The Beauty of Oregon revealed.......
You can travel far and wide and you will not find the combined beauty that Oregon has to offer in any other place. The people who inhabit Oregon are just as unique as the lands that comprise our great state. Our attempt with this page is to show you some of the reasons we love Oregon, and show you the beauty that we enjoy daily that can only be found in Oregon.
First thing you need to know about Oregon is how to say it correctly. It is not pronounced
Ore-ee-Gone!! To properly pronounce it you must say it like this; Origenn. Now that you sound like a local, let me lay down a little history about Oregon.
A glance at our History
Oregon's earliest residents were several Native American tribes, including the Bannock, Chinook, Klamath, and Nez Perce. James Cook explored the coast in 1778 in search of the Northwest Passage. The Lewis and Clark Expedition traveled through the region during their expedition to explore the Louisiana Purchase. They built their winter fort at Fort Clatsop, near the mouth of the Columbia River. Exploration by Lewis and Clark (1805?1806) and the United Kingdom's David Thompson (1811) publicized the abundance of fur in the area. In 1811, New York financier John Jacob Astor established Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River with the intention of starting a chain of Pacific Fur Company trading posts along the river. Fort Astoria was the first permanent white settlement in Oregon. In the War of 1812, the British gained control of all of the Pacific Fur Company posts.
The Astorians
The first land route across the continent that was well-mapped was that taken by Lewis and Clark from 1804 to 1805. They believed they had found a practical route to the west coast. However, the pass through the Rocky Mountains they took, Lolo Pass, turned out to be too difficult for wagons to pass. In 1810, John Jacob Astor outfitted an expedition (known popularly as the Astor Expedition or Astorians) to find an overland supply route for establishing a fur trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River at Fort Astoria near the present day city of Astoria.
Fearing attacks by the Blackfeet the expedition veered south of the Lewis and Clark route in South Dakota and in the process passed through Wyoming and then down the Snake River to the Columbia River.
Members of the party returned back east after the British took over the outpost in the War of 1812 via the Snake River. The party stumbled upon South Pass a wide, low pass through the Rockies in Wyoming. Passing through the pass the party continued on back via the Platte River.
Fort Astoria was returned to United States control at the end of the War of 1812. However the British Hudson Bay Company continued to control the fur trade there.
The Great American Desert
Westward expansion did not begin immediately, however. Reports from expeditions in 1806 by Lt. Zebulon Pike and in 1819 by Maj. Stephen Long described the Great Plains as "unfit for human habitation" and "The Great American Desert". These descriptions ignored the fact that the land could be fertile if irrigated with ground water (the Great Plains are a major farming area today). Regardless, the images they conjured up of a wasteland of sand and cactus discouraged migration for some time.
The route of the Oregon Trail began to be scouted out as early as 1823 by fur traders and explorers. The trail began to be regularly used by fur traders, missionaries, and military expeditions during the 1830s. At the same time, small groups of individuals and the occasional family attempted to follow the trail and some succeeded in arriving at Fort Vancouver in Washington.
The Elm Grove Expedition of 1842
On May 16, 1842 the first organized wagon train on the Oregon Trail set out from Elm Grove, Missouri, with more than 100 pioneers. (Members of the party later disagreed over the size of the party, one stating 160 adults and children were in the party, while another counted only 105.) Despite company policy to discourage U.S. emigration, John McLoughlin, Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver, offered the American settlers food and farming equipment on credit, being unwilling to watch able-bodied people starve.
Oregon Country or "Oregon" (to be distinguished from the State of Oregon) was a term that referred to a region of western North America consisting of the land north of 42°N latitude, south of 54°40'N latitude, and west of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. The area now forms part of the present day Canadian province of British Columbia, all of the US states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, and parts of Montana and Wyoming. The region is roughly equivalent to a broad definition of the Pacific Northwest. Though the term was used to describe the area from the beginning of American claims to the region until the Oregon Treaty of 1846, it is very rarely used in this sense today. The equivalent British name for most of this area was Columbia District; north of the Thompson River was part of the New Caledonia District which extended considerably north beyond 54°40'N.
Free land!
The biggest driving force for settlement was the offer of free land.
In 1843 the settlers of the Willamette Valley by a vote of 52 to 50 drafted a constitution that organized the land claim process in the state. Married couples were allowed to claim up to 640 acres (a "section" which is a square mile) at no cost and singles could claim 320 acres.
In 1848 the United States formally declared Oregon Country a U.S. territory. The Donation Land Act of 1850 superseded the earlier laws. However it recognized the earlier claims. Settlers after 1850 could be granted half a section (320 acres) if married and a quarter section (160 acres) if single. A four-year residence and cultivation was required. In 1854 the land was no longer free (although still cheap -- initially $1.25/acre). Though prices have gone up a bit since then, you can still find a lot of deals on open land in Oregon.
Opening of the Oregon Trail
In what was dubbed "The Great Migration of 1843" or the "Wagon Train of 1843", an estimated 800 immigrants, led by Marcus Whitman, arrived in the Willamette Valley. Hundreds of thousands more would follow, especially after gold was discovered in California in 1848. The trail was still in use during the Civil War, but traffic declined after 1869 when the transcontinental railroad was completed. The trail continued to be used into the 1890s and modern highways eventually paralleled large portions of the trail.
Other migration paths for early settlers prior to the establishment of the transcontinental railroads involved taking passage on a ship rounding the Cape Horn of South America or to the Isthmus (now Panama) between North and South America. There, an arduous mule trek through hazardous swamps and rain forests awaited the traveler. A ship was typically then taken to San Francisco, California.
Remnants of the trail in Idaho, Kansas, Oregon, and Wyoming have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Settling after the migration
In 1841, the master trapper and entrepreneur Ewing Young died with considerable wealth, with no apparent heir, and no system to probate his estate. A meeting followed Young's funeral at which a probate government was proposed. Doctor Ira Babcock of Jason Lee's Methodist Mission was elected Supreme Judge. Babcock chaired two meetings in 1842 at Champoeg-half way between Lee's mission and Oregon City-to discuss wolves and other animals considered troublesome at the time. These meetings were precursors to an all-citizen meeting in 1843, which instituted a provisional government headed by an executive council made up of David Hill, Alanson Beers, and Joseph Gale. This government was first of several acting governments of the Oregon Country (also referred to as the Republic of Oregon) prior to American annexation.
The Oregon Trail infused the region with new settlers, starting in 1842?43, after the United States agreed to jointly settle the Oregon Country with the United Kingdom. The border was resolved in 1846 by the Oregon Treaty after a period during which it seemed that the United States and the United Kingdom would go to war for a third time in 75 years. Cooler heads prevailed, and the Oregon boundary dispute between the United States and British North America was set at the 49th parallel. The Oregon Territory was officially organized in 1848.
Settlement increased due to the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850, in conjunction with the forced relocation of the native population to Indian Reservations in Oregon. The state was admitted to the Union on February 14, 1859.
At the outbreak of the American Civil War, regular U.S. troops were withdrawn and sent east. Volunteer cavalry were recruited in California and were sent north to Oregon to keep peace and protect the populace. The First Oregon Cavalry served until June 1865.
In the 1880s, railroads enabled marketing of the state's lumber and wheat, as well as the more rapid growth of its cities.
Industrial expansion began in earnest following the construction of the Bonneville Dam in 1943 on the Columbia River. The power, food, and lumber provided by Oregon helped fuel the development of the west, although the periodic fluctuations in the nation's building industry have hurt the state's economy on multiple occasions.
The state has a long history of polarizing conflicts: Native Americans vs. British fur trappers, British vs. settlers from the U.S., ranchers vs. farmers, wealthy growing cities vs. established but poor rural areas, loggers vs. environmentalists, white supremacists vs. anti-racists, social communism vs. small-government conservatism, supporters of social spending vs. anti-tax activists, and native Oregonians vs. Californians (or outsiders in general). Oregonians also have a long history of secessionist ideas, ranging from varying parts of the population on all sides of the political spectrum attempting to form other states and even other countries. (See: State of Jefferson, State of Klamath, State of Shasta and Cascadia.) Oregon state ballots often include politically conservative proposals (e.g. anti-gay, pro-religious measures) side-by-side with politically liberal ones (e.g. drug decriminalization), illustrating the wide spectrum of political thought in the state.
Naming of Oregon
The origin of the state's name is something of a mystery. The earliest known use of this proper noun was in a 1765 petition by Major Robert Rogers to the Kingdom of Great Britain. The petition referred to Ouragon and asked for money to finance an expedition in search of the Northwest Passage.
Why Rogers used the name has led to many theories, which include:
- During the time of the Hudson's Bay Company and the voyages of Robert Gray, some say the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest referred to the Columbia River as the great "Ouragon". Since the Columbia River is perhaps the most significant geographic feature of the region, it is plausible that the name was anglicized to Oregon and thence became known as such.
- Others derive the name as a corruption of the French word ouragan (hurricane), referring to the tumultuous nature of the Columbia River.
- George R. Stewart argued in a 1944 article in American Speech that the name came from an engraver's error in a French map published in the early 1700s, on which the Ouisiconsink (Wisconsin River) was spelled "Ouaricon-sint", broken on two lines with the -sint below, so that there appeared to be a river flowing to the west named "Ouaricon". This theory was endorsed in Oregon Geographic Names as "the most plausible explanation".
- In 2001, archaeologist Scott Byram and David G. Lewis published an article in the Oregon Historical Quarterly arguing that the name Oregon came from the word oolighan, referring to grease made from fish, which the Native Americans of the region traded in. Those trade routes brought the term eastward.
- In a 2004 article for the Oregon Historical Quarterly, Professor Thomas Love and Smithsonian linguist Ives Goddard argue that Rogers chose the word based on exposure to either of the Algonquian words wauregan and olighin, both meaning "good and beautiful".
Less supported theories are based on it having a Spanish etymology. The theory that it comes from oregano, was dismissed years ago by Henry W. Scott, an early editor of The Oregonian. He wrote that it was "a mere conjecture absolutely without support. More than this, it is completely disproved by all that is known of the name." Others have speculated that the name is related to the kingdom of Aragon: the major part of the Spanish soldiers that conquered the West Coast from California to Vancouver Island in the 18th century were, in fact, from Catalonia, a principate of the ancient Crown of Aragon in Spain.
In 1778, Jonathan Carver used Oregon to label the Great River of the West in his book Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America. The poet William Cullen Bryant took the name from Carver's book and used it in his poem Thanatopsis to refer to the recent discoveries of the Lewis and Clark Expedition; this use helped establish it in modern use.
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