Mike's History Tours

10/28/2024

Team in KOIN news today. Mike would be proud. We showed off a picture Mike Ryerson took plus note that on the October 2004 NW Examiner handwritten note states to return to Mike Ryerson.

12/22/2023

Have you ever been on one of our walking tours? For Christmas we would love a review for the Google Beast.

Post a review to our profile on Google

10/06/2023

Book our newest tour dark side of history tour. Murder, Mayhem & Oddities - St. Johns, PDX

Experience St. Johns paranormal and criminal heritage as we take to the streets to converse about the history that is left out of the history books. We will take our guests to locations where the spirits are known to be less than peaceful. This is a walking tour with steep grades. Bring your rain gear and walking shoes and use a restroom before you join the tour. Gear up to learn about cautionary tales including Elizabeth Huff Byars' murderous daughters, Thelma A. Taylor's ghost, the theater poltergeist, the Doppelganger, and the local eugenists Better Baby Contest. Our evening tours are not for the faint of heart or those under the age of 12.

https://book.peek.com/s/3d801dd3-2b8e-414c-8082-e0ec3ab7e712/L3qXrMurder, Mayhem & Oddities - St. Johns, PDX

05/15/2022

Missing Bud and Mike Ryerson today. Celebration of life today at Portland's Living room 1pm.

Back in the nineteen-eighties, Bud Clark was aligned with where his city was heading.

11/13/2020

Book a Ghost Tour Tonight. Starts ay Anna Banana's at 6pm. Our blend of history and ghost is pretty special. https://book.peek.com/s/3d801dd3-2b8e-414c-8082-e0ec3ab7e712/ga1LB

10/10/2020

Slabtown Picture Show & Virtual History Talk
Thursday, October 15th
Join Norman Gholston, one of the authors of Portland's Slabtown, to hear about the era from the area's land claims through the Lewis & Clark Centennial Exhibition of 1905. "In Portland's first decades, the northwest side remained dense forests. Native Americans camped and Chinese immigrants farmed around Guild's Lake. In the 1870s, Slabtown acquired its unusual name when a lumber mill opened on Northrup Street. The mill's discarded log edges were a cheap source of heating and cooking fuel. This slabwood was stacked in front of working-class homes of employees of pottery, the docks, icehouses, slaughterhouses, and lumber mills. Development concentrated along streetcar lines."
Tanya Lyn March Ph.D. owner of Slabtown Tours will cover the eras from WWI to the 1980s. Highlighting Friendly House, the redlining map of 1937, the Vaughn Street Urban Renewal Area, the 5,000 Black residents in WWII housing in Guild's Lake, the fight to stop the I-505 and the effort to save The Good Old Homes.
Don't miss this chance to learn about the rich local history of the neighborhood!
6-7:15pm | Thursday, October 15 | via Zoom | Free | Registration required | Call or email Denise Lafond to register and for information about how to access the event online: 503-935-5286 or [email protected]

09/20/2020

Mike, I need your advice. Miss my tour guide partner in crime.

05/07/2020

Happy Birthday Mike. Throw Back Thursday and it's election time. Posting an old Portland Oregon election image. Details on Slabtown Tours' Instagram.

05/05/2020

I think Mike would Approve...

Buy a shirt today! The money raised through this fundraiser will help us pay bills today so we can provide tours later.

03/24/2020

No tours just research right now. Spanish Flu in PDX

Today’s national news references to the 1918–1919 Spanish Influenza pandemic have focused on the contrasting experience of two cities—Philadelphia and St. Louis. In the face of the pandemic in September 1918, Philadelphia held a parade; over the next six months

10/31/2018

If I call in sick tonight do you think Mike can lead the tour? I know he'd be happy our tours finally got into WW.

Evidence of this city’s sordid past can be found all year round, but in honor of Halloween, we embarked on five haunted walking tours in and around Portland.

10/13/2018

The7pm Ghost tour is almost full so we opened up a 9:30pm tour. Ghosts are IN rain is OUT.

Tanya Lyn March, ghost historian and tour guide, has gathered several ghost naritives from homeowners, alienists, ephemera collectors and ancient newspapers. Prepare to walk the streets as dusk settles for a kaleidoscope view of numerous Northwest Portland locations in seach of the unexplainable. Le...

09/18/2018

Mike Ryerson's opened a lot of people up to how many homes were lost in NW to surface parking. Sadly surface parking is more costly develop that building "replacement" so many of these spaces continue to be undeveloped.

08/16/2018

Laurie Mitchell plugged the tours and she loved Mike's map.

looking at the impact of cars on the neighborhood

01/05/2018

Fun Fact #39. Don't be offended by the Headline- Mike Ryerson taught me to write this way.

The Portland Police were displeased with Mike Ryerson’s Es**rt Service.