July 9, 1990: OMSI Breaks Ground at New Location on Banks of the Willamette River

The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, better known today as OMSI, was created by Portland Park Commissioner Colonel L.L.Hawkins in 1903, and began as merely a collection of odd artifacts scattered about in Portland’s City Hall.

The museum moved to a house in NE Portland in 1949, before finding a new home in Washington Park in 1957. The museum was a success, and by the mid-1980s a campaign began to build a bigger facility on the east bank of the Willamette River.

Ground was broken on that new, current, location on July 9, 1990.

OMSI opened at the new location on October 24, 1992. It is now one of the ten largest science centers in the country. The museum sports, in addition to hundreds of science exhibits, an OMNIMAX Dome Theater, a 200-seat planetarium, and even a submarine.