Pedestrians along the westside seawall check out river levels during the 1948 flood. A little farther north city crews are hard at work continuing sandbagging operations to prevent flooding along SW Harbor Drive. This view is looking north from the Morrison Bridge sidewalk.
(City of Portland Archives)
Oregon Real Estate Round Table 
When this photo was taken the Willamette river was a lot more polluted than it is today. Somewhere around this time the river caught on fire. It was so polluted that the oil and other pollutants actually caught f ire. It had to be horrible working on this project.