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() is a city in Clackamas County, Oregon, United States. A very small portion of the city extends into Multnomah County. The population was 20,490 at the 2000 census. The 2006 estimate is 20,835 residents. Founded in 1848 on the banks of the Willamette River, the city, known as the Dogwood City of the West, was incorporated in 1903 and is noted as the birthplace of the Bing cherry. It is more recently known as the home of Dark Horse Comics. The city has become a suburb of Portland and also adjoins the unincorporated areas of Clackamas and Oak Grove.
Milwaukie was founded in 1848 as a rival to the upriver Oregon City by Lot Whitcomb, who named it for Milwaukee, Wisconsin (which would later settle on the spelling "Milwaukee"). Whitcomb arrived in Oregon in 1847 and settled on a donation land claim, where he built a sawmill and a gristmill. Milwaukie rivaled Portland and Oregon City for a time, but Portland eventually became the bigger city because it had a deeper port. Milwaukie post office was established in 1850, with Whitcomb as the first postmaster. The Oregon and California Railroad named their station there Milwaukee in 1870 and corrected it to Milwaukie in 1892. As the city center grew further from the railroad and a branch line was built across the Willamette to Lake Oswego, Oregon, Milwaukie station was replaced and renamed
for Joseph H. Lambert, a pioneer orchardist who developed the Lambert cherry. The name of the station was changed to East Milwaukee in 1913 and corrected to
The Bing cherry, among other varieties, was developed in Milwaukie by another pioneer orchardist, Seth Lewelling, who settled in the area with his brother Henderson Luelling.