More than a thousand redheads packed Pioneer Courthouse Square in downtown Portland Saturday, hoping to break a Guinness World Record.

Organizers won't know if they made the grade for another two to three months, but unofficial counts clocked in between 1,300 and 1,600 redheads at the

.

If those numbers hold, Portland will have topped the previous record, set last year when 1,255 redheads gathered in Breda, Netherlands.

Only natural redheads were let in -- no bottle gingers allowed. But the crowd was a diverse mix of people from across the country for the event, which raised money for skin cancer research.

Deb Doonan traveled from Mount Prospect, Ill., to attend the ginger gathering. She marveled at the sight of so many redheads.

"You see quite a few of them here," Doonan said, "which is unusual. Except at weddings and funerals in my family," she joked.

Roughly one percent of the world's population is thought to have red hair, with United States ginger saturation pegged

. It's even rare in Ireland and Scotland, where the

.

The reason for red hair's rarity is its source: a recessive gene. Both parents must have the gene in order for a child to be born a redhead.

Neither Todd nor Jennifer McIlhenny, of Portland, were born with red hair. But their son, Caden, 9, is a true ginger.

"He was the one that was pushing to get down here," said Todd McIlhenny.

For Caden, the event was more about Guinness than ginger. He's a big fan of world records, his favorite being a rocket-propelled school bus that hit 367 mph.

"It's awesome," he said.

, owned until 2001 by the same folks who make Guinness beer, are notoriously finicky about details. The redheads had to be photographed, they had to be identified by number and they had to stand in a corral for 10 minutes in bright sun in order for the event to count toward the record.

The gingers also had to bring a color photo of themselves when they were young as proof of their true redheaded nature, and pay an $11 registration fee.

If the redheads clinch their record, it will be Portland's third Guinness bid this year. In July the Human Access Project achieved the record for most people floating in a line with 620 people, and Treecology and Hoyt Arboretum broke the record for most people simultaneously hugging trees in one place at one time,

.

There is plenty left to do in order to secure the redhead record, though, including recounting all the participants caught on video and scanning through thousands of photographs.

All the technical details left event organizer Rusty Wiese running around Pioneer Courthouse Square most of the afternoon as the temperature crept up to 78 degrees.

"We picked this hot day to prove that redheads can be outside and have fun in the outdoors," said Wiese, himself a ginger.

With the fair skin of redheaded people in mind, Wiese said 10 percent of the surplus revenue from the event would go to the Skin Cancer Foundation. He's also saving a bit for an encore event next year.

Anne Lindsay, who organized a gathering of 890 redheads in Sammamish, Wash., that produced a world record in 2010, said people have plenty of misconceptions about redheads. But there's one that really irks her.

"Redheads are not going extinct," she said. "It's genetically just not possible."

--Christian Gaston