Progress is a former unincorporated community in Washington County,

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

, United States. It is now part of the cities of Tigard and Beaverton. It is located at the crossroads of

Scholls Ferry Road Oregon Route 210 (also known as Scholls Ferry Road, or, more formally, the Scholls Highway No. 143 (see Oregon highways and routes)) is a state highway which runs between the community of Scholls, Oregon and the Raleigh Hills neighborhood we ...

and Hall Boulevard (unsigned Oregon Route 141). The Progress area is home to Washington Square, a large

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a large indoor shopping center, usually Anchor tenant, anchored by department stores. The term ''mall'' originally meant pedestrian zone, a pedestrian promenade with shops along it, but in the late 1960s, i ...

that opened in Tigard in 1973–1974.

Geography

The portion of Progress located within Tigard's

city limits City limits or city boundaries refer to the defined boundary (real estate), boundary or border of a city. The area within the city limit can be called the city proper. Town limit/boundary and village limit/boundary apply to towns and villages. ...

is in the quadrant east of Scholls Ferry Road and South of Hall Boulevard. This area is the site of the historic Crescent Grove Cemetery (aka Progress Cemetery), founded in 1852. The remaining three quadrants of the crossroads at Progress are located in the City of Beaverton, with the portion north of Hall Boulevard in the Denny Whitford/Raleigh West neighborhood, and the portion south of Hall Boulevard in the Greenway neighborhood. Progress Station #53 of Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue is located in the Denny Whitford/Raleigh West neighborhood of Beaverton.

History

Progress had a post office from August 28, 1899, to July 11, 1904. The first postmaster was Joseph Hingley. In 1915, Progress was described as a village along the interurban Portland, Eugene & Eastern Railroad (P.E. & E.). It had a Methodist and an Episcopal church, as well as a

grade school A primary school (in Ireland, India, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, South Africa, and Singapore), elementary school, or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ...

. At that time the primary economic activities were horticulture and agriculture. The former P.E. & E. line is now the Tigard Branch of the

Portland and Western Railroad The Portland and Western Railroad is a Class II railroad serving the U.S. state of Oregon, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of shortline and regional railroad holding company Genesee & Wyoming Inc. The PNWR includes a subsidiary, the Willamett ...

, which is also in use by

WES Commuter Rail The Westside Express Service (WES) is a commuter rail line serving parts of the Portland metropolitan area's Washington County, Oregon, Washington and Clackamas County, Oregon, Clackamas counties in the U.S. state of Oregon. Owned by TriMet and ...

(WES). WES' Hall/Nimbus station is the closest stop to Progress. By 1989, Lewis A. McArthur noted that Progress was "part of a heavily built suburbia" between Tigard and Beaverton. In 1990, author Ralph Friedman commented that Progress had been " gulfed by the giant mart of Washington Square."

View-Master plant

Sawyer's Sawyer's, Inc. was an American manufacturer and retailer of slide projectors, scenic slides, View-Master reels and viewers, postcards, and related products, based in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1914 as a photo-finishing company, Sawyer's began p ...

, later General Aniline & Film (GAF), the manufacturer of

View-Master View-Master is the trademark name of a line of special-format stereoscopes and corresponding View-Master "reels", which are thin cardboard disks containing seven Stereoscopic 3-D pairs of small transparent color photographs on film.Mary Ann & Wo ...

reels, built a large plant near Progress in 1951. The plant closed in 2000, and this area later became part of Washington Square Mall. The View-Master factory supply well was investigated for possible chemical contamination in the early 2000's.

RedTail Golf Center

The City of

Portland Portland most commonly refers to: *Portland, Oregon, the most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon *Portland, Maine, the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maine *Isle of Portland, a tied island in the English Channel Portland may also r ...

Parks and Recreation RedTail Golf Course in Beaverton was originally named "Progress Downs". The land, a former farm, was purchased in 1954 by the city to replace the West Hills Golf Course, which was to be the new site of the Washington Park Zoo. The course opened in 1966. Progress Downs was renamed RedTail after a 1999 renovation. In 2024, the city was considering selling the golf course to develop a

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (baseball), National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB i ...

Park.

References

External links

Historic aerial image of Beaverton and the community of Progress
from the City of Beaverton collection Beaverton, Oregon Tigard, Oregon {{WashingtonCountyOR-geo-stub