Thank you for sticking with me. I think I figured it out (thanks to you getting me to scrutinize the portal alias tables) but I am unsure why it was an issue. Here is the contents of my dbo.PortalAlias that was causing the redirect:

2    0    localhost/library
NULL    NULL    NULL

In the past, I would always delete all but one of the records in portal alias and add in my localhost address. Which worked. But, this time it was redirecting to the live site. Unsure where it would even get the url of the live site. So, I setup the localhost again but this time I left the additional entries in the portal alias table, so it now looks like this:

2    0    localhost/library
5    0    library.loudoun.gov
7    1    lcpl.lib.va.us
NULL    NULL    NULL

Which did not redirect and resolved to the localhost address as expected. Up until this install, I have never had the redirect problem and was always able to leave nothing but the localhost address in the portal alias table.

Portal 1 ( lcpl.lib.va.us ) I used to redirect people who came in on that url to the current address (library.loudoun.gov). Anyone who comes in on the old url lcpl hits portal 1 which is a permanent redirect to library.loudoun.gov.

Could that redirect have been the root of the issue when I removed the portal 1 portal alias from the db?

Truly, thanks again for the help, I might be able to sleep tonight now.