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Portland International Airport

airport serving Portland, Oregon (USA)

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ1425566
Source-derived summary

Portland International Airport (IATA: PDX, ICAO: KPDX, FAA LID: PDX) is a joint civil–military airport and the largest airport in the U.S. state of Oregon, accounting for 90% of the state's passenger air travel and more than 95% of its air cargo. It is within Portland's city limits just south of the Columbia River in Multnomah County, 6 miles (10 kilometers) by air and 12 mi (19 km) by highway northeast of downtown Portland. Portland International Airport is often referred to by its IATA airport code, PDX. The airport covers 3,000 acres (1,214 ha) of land.

Portland International Airport has direct flights to cities throughout the United States and in several other countries, including Canada, Mexico, Germany, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Iceland. The airport is a hub for Alaska Airlines. It also has a maintenance facility for Alaska Air subsidiary Horizon Air. General aviation services are provided at PDX by Atlantic Aviation. The Oregon Air National Guard has a base on the southwest portion of the airport property grounds, and is also the host unit of the 142nd Wing which operates the F-15EX Eagle II. Local transportation includes the MAX Red Line light rail, which takes passengers between PDX and downtown Portland, as well as farther west to Beaverton. There is also Interstate 205, which connects to southwestern Washington (north from PDX) along with many suburbs of Portland (south from PDX).

History

Portland's first airport was the Swan Island Municipal Airport, northwest of downtown Portland on the Willamette River.

Editorial summary

“Portland International Airport” enters the record as airport serving Portland, Oregon (USA). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Portland, International and Airport can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA valuable geographic starting point for tracing changing names, boundaries, uses and administrative responsibility. The current 250-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Portland, International and Airport.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Portland International Airport” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Portland, International and Airport provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1425566. Authority coordinates are 45.589, -122.597. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.

Critical limits

Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Portland International Airport”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Portland International Airport primary sources, Portland International Airport archive and Portland research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Portland International Airport”?
  2. Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
  3. What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Portland International Airport” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.