The history of the city of Portland, Oregon, began in 1843 when business partners William Overton and Asa Lovejoy filed to claim land on the west bank of the Willamette River in Oregon Country. In 1845 the name of Portland was chosen for this community by coin toss. February 8, 1851, the city was incorporated. Portland has continued to grow in size and population, with the 2010 Census showing 583,776 residents in the city.
During the dot-com boom of the mid-to-late 1990s, Portland saw an influx of people in their 20s and 30s, drawn by the promise of a city with abundant nature, urban growth boundaries, cheaper rents, and opportunities to work in the graphic design and Internet industries, as well as for companies like Doc Martens, Nike, Adidas, and Wieden+Kennedy. When this economic bubble burst, the city was left with a large creative population. Also, when the bubble burst in Seattle and San Francisco, even more artists streamed into Portland, drawn in part by its relatively low cost of living, for a West Coast city.
In 2000 the U.S. census indicated there were over 10,000 artists in Portland.
