History Book: Vanport’s last day

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, June 2nd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. In 1948, Vanport was a bustling shipyard city in Oregon. Thousands of African-Americans worked side-by-side with whites, and they managed to avoid major strains on racial relations. At least, for the most part.

EICHER: There were some issues: Vanport and the neighboring city of Portland still enforced strict housing discrimination at the time. Then, a sudden, tragic disaster on Memorial Day upended life as everyone knew it. And it changed the city and its citizens forever. WORLD’s Emma Eicher brings us the story.

BOB NISTLER: Back in the day, you're talking about 1948, May 30, the real Memorial Day. And so then we had what they call the Vanport flood.

EMMA EICHER: Bob Nistler was only 14 years old when floods demolished the city of Vanport, Oregon.

It’d been an odd spring—first, it was freezing until mid-May. Then, it suddenly got really hot. And it’d been raining for days.

NISTLER: Anyhow, we got a letter from Army Corps that said, Oh, don't worry about the flood. They said, we'll let you know a few days ahead of time if there's any danger.

There’s a lot of water in Vanport, then a city of more than 18,000. It’s built on wetlands and sandwiched between the Columbia River and another waterway, called the Columbia Slough. About 5 miles of levees had protected the city from flooding since it was founded in 1943.

Those levees kept water out while locking in a unique culture. At the time, Vanport was known for its unprecedented level of racial integration since the ship-building industry there had hired thousands of African-Americans.

But some white residents grumbled and most neighborhoods were segregated, as Vanport still had major housing discrimination. And it was much worse in the larger city of Portland.

Then came 1948. The winter ice was melting fast. Too fast. And the rain didn’t help either.

Something had to give. And it did.

NISTLER: We heard somebody say, Oh, the dike broke. The dike broke, and it was probably four miles, couple two, three miles up … So we jump on our bicycles and ride up there.

Nistler’s “bike” was just an orange crate with handlebars and a couple of wheels. But it did the job. He and a neighbor kid streaked up to the levee to see the damage for themselves.

NISTLER: Just see the opening, the opening, and the big thing was probably 15, 20, 30 feet wide. And by the time we seen it, that water just roared through there.. It was getting bigger, so we took off, rode our bicycles back and told Mom and Dad.

His mom was recovering from gallbladder surgery—so they loaded her into a neighbor’s car. But there was no room for anyone else. And Nistler’s brother Joe was up in the hills with the family car.

So Nistler and his dad decided to wait for Joe to come back to make their getaway.

They waited, and waited, but Joe didn’t show up. The flood kept rising—and would ultimately plunge the entire city underwater.

NISTLER: So then we decided, well, maybe we'll run up here to get to the bus … Well, we got up to the bus … and all at once, you could see the water coming down and coming up to the bus. And so we turned around and run back home.

Nistler’s family lived on the bottom floor of an apartment complex. They ran up the stairs and started breaking into people’s apartments on the top floors … trying to get as high above the flooding as possible.

At one point, Nistler glanced out the window—and saw a very strange sight. About a half-mile away, they could see another house floating.

NISTLER: And there was a couple standing in the front looking at us, looking around …

Then, Nistler’s building started floating, and the waters carried them away.

NISTLER: The water come and picked us up, and we went into that slough, then all at once that just kind of stopped there and just kept raising the water and all at once it starts moving. It moved down … come to a bridge.

When the flood finally set them down, the Nistlers tumbled out onto dry land. They started back as the waters around them roared into the Columbia Slough.

But as they walked, the flood rose around them again. So they took shelter in another apartment building. Twilight fell as they waited for rescue.

NISTLER: We, see a boat way over there and so we waved at the boat. So they come and picked us up and took us out …

Nistler’s family was safe, and so were most of the Vanport citizens. But the flood took the homes of almost everyone. City officials teamed up with the Red Cross to help feed and shelter as many people as they could.

And there was a silver lining to the disaster. The racial integration that was so unique to Vanport spread to Portland. Whites opened their homes to welcome black families, and hired displaced black workers. The state of Oregon finally had to reckon with discriminatory labor laws and housing practices.

As for Nistler and his family, they moved a couple hours away to start their lives all over again.

NISTLER: We moved out to McMinnville and bought a small farm at that time, that was 1949 …

Bob is 91 now, but he still loves to tell the story of being washed away in a floating building.

With thanks to WORLD’s Bonnie Pritchett who interviewed Nistler for this week’s WORLD History Book, I’m Emma Eicher.

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