to Vanport Junior High School, Lincoln and Jefferson high schools were used after school hours, as well as the University of Oregon's dental and medical schools, located in Portland.
Following the May 30 Vanport Flood of 1948, the college became known as "the college that wouldn't die" for refusing to close after the flood. The term was coined by Lois Hennessy, a student who wrote about the college and the flood in the Christian Science Monitor, though students nicknamed the school "The college without a future." (Hennessy was the mother of poet Gary Snyder.) The school occupied Grant High School in the summer of 1948, then to hastily converted buildings at the Oregon Shipyard, known as the Oregon Ship. In 1953, the school moved to downtown Portland and occupied the vacated buildings of Lincoln High School on SW Broadway Street, including Lincoln Hall, then known as "Old Main."
The school changed its name to the Portland State Extension Center between December 1951 and February 1952. In 1955, the Center changed …
