Oregon has been home to many indigenous nations for thousands of years. The first European traders, explorers, and settlers began exploring what is now Oregon's Pacific coast in the early to mid-16th century. As early as 1564, the Spanish began sending vessels northeast from the Philippines, riding the Kuroshio Current in a sweeping circular route across the northern part of the Pacific. In 1592, Juan de Fuca undertook detailed mapping and studies of ocean currents in the Pacific Northwest, including the Oregon coast as well as the strait now bearing his name. The Lewis and Clark Expedition traversed Oregon in the early 1800s, and the first permanent European settlements in Oregon were established by fur trappers and traders. In 1843, an autonomous government was formed in the Oregon Country, and the Oregon Territory was created in 1848. Oregon became the 33rd state of the U.S. on February 14, 1859.
Today, with 4.2 million people over 98,000 square miles (250,000 km2), Oregon is the ninth largest and 27th most populous U.S. state. The capital, Salem, is the third-most populous city in Oregon, with 175,535 residents. Portland, with 652,503, ranks as the 26th among U.S. cities. The Portland metropolitan area, which includes neighboring counties in Washington, is the 25th largest metro area in the nation, with a population of 2,512,859. Oregon is also one of the most geographically diverse states in the U.S., marked by volcanoes, abundant bodies of water, dense evergreen and mixed forests, as well as high deserts and semi-arid shrublands. At 11,249 feet (3,429 m), Mount Hood is the state's highest point. Oregon's only national park, Crater Lake National Park, comprises the caldera surrounding Crater Lake, the deepest lake in the United States. The state is also home to the single largest organism in the world, Armillaria ostoyae, a fungus that runs beneath 2,200 acres (8.9 km2) of the Malheur National Forest. (Full article...)
The Oregon Trail Memorial half dollar was a fifty-cent piece struck intermittently by the United States Bureau of the Mint between 1926 and 1939. The coin was designed by Laura Gardin Fraser and James Earle Fraser, and commemorates those who traveled the Oregon Trail and settled the Pacific Coast of the United States in the mid-19th century. Struck over a lengthy period in small numbers per year, the many varieties produced came to be considered a collector ripoff, and led to the end, for the time, of the commemorative coin series. Ohio-born Ezra Meeker had traveled the Trail with his family in 1852 and spent the final two decades of his long life before his death in 1928 publicizing the Oregon Trail, that it should not be forgotten. In 1926, at age 95, he appeared before a Senate committee, requesting that the government issue a commemorative coin that could be sold to raise money for markers to show where the Trail had been. Congress authorized six million half dollars, and placed no restriction on when or at what mint the coins would be struck. Meeker's Oregon Trail Memorial Association had tens of thousands of pieces struck in 1926 and 1928, and did not sell them all. Nevertheless, most years between 1933 and 1939, it had small quantities of the half dollar coined, in some years from all three operating mints to produce mintmarked varieties, and raised prices considerably. Many of the issues were controlled by coin dealers and speculators, and individual collectors had to pay high prices on the secondary market to obtain specimens. Public protests followed, and in 1939 Congress ended the series. Just over 260,000 of the 6,000,000 authorized coins were struck, of which about 60,000 were melted. The US commemorative coin that was struck over the longest period, the Oregon Trail Memorial half dollar has been widely praised for its design, but the Native American's intended gesture of peace has often been misunderstood as a demand that westbound settlers halt.
... that while building a wagon road along Union Creek, Francis M. Smith and John M. Corbell rediscovered Crater Lake, the deepest lake in the United States and one of the clearest in the world?
... that James A. Merriman was the only Black graduate from Rush Medical College in 1902 and the first African-American physician to practice medicine in Portland?
... that when Oregon journalist Larry Smyth was asked who he thought would win presidential elections, he invariably replied "the man who gets the most votes"?
... that Obed Dickinson, an abolitionist pastor in Oregon in the mid-1800s, was pressured into resigning for advocating for racial equality?
... that Gus C. Moser served five 4-year terms in the Oregon State Senate, including two non-consecutive 2-year periods as senate president, to which post he was elected unanimously in 1917?
The Oregon Coast Aquarium is an aquarium in Newport, Oregon. It is perhaps best known for having housed Keiko, the orca from the movie Free Willy, from January 1996 until 9 September 1998, when he was shipped to Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland. Even without its former star attraction, USA Today and Coastal Living Online have ranked the Oregon Coast Aquarium among the top ten aquariums in the United States.
This is destined to be a very wealthy portion of the United States, and, if to this we can add the most temperate, nothing will prevent our rising, and becoming a valuable acquisition to the union. Much power now lies in your hands, and, I sincerely hope, we may commence our new career with a law in our statute books, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of ardent spirits in Oregon territory.
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