Nicknames of Portland, Oregon

There are several well-known and commonly used nicknames referring to Portland, Oregon.

The official, and also most common, nickname for Portland is The City of Roses or Rose City. The first known reference to Portland as "The City of Roses" was made by visitors to an 1888 Episcopal Church convention.

In 1889, the Portland Rose Society was founded, and promoted the planting of 20 miles (32 km) of Portland's streets with roses in advance of the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. The nickname grew in popularity after the exposition, where Mayor Harry Lane suggested that the city needed a "festival of roses."

The nickname is often attributed to Leo Samuel, who founded the Oregon Life Insurance Company in 1906 (known today as Standard Insurance Company). Samuel, who moved to Portland in 1871, grew roses outside his home. He placed a pair of shears outside his garden so people could snip a rose from his garden to take for themselves. This encouraged other people and businesses to plant their own roses outside their homes and business. Today, roses are still planted outside the Standard Insurance Company's home office building in downtown Portland.

The first Portland Rose Festival was held in 1907, and remains the city's major annual festival more than a century later. In 1917, the International Rose Test Garden was established, and it now features more than 7,000 rose plants of 550 varieties. It is the oldest continuously operating public rose test garden in the United States.

The "City of Roses" nickname inspired the name for the four-year-old female Asian elephant who arrived in 1953, Rosy. The first elephant ever to live in Oregon, she remained the matriarch of the Oregon Zoo's herd and gave birth to six calves before her death in 1993. On August 31, 1994, her daughter Me-Tu became the first elephant in North America to have twins. On August 23, 2008, her granddaughter Rose-Tu (the surviving twin) gave birth to Samudra, the first third-generation elephant born in the United States.

On June 18, 2003, the city council unanimously approved a resolution adopting "City of Roses" as the city's official nickname. There are many other cities and towns known as or The City of Roses.

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