon's second largest city from scratch in four and one-half months.

On what used to be swampy farmland between Portland's city limits and the Columbia River, the outlines of this city are already well defined. By the end of January, there will be enough two-story frame apartments to house 40,000. The city will outstrip the State capital, Salem (pop. 30,908); only Portland itself will be larger.

Reason for the city is the dearth of bed & board for the hordes of workers at Henry Kaiser's Swan Island, Vancouver and St. John's shipyards. In Oregon sunshine and Oregon rain, 3,900 workers (including 200 women who push wheelbarrows and wield shovels) are slapping the town together: sawing and hammering 42,000,000 bd. ft. of lumber, stringing up 2,162,000 ft. of wiring, laying down 316,000 ft. of pipe, installing 10,122 toilets.

Some 500 families will move into the green-painted houses on Dec. 1. When the town is completed it will have seven miles of paved streets, 45 miles of pathways, 50 acres of parking lots. Each unit of four buildings will have a community building with heating and laundry facilities; each apartment will be furnished with icebox, electric stove, beds, dressers, couches, tables, chairs. Two mighty community halls will provide space for basketball, dances, roller skating, church services; three shopping centers will have all types of stores. There will be 107 playground areas with full equipment; 30 tons of grass seed have been ordered for lawns.

Ever since the war boom started, many shipyard workers got their night's rest in crowded rooming houses, huddled in trailers, doubled up in the back seats of their cars, even in sleeping bags in the open country.* Nobody expects the new city to last forever, but to such workers it will look like the promised land.

Last week the Portland Housing Authority unimaginatively named the town Vanport City (for Vancouver and Portland). But the Portland Oregonian suggested the name that will probably remain in current usage: Kaiserville.

*Last week fire in a temporary Kaiser shipyard dormitory killed seven, injured 40.

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