USS Oregon

Shades of the Great White Fleet

The Oregon was built in 1890 in San Francisco. When the Spanish American War came along she steamed South around South America and then North all the way to the naval base on Key West (which is just down the road from Islamorada, site of the TV series Bloodline). It took two months to make this voyage. The amount of time became a selling point for Teddy Roosevelt's Panama Canal. The Oregon was not part of Teddy's Great White Fleet. She was decommissioned in 1906. The Great White Fleet sailed in 1907.

USS Oregon Triple Expansion Steam Engine

The USS Oregon is what is now known as a pre-dreadnaught battleship. They were the last ones to use reciprocating steam engines. The next generation, the dreadnaughts, used steam turbine engines.

Model of the USS Iowa, sister ship to the Oregon
Gives a good view of the deck layout.

USS Oregon in Portland, Oregon 1912, during Rose Festival
Photo taken from the then unfinished Broadway Bridge

The Oregon left military service in 1925 and moved to Portland where she served as a monument and museum.

Aerial of Battleship Oregon in its newly built park. It was located on the southwest waterfront at the foot of SW Jefferson Street just south of the Hawthorne Bridge, May 9, 1940.

Eventually the Oregon was sold for scrap.
This tower, now in Tom McCall Waterfront Park in downtown Portland is all that is left.

U.S.S. Oregon in Guam Harbor
The scrappers got the superstructure, 
then WW2 came along and the Navy reclaimed the hull to store ammunition. 
Courtesy Oregon Historical Society

Inspired by Posthip Scott.