EARLY HISTORY PRESERVATION: The Lost Colony of Eric Ladd

PATREON: www.patreon.com/exploreoregon After a return to the city of Portland, Oregon at the end of the 1940s (after spending much of the decade in Los Angeles and New York) a young man named Eric Ladd (albeit not his birth name) came back to his place of birth to see so much he remembered from his childhood gone. Inspired to preserve the rapidly disappearing architecture from Portland's earlier decades, Ladd became a trendsetter in the realm of historical preservation long before such a thing hit the mainstream. This culminated in a site in the city's Goose Hollow neighborhood that started going under the name of the "Colony". Here Ladd had successfully relocated a couple buildings and wanted to relocate more as they continued to be torn down into the 1950s and 60s. Despite being ahead of his time and pursuing something he clearly had a love for, this is not a story of success but rather a story of a missed opportunity (at least as far as the city of Portland is concerned). This is the story about something destined to be beautiful ultimately faded away with time. It's the story of man who gave just about everything he had to create something truly wonderful.