SW Broadway
Downtown Portland Oregon
June 27, 2026 | 11:25 a.m.
Walking the same streets nearly seventy years after Portland prepared for the unthinkable.
I wasn’t expecting a Cold War film to change the way I looked at Portland.
Like many people, I had never heard of The Day Called “X” (1957). Produced by CBS Public Affairs in cooperation with the Federal Civil Defense Administration and narrated by actor Glenn Ford, the hour-long television film imagines Portland facing the threat of a nuclear attack.
What surprised me wasn’t the fictional premise. It was how little of the film actually feels staged.
Mayor Terry Schrunk appears as himself. Apart from Glenn Ford’s narration, the people onscreen are real Portlanders performing the jobs they actually held—civil defense officials, police officers, broadcasters, and city employees. The underground command center at Kelly Butte isn’t a recreation but the actual facility Portland intended to use in an emergency.
Before long, the imagined disaster fades into the background, and something else takes its place: a remarkably detailed portrait of Portland in 1957.
Even the streets belong to the Portland of 1957.
What begins as a Cold War docudrama gradually becomes something else: a time capsule.
Embedded below is the restored version of The Day Called “X” (1957), made available by Periscope Film. Watching it today, it’s easy to forget you’re looking at a fictional scenario and instead begin noticing the Portland that actually was.
SW Broadway, Downtown Portland
Watching the film, I found myself paying less attention to the imagined attack than to the city itself.
One sequence from the film has stayed with me ever since.
During the film’s fictional evacuation, downtown Portland empties. Then Jackson Tower comes into view, and I realized I knew exactly where I was.
SW Broadway—normally busy with shoppers, office workers, and traffic—becomes almost silent. Intersections I had walked only hours before suddenly existed again—not in color, but in black and white. Later, police motorcycles patrol intersections. Entire blocks appear deserted. The sequence is unsettling not because it depicts destruction, but because it shows a familiar city temporarily stripped of its everyday life.
The evacuation unfolds with a surprising calm. Instead of cinematic chaos, traffic is directed methodically, streets empty in an orderly fashion, and the city seems to pause rather than panic. It was convincing enough that I found myself wondering whether CBS had somehow managed to film an actual evacuation.
The film was intended to reassure audiences that Portland had a plan.
Watching the film in 2026, curiosity got the better of me.
I went downtown to find one of the locations shown in the film. Standing on SW Broadway, I photographed the same view nearly seventy years later.
The storefronts had changed. Bike lanes now occupied part of the street. Modern office towers rose behind historic buildings that had quietly endured through decades of change. Yet the geometry of the street remained unmistakable. Jackson Tower still anchors the streetscape, connecting two moments separated by generations.
It was less like recreating a movie scene and more like discovering that the city had been patiently preserving its own memory.
Kelly Butte
The film eventually leads viewers to Kelly Butte, where Portland’s Civil Defense Center was built inside the hillside. Until now, I had always assumed such a facility would have been hidden somewhere in the West Hills above downtown—or perhaps in a remote corner of Oregon.
Instead, it sits in East Portland.
For years I had driven past Kelly Butte on the way to Portland International Airport without knowing what had once existed beneath the trees.
To me, it was simply another wooded hill beside Interstate 205. Learning that it once housed Portland’s emergency command center permanently changed the way I saw the place.
The hill hadn’t changed. My understanding of it had.
Today, however, its greatest value lies elsewhere. It preserves a city that no longer exists exactly as it was, while reminding us that many of its streets, buildings, and landmarks still do.
History is often found inside museums or behind glass.
Sometimes, however, it survives in moving images.
Sometimes it waits beneath a wooded hill beside a freeway.
And sometimes it can still be found by standing on a downtown sidewalk with an old film in one hand and a camera in the other.
Sources
- Periscope Film, The Day Called “X” (1957)
- Oregon Encyclopedia – Kelly Butte Civil Defense Center and Kelly Butte Natural Area
- Google Maps (Kelly Butte location)
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