Since 1974 the largest continuously operating open-air arts and crafts market in the United States has run every weekend right where you are. Portland Saturday Market has run every weekend from March through Christmas Eve since 1974, when two craftswomen named Sheri Teasdale and Andrea Scharf established it under the Burnside Bridge with a handful of vendors. The market now hosts more than three hundred artisan vendors each weekend, selling hand-crafted goods ranging from jewelry and ceramics to hot food and live music.
Every vendor at the Saturday Market is required to have made what they sell — no imported goods, no resellers. This rule has kept the market authentic through five decades of operation and has made it a genuine showcase for the craft traditions of the Pacific Northwest. The market also operates on Sundays, making it the Saturday and Sunday Market in practice, though the original name stuck.
The location under and beside the Burnside Bridge gives the market a distinctly Portland character: utilitarian, slightly gritty, and entirely itself. The food vendors alone represent a comprehensive tour of global street food traditions filtered through Oregon's agricultural bounty.