Portland, Oregon Owney tag

Owney, American, c. 1888 - 1897 · April 16, 1893

Owney received this token from a group of Railway Mail Service (RMS) clerks working out of Portland, Oregon on a “South Bound” railway mail car. The token was originally produced by Mitchell Lewis & Staver Co., a Pacific Northwest machinery company that began in 1882 and is still in operation. The RMS clerks scratched out one face of the token and crudely engraved their identification information as well as the date, April 16, 1893, over that side of the coin.