Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:34:00

American soccer's most storied ground has been hosting crowds on the same Portland block since 1893. Providence Park at 1844 SW Morrison Street began as Multnomah Field, the Multnomah Athletic Club's grounds in Tanner Creek Gulch, where President Taft spoke in 1909; the club spent 500,000 dollars in 1926 to build the full stadium whose upper bowl and wooden benches survive today. The City of Portland bought it for 2.1 million dollars in 1966 and renamed it Civic Stadium, and the naming carousel since - PGE Park from 2001, Jeld-Wen Field from 2011, Providence Park from 2014 - tracked the venue's reinventions through minor-league baseball, greyhound racing, Elvis concerts and college football. Soccer claimed the building for good in stages: the original NASL Timbers of the 1970s made "Soccer City USA" a slogan, the 38.5-million-dollar 2001 renovation brought Triple-A baseball and USL soccer together, and the 31-million-dollar 2009-11 conversion made the park soccer-specific for the Timbers' MLS entry. Every Timbers match from 2011 until 2023 sold out - one of the longest streaks in American sport - powered by the Timbers Army's north end and the log-slab goal celebrations of mascot lumberjack Timber Joey. The 85-million-dollar, privately funded 2017-19 expansion answered a 13,000-name season-ticket waitlist by stacking three new seating levels onto the east side - 4,074 seats bringing capacity to 25,218 - plus new videoboards, LED lighting, remodelled locker rooms and upgraded turf. The Portland Thorns, founded 2013, share the ground and set the NWSL's single-game attendance record with a 25,218 sellout in August 2019; that year both Portland clubs ranked top-ten in attendance among all US and Canadian professional soccer teams, men's or women's. Pressed against the MAX light rail in the Goose Hollow neighbourhood, its concourses threaded through 1926 concrete, Providence Park offers what no new build can: a century of continuous crowds, the loudest of them wearing green and gold.