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1200 SW Park Ave., 503-222-1741, ohs.org. 10 am–5 pm Monday–Saturday, noon–5 pm Sunday. $5–$10, free for Multnomah County residents.
Free is a very good price, though it often means diminished quality. Not so at the Oregon Historical Society, which offers free admission to all Multnomah County residents as the museum’s thank-you to voters for supporting it with tax levies. It’s a particularly good time to visit OHS since it just debuted a new permanent exhibit last week on the history of Portland called Rivers, Roses, and Rip City. There’s something for every Stumptown interest among the 500 objects, images and archival materials: bottles and festival passes from the dawn of Portland’s beer scene; Bill Schonely’s 1970 hiring letter as the Portland Trail Blazers’ play-by-play announcer (his name is misspelled; annual salary: $25,000); and, of course, a big square of the real PDX airport carpet, not the one there now that is not quite right. One of the marquee objects is the actual overcoat future Mayor Bud Clark wore in the famous “expose yourself to art” poster. Once you’ve swung through the exhibit, test your Portland smarts with a game of Stumptown trivia on a flashy interactive screen.
Don’t miss: The actual penny that Asa Lovejoy and Francis Pettygrove flipped to decide whether to name the city Portland or Boston in 1845. It’s in a display case in the main lobby.
Will kids like it? Yes. OHS does a nice job of mixing static images and objects with electronic materials that tend to be more kid bait. It’s also free, centrally located, and a manageable size for even the shortest attention spans.