Docked at Waterfront Park, the sternwheeler Portland is both artifact and museum: built in 1947, she’s the last steam-powered, sternwheel tugboat operating in the United States — and the Oregon Maritime Museum lives aboard her.
Climb from the engine room’s great steam machinery up to the pilothouse, where the Columbia and Willamette rivers spread out as they did for a century of riverboat captains. Exhibits trace Portland’s life as a port — salmon fleets, shipyards, the great sternwheel era — with models, bells and stories from the crew who keep her floating.
It’s history you board rather than read: creaking decks, river breeze and a paddlewheel waiting to turn. Check for her occasional cruises, when the museum quite literally goes for a ride.
