I had always wanted to live on a houseboat, and my father’s good friend had a son who had always wanted to build a houseboat. My father contracted with him to build one which he would rent out to me. The challenge was to find a moorage that had a slip available. At that time(1972) Portland had put a moratorium on new moorages and the only way to get in one was to buy a used houseboat.

I looked all around and finally found a moorage with space available on the Multnomah Channel, an arm of the Columbia River which goes around Sauvie Island north of Portland. Brown’s Landing, as it was called after its proprietor, had an active canoe business and about 20 houseboats stretched out in a line at the base of the dike protecting the farm land from flooding. The town was Scappoose, Oregon, and was about a 30 minute drive from Portland.

While it appears from my WEB searching that our little house no longer exists, this is an accurate view of the moorage taken from across the channel in 2014. It was as bucolic as it looks, with calm water and a backdrop of cottonwood trees. Water and sewer were supplied in pipes that ran along the walkway. The parking lot was up the hill at one end of the walkway.

How was it to live on the water? I will be telling you in the posts to come.