Portland

Updated 30 October 2026 · Fan site. Not affiliated with Rockstar Games or Take-Two Interactive.

Portland is the industrial eastern island of Liberty City in the 3D era. It is where players start in Grand Theft Auto III (2001), Grand Theft Auto Advance (2004) and Liberty City Stories (2005). It holds the docks, Chinatown, the Red Light District and Saint Mark's, the home turf of the Leone Mafia family.

What is Portland in GTA III?

Portland is the first of the three areas of the 3D-era Liberty City, and the place where every story set there begins. Wikipedia says players of Grand Theft Auto III start in Portland and unlock the other areas as the plot moves on, because the team wanted players to start poor and work their way up. Staunton Island and Shoreside Vale come later. The same order holds in Advance and Liberty City Stories.

What is Portland based on?

Wikipedia describes the 2001 city as three parts: an industrial section standing in for Brooklyn and Queens, a Manhattan-like commercial centre and New Jersey-style suburbs. Portland is the industrial part. GTA Wiki adds a Scottish touch: it cites Rockstar's design document for GTA III, which says the port areas drew on Leith, the dockside district of Edinburgh, where Rockstar North is based. The GTA III manual, as quoted by GTA Wiki, pitches Portland as the city's industrial zone of docks, warehouses and a red light district, where long Mafia rule is now being tested by the Triads.

What are the districts of Portland?

Saint Mark's, in the north-east, is the Italian-American heart of the island. Chinatown and the Red Light District sit on the western shore next to it, with the apartment blocks of Hepburn Heights nearby. The rest is mostly working waterfront. Portland Harbor is a shipyard on the east side, Atlantic Quays, Callahan Point and Trenton line the south, and Portland View fills the centre. In the north, Harwood has a junkyard, the Head Radio studio and the Portland mouth of the Porter Tunnel. Portland Beach is a bare, rocky shore with the Portland Rock lighthouse just offshore.

Who controls Portland?

Saint Mark's belongs to the Leone family, though GTA Wiki notes that the Forellis also have a foothold, especially at Marco's Bistro. Chinatown was once Leone ground before the Triads took it, and gunfights flare along its border with Saint Mark's. The Red Light District passed from the Sindacco family to the Leones once the Sindaccos were driven out, and Hepburn Heights went from the Leones to the Diablos street gang. The full story of the Mafia war is on our Leone family page.

Harwood carries a piece of series lore. GTA Wiki says it is where Tommy Vercetti killed eleven men in 1971, which earned him the nickname "The Harwood Butcher" before his story moved to Vice City.

How did Portland change between 1998 and 2001?

The island's links to the rest of the city change from game to game. In Liberty City Stories, set in 1998, Wikipedia says the Callahan Bridge is not finished, so a ferry is the main way across to Staunton Island. GTA Wiki says the ferries ran from Harwood to Rockford and were gone by 2000, the year of Advance, when the bridge was in use. By 2001 a bomb has wrecked a large section of it, and the Porter Tunnel to Staunton Island opens only partway through GTA III.

Getting around inside Portland is mainly by road and by the elevated Portland El, which GTA Wiki says stops at Rothwell, Kurowski and Baillie stations. The underground subway that links all three islands is missing from Advance, as is the Porter Tunnel, which the wiki puts down to the Game Boy Advance's limits. Freight trains have their own route: the Harbour Tunnel runs under Saint Mark's between the Harwood train yard and Portland Harbor.

Who lives in Portland?

Most of the 3D-era Liberty City cast passes through. Toni Cipriani works from his mother's restaurant there, Salvatore Leone and his son Joey run the family from the island, and Claude takes his first jobs on the island in GTA III. In Advance, Mike starts out in the same streets. The Advance version is the odd one out. Wikipedia notes that the city was noticeably reworked for the Game Boy Advance and its top-down camera, so even players who know the GTA III island have to learn its streets again. Portland even turns up outside its own games: GTA Wiki says Marco's Bistro appears in Vice City, and Saint Mark's and the Red Light District appear in San Andreas, where Carl Johnson visits in the mission Saint Mark's Bistro.