Until 1915 the ground you are on belonged to the independent city of St. Johns, incorporated in 1903 and annexed by Portland over the objections of many of its residents. St. Johns sits at the northern tip of the North Portland Peninsula, where the Willamette bends and the Columbia River begins, and its geographic isolation gave it a self-sufficient character that survives annexation a century later. The commercial blocks of North Lombard Street that form the St. Johns town center retain the scale and feel of a small-town main street, with local bars, a hardware store, a food co-op, and neighborhood restaurants that have not yet been Instagrammed into celebrity.
St. Johns has historically been one of Portland's most economically challenged neighborhoods, and it has also been one of the most resistant to the rapid gentrification that reshaped neighborhoods closer to the city center. The Cathedral Park under the St. Johns Bridge, which you will visit nearby, draws visitors to this corner of the city. But the neighborhood itself has been doing its own thing, at its own pace, with its own particular community pride, for well over a century.
This is Portland before the food carts were branded.