Henry Pittock built the house in front of you, at the highest point in residential Portland, to announce that he had won. Pittock arrived in Portland in 1853 at the age of fourteen, reportedly walking the final segment of the Oregon Trail after his wagon train's oxen gave out. He took a job as an apprentice printer at a newspaper, eventually bought it, and built the Oregonian into the dominant newspaper of the Pacific Northwest — a position it held for more than a century.
The mansion he built on this hilltop between 1909 and 1914, in the French Renaissance style, represented the apex of Portland's Gilded Age. It has twenty-two rooms, a Turkish smoking room, a Dutch room with imported Delft tile, and elevators — uncommon in private homes in 1914. After Pittock's death in 1919 the house passed through several owners, fell into disrepair, was damaged in the 1962 Columbus Day Storm, and faced demolition before the city purchased it for preservation in 1964.
The view from the grounds takes in the entire Portland metro area: the Willamette Valley below, Mount Hood to the east, Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams to the north, and on clear days, the entire arc of the Cascades. Everything Henry Pittock built lies somewhere in the view from up here.