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When An Oregon Town Disappeared: How Vanport Was Lost

caption: On Memorial Day, May 30, 1948, a dike at Vanport, Ore., broke and the flood engulfed the nearby Portland Air National Guard Base.
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On Memorial Day, May 30, 1948, a dike at Vanport, Ore., broke and the flood engulfed the nearby Portland Air National Guard Base.
Oregon Air National Guard

Jeannie Yandel talks to Shawn Daley, chief innovation officer and assistant professor of education at Concordia University in Oregon, about the lost town of Vanport, Oregon.

It was destroyed in 1948 when a dike broke on the Columbia River during a flood. Nearly 60 years later, some people saw a reflection in the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans' 9th Ward, which was heavily damaged when a dike on the Mississippi River broke.

See a video about the disaster from Multnomah County Records Management and Archives:

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