Portland is a city at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. With a population of 533,427, it is Oregon's largest city, and the third largest in the Pacific Northwest, after Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia. Approximately 2 million live in the surrounding metropolitan area (MSA), the 24th-largest in the U.S. ----------------------------------- Portland was incorporated in 1851 and is the seat of Multnomah County. The city and region are notable for strong land-use planning and investment in public transit, supported by Metro, a distinctive regional-government scheme. Portland lies in the Marine West Coast climate region marked by warm summers and rainy but temperate winters, ideal for roses. Indeed, for more than a century Portland has been known as "The City of Roses", and has many rose gardens, most famously the International Rose Test Garden in Washington Park. Portland is also known for its large number of microbreweries, as the home of the Trail Blazers NBA basketball team, and is one of only two U.S. cities containing an extinct volcano.----------------Portland started as a spot known as "the clearing", which was on the banks of the Willamette about halfway between Oregon City and Fort Vancouver. In 1843, William Overton saw great commercial potential for this land, but lacked the funds required to file a land claim. He struck a bargain with his partner Asa Lovejoy of Boston, Massachusetts: for 25¢, Overton would share his claim to the 640-acre (2.6 km²) site. Overton later sold his half of the claim to Francis W. Pettygrove of Portland, Maine. Pettygrove and Lovejoy both wished to name the new city after their own home town; this was decided with a coin toss, which Pettygrove won.--------------------At the time of its incorporation on February 8, 1851 Portland had over 800 inhabitants,a steam sawmill, a log cabin hotel, and a newspaper, the Weekly Oregonian. By 1879, the population had grown to 17,500. ------------------------- Portland's location, with access both to the Pacific Ocean via the Willamette and the Columbia rivers and to the agricultural Tualatin Valley via the "Great Plank Road" through a canyon in the West Hills (the route of current-day U.S. Highway 26), gave it an advantage over nearby ports, and it grew quickly. It remained the major port in the Pacific Northwest for much of the 19th century, until the 1890s, when Seattle's deepwater harbor was connected to the rest of the mainland by rail, affording an inland route without the treacherous navigation of the Columbia River. ---------------------------------- The first known reference to Portland as "The City of Roses" was made by visitors to an 1888 Episcopal Church convention, the nickname growing in popularity after the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition where Mayor Harry Lane suggested that the city needed a "festival of roses" The first Portland Rose Festival was held two years later, and remains the city's major annual festival a century later.