Natasha Geiling is a journalist for Think Progress and writes at @ngeiling. Her Smithsonian Magazine article for this story can be found here: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/history/vanport-oregon-how-countrys-largest-housing-project-vanished-day-180954040/

Henry Kaiser was a successful industrialist in the early 1900’s, he starting building shipyards on the Columbia right outside of Portland in 1941 when America became a part of World War 2. Because of the war, Kaiser had to build more ships, so he built more shipyards, and he needed workers for these shipyards so he offered big pay and recruited men from all over the country. Within a year, almost 100,000 men and their families had moved to Portland to work on these shipyards but there weren’t enough places for the new residents. So, Kaiser goes to the local housing authority and says, “hey, cities with booming industries all over the country are building public temporary housing for all the workers, we should have some in portland” But, The Housing authority didn’t like the idea of public housing mixing with private interests but moreover, it came down to race. The real estates code of ethics restricted african americans to a tiny little town called Albina. By 1940 1,100 of Portland’s1,900 black residents lived in Albina. And that’s about all the city could hold, it was maybe 2 miles long and a mile wide, it couldn’t handle this many new workers. So Kaiser took matters into his own hands. He bought what could basically be referred to as a marsh right outside of city limits. It was physically disconnected from land in-between the Columbia Slough and the Columbia River. The land only stayed dry by building these 15-25 foot dikes all around the area. He called this new city, Vanport. Because it was between Vancouver and Portland. In about 100 days, Vanport had over 10,000 homes and apartments and at it’s peak, housed over 40,000 people.