"Growing Up With G.I. Joe's" by Janna Orkney

G.I. Joe’s offered Christmas shoppers the largest toy selection in Portland in the late 1950s and 1960s.  Since this photo is marked 1958, the toy department must have been in the original store on Vancouver Avenue in North Portland.  In 1966, Dad opened Store 2 adjacent to the original store and moved Toyland there to coincide with that store opening.  When he opened Store 3 in 1968, he again moved the toys there.

Heading for Delta Park, elephants and their handlers trudge in front of the original expanded G.I. Joe’s store in 1956 or 1957.  They were part of a huge circus that put on shows for a few days.

I remember going to the circus site and watching the elephants help put up the tents!  It was almost a better show than seeing the actual performance in the three rings.  My brother Corky and I had mixed feelings about circuses anyway, because we had seen a few movies that I think had scary clown murderers in them.

I had thought that the circus was Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey, but on the internet, I found a list of cities they toured in those years and it did not include Portland.  Time for more research!

Mom snapped this photo.

The Vanport Flood of May 30, 1948, was the most grave natural disaster that Portland has ever faced.  The Columbia River broke through a railroad embankment and inundated Vanport, which was the second largest city in Oregon at the time.

The flood left approximately 18,000 people homeless.  The community was not rebuilt  Instead, the area became Delta Park where the Portland International Raceway (PIR) and a golf course were located.

The early G.I. Joe’s of which my dad was a part owner (before he bought the business in 1952), was situated on N. Vancouver Avenue in the flooded area, but on higher ground.  The store supplied sleeping bags and other useful merchandise to the Red Cross to aid the flood victims.

There is a chapter in Growing Up With G.I. Joe’s that focuses on the 1948 Flood with photos of Vanport apartment buildings floating in disarray.  It is with a sad heart that I think back on that day.

The photo above is of that first G.I. Joe’s in tents that opened in 1948.