← Mar-Apr 2025 Newsletter

Take a Trip Back in Time

A BWNA-Sponsored Event — A Presentation by Local Historian Doug Decker on Early NE Neighborhood History

  • Date: Tuesday, April 1
  • Time: 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
  • Location: Fremont United Methodist Church, 2620 NE Fremont St.
  • Cost: FREE, though a suggested donation of $5 at the door is requested from those who can afford to do so. Funds go to cover the cost of this and future BWNA events.
  • Reservations: Seating is limited, and reservations are required! Visit BWNA/eventbrite.com or scan the QR code to secure your spot.

Like many Northeast Portland neighborhoods, Beaumont-Wilshire was carved from orchards, open fields, and patches of forest. As a young Portland sprawled across the river, the rural landscape of the eastside was replaced by a grid of neighborhoods, a busy streetcar system, and tens of thousands of new residents. Successive waves of homebuilding and change in the decades that followed shaped the neighborhoods we know today. Using early maps, documents, photos and newspaper accounts, and memories he’s collected from past residents, local historian Doug Decker will explore the early years of Northeast Portland neighborhoods — including Beaumont-Wilshire — to examine connections between past, present, and future.

About Doug Decker

Doug Decker’s public history research may be best known through AlamedaHistory.org and the dozens of studies, lectures, and tours he’s led of Portland neighborhoods and buildings and forested lands across Oregon.

This article appeared in the Mar-Apr 2025 issue of the BWNA Newsletter.

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