On Oct. 3, 1918, the Spanish Flu reached Portland when Private James McNeese, a young soldier on his way from Camp Lewis, Washington to the cavalry officers’ training camp at Leon Springs, Texas arrived in Portland. Doctors quickly determined he had the ‘Spanish’ influenza, and immediately sent him by ambulance to the military hospital at the nearby Vancouver Barracks, just across the Columbia River in Washington. It was the first reported case of the epidemic strain of influenza to appear in Portland.

In Portland, the epidemic was generally a long, arduous slog over the course of many months. As a result, Portland experienced a cumulative excess death rate (that is, the death rate during the entire epidemic period above and beyond the normal deaths one would expect) of 505 per 100,000 people, even though none of its peaks climbed above 60 per 100,000.