Summary: OCT. 1, 1880, WAS a very big day in Portland. For the first time in the history of the city or the state, a sitting President of the United States had come to visit. President Rutherford B. Hayes had arrived in Portland the night before and was staying in the Esmond Hotel, the nicest in Portland at the time, on the corner of Morrison and Front streets. Portland was, of course, very much a frontier town in 1880, still dotted with the stumps of the trees that had been cleared to make room for it. So it can’t have come as too much of a surprise to the president when, at 9:30 the next morning, a gunfight broke out directly beneath his hotel window. He was probably a little more surprised, though, when he found out who the gunfighters were: It was the president of the local synagogue — and the rabbi. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/20-12.rabbi-gunfight-rutherford-hayes-592.html)
