Historedia
Episode 1 of 2

Coin Toss Decides Name

When
1845
Where
The Clearing
Part of
Portland Penny decides the name of Portland, Oregon

In 1845, founders Francis Pettygrove and Asa Lovejoy held a coin toss to name the settlement, with Pettygrove winning.

The coin toss was decided in 1845 with two out of three tosses which Pettygrove won. Pettygrove, from Portland, Maine, won the toss, and the town site became known as Portland, Oregon, rather than Boston, Massachusetts, as Lovejoy had preferred.

Sources

  1. Portland Penny Wikipedia, revision of 2026-07-05
  2. Asa Lovejoy Wikipedia, revision of 2026-04-23

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.