A Guide to the State of Oregon

Oregon Blue Book

The Oregon Blue Book is an official state directory and manual concerning state, county, city, federal and tribal governments, with related general information.

The online version is continually updated and contains more information and resources than is possible with the paper copy. This site will give you a thorough knowledge of Oregon including its history, physical characteristics, recreation, state government, local government, voting information, cultural activities, plus lots more. So, take a tour of the state capitol, view scenes from Oregon counties, and hear the state song, Oregon, My Oregon.

Oregon: The Name

The first written record of the name "Oregon" comes to us from a 1765 proposal for a journey written by Major Robert Rogers, an English army officer. It reads, "The rout ... is from the Great Lakes towards the Head of the Mississippi, and from thence to the River called by the Indians Ouragon. ..." His proposal rejected, Rogers reapplied in 1772, using the spelling "Ourigan." The first printed use of the current spelling appeared in Captain Jonathan Carver's 1778 book, "Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America 1766, 1767 and 1768." He listed the four great rivers of the continent, including "the River Oregon, or the River of the West, that falls into the Pacific Ocean at the Straits of Annian."

In April, 2004, two researchers say they've solved one of the oldest place name mysteries in the country: the origin of "Oregon." "This is really the holy grail of U.S. place names," Thomas Love, a Linfield College anthropology professor, said. "It took us a long time, but we nailed it." Love, working by telephone and e-mail with Ives Goddard, a Smithsonian Institution linguist, labored more than six years devising and refining the theory. "Oregon," they argue, is derived from "wauregan," a Connecticut tribe's pidgin word for "good, beautiful." They also argue that "wauregan" was related to another Eastern tribe's word "olighin," which means "beautiful river" -- and that link led to the use of "wauregan" in naming a Northwest river flowing into the Pacific Ocean.

The Oregon Encyclopedia

In 2007, Portland State University and the Oregon Historical Society launched "The Oregon Encyclopedia," a free online facts about the significant people, places, institutions and events that have shaped who, where and what we are. The encyclopedia will be a work in progress through 2009, when the state celebrates its 150th birthday.

The project will grow and change as Oregon does, the encyclopedia is expected to include up to 3,000 entries with more than 200 essays, plus photos, documents and maps. They will cover topics dating from 10,000 years ago to present, and range from economic and demographic shifts to biographies, art, music, popular culture, plus more.

What is an Oregonian

Chet Orloff, former head of the Oregon Historical Society, wrote a column in The Oregonianabout the character of Oregonians in November 2001. This was after Oregon has taken on the US Attorney General (John Ashcroft), in challenging directives to abrogate our Death with Dignity Act and, in Portland, to detain and interview visitors and citizens of Middle Eastern descent. Here are some of his words.

We Oregonians are a contrary lot. The vast majority of those on the Oregon Trail in the mid-19th century turned south to the California gold fields. A few headed north, marking the beginning of the state of Oregon as we know it now. They took the road less traveled.

It took years for many of the other states to catch up with Oregon's initiative, referendum and recall governance. Today, for all its many faults, the system is the stock in trade of participatory democracy.

Governor Oswald West made the beaches open to all by declaring the coastline a public highway and setting the course for Oregon's 20th century conservation movement. What notions in a land of private property! West dealt with legislators by announcing that if they tried to kill off his measures, he would "veto any bill that they fathered . . . whether it had merit or not." In 1911 he vetoed 63 bills.

The go-against-the-grain leadership of Wayne Morse (Vietnam), Maurine Neuberger (women's issues), Mark Hatfield (use of military force, health care and education), Tom McCall (land use) and Neil Goldschmidt (downtown revitalization) pushed and pulled Oregonians, and Americans, to think in new ways.

Consider Metro, still one of the nation's better efforts at regional government and yet one that few other regions have emulated -- not from lack of trying and enthusiasm, but from lack of will and imagination. It will take decades even for many Oregonians to appreciate what future historians will acknowledge as yet another example of Oregon's being ahead of the curve.

Oregon, in the words of its deeply missed laureate Terence O'Donnell, is a "time-deep land." The land itself and the history upon it are unique to Oregon. Considering all that we face today, how well we manage this land can continue to set us apart from, and put us ahead of, the crowd.

Chet Orloff

Oregon Relationship With California

Oregonians love to complain about them, those outsiders from other states who don't appreciate the Oregon way of doing things.

Carl Abbot is a teacher of urban studies and planning at Portland State University. He is the author of a number of studies of the changing patterns of regional growth in the United States, including The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the Modern American West. Carl had this to say in mid-October 2005 in a article in The Oregonian entitled, Caught in California's Orbit.

We talk about showing visitors the door, rolling up the welcome mat and legislating zero growth. We hold up Los Angeles as the Godzilla of planning, and we fear creeping Seattleization.

Well, let's get over it. For the foreseeable future, Oregon is the little state between two bigger states. We should happily look for the benefits that spill over the borders. California, like it or not, provides us with brains, capital, customers and a shove into the fast lane.

So maybe it's time to revisit our Cali-phobia. Here are six ways California and Californians are making Oregon a more prosperous and interesting place.

• Without Silicon Valley, the Silicon Forest would be the Silicon Woods. Oregon did develop a homegrown electronics industry in Tektronix and its progeny, such as Mentor Graphics and Floating Point Systems, but Tek reached the top of its growth curve in the 1970s. Since then we've depended on Hewlett Packard (from California) and Intel (from . . . you know the answer).
• Which brings up point two: Without California's universities, less brain power would be available to tackle Oregon problems. This state's higher education system doesn't match California's. Given our chronic under funding of higher education, Oregon depends on recruiting highly credentialed workers from California universities to compete in a brain-powered world. Lots of attention has been devoted to the problem of expanding engineering programs in Oregon universities, but the need for educated talent stretches across the board.
• Oregon is pinning a lot of hope on the "creative services" sector of the economy, which produces the software, multimedia, advertising and entertainment products that flow through every cell phone, computer, satellite dish and cable hookup. It's great that Portland is one of the most attractive cities in the country for cool, well-educated people in their 20s and early 30s. But California's huge media and entertainment industry is an essential client of ours. For a little history, remember it was California raisins that made Will Vinton Studios an early success in this field.
• More Californians mean more diversity of ethnicity and ideas. Fifty years from now, the United States is going to be a rainbow nation of races and ethnic groups, with European-origin Americans no longer the automatic majority. California is getting there first, as it does in a lot of things. One reaction has been what Mary Murphy, a Montana State University professor, called the "white flight highway" that white Californians take to Idaho, Nevada, Utah or Montana in the hope of escaping racial diversity. Oregon is also one of the white flight destinations, but our civic culture has not been especially receptive. Instead, California migration is slowly helping Oregon ease into the Pacific Rim world in which Asians, North Americans, Central Americans and South Americans mingle in a vast global neighborhood and marketplace.
• Without Californians, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival would find it hard to maintain its rich array of offerings and outstanding national reputation. Why? There are more Californians in its audience than Oregonians (44 percent to 38 percent. And what would Mount Bachelor do without California skiers? What would Oregon Coast restaurants and motels do without California tourists? How would Realtors in Central Oregon fill their time if they couldn't show vacation and retirement properties to Californians?
• Last but not least, it's time for a confession. I'm not a native here, although I consider myself a naturalized Oregonian. I reached Portland by way of school years in Dayton, Ohio, higher education in Philadelphia and Chicago and university jobs in Denver and Norfolk, Va. When I arrived, in 1977, one of the first things I noticed was a peculiar Oregon approach to freeway driving. Oregonians were slow! They may have had freeways, but they treated them like Oregon 34, wending its quiet two-lane way from Waldport to Alsea. Californians have been the cure. By impatient example, they've taught us how to merge into fast-moving traffic. It's about time we learned. The 21st century will make the 20th look pokey, so we can be grateful for anyone who gets us up to speed.

The Computer Game: Oregon Trail

Remoteness contributes to Oregon's reputation as a wild place, a state of tough and rugged individuals. The journey lives on in books, school texts and museums, but probably never with as much reach as a computer game of the same name. Oregon Trail infiltrated primitive school computer labs of the 1980s.

The game was created in 1971 by Don Rawitsch and two friends, all seniors at Minnesota's Carleton College, on a mainframe computer. Rawitsch researched the game by poring through real Oregon Trail diaries and maps. He kept a scorecard, noting the frequency of storms, food shortages and illness to build probabilities.

The game was inspired by the real-life Oregon Trail and was designed to teach school children about the realities of 19th century pioneer life on the trail. The player assumes the role of a wagon leader guiding his party of settlers from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon's Willamette Valley by way of the Oregon Trail via a Conestoga wagon in 1848.

A few years later, rawitsch was hired at a Minnesota state-funded organization that developed educational software, and he resurrected oregon trail. as personal computers spread, so did the game. he uploaded his game into the organization's network where it could be accessed by schools across minnesota, and it proved so popular that it was released and sold on floppy disk in 1985, when the format became popular. several updated versions were released.

By then, Rawitsch had impressions of modern Oregon: politically progressive, environmentally conscious. He heard about Steve Prefontaine, the legendary runner known for his grit. "The people who made it, they had to be special," he says. "They had to be tough and resourceful and self-sufficient. I'm sure they had to build their lives from scratch. That whole self-reliant aspect, for me, matches up with the people from your state who have done pioneering work."

A popular aspect of the game is the ability to go hunting. Using guns and bullets purchased over the course of the game, players select the hunt option and hunt wild animals to add to their food reserves. Bison (replaced by bear on the second half of the trail) are the slowest moving targets and yielded the most food, while rabbits and squirrels are fast and offered very small amounts of food. Deer were in-between in speed, size, and food yield. While the amount of wild game shot during a hunting excursion is only limited by the player's supply of bullets, the maximum amount that can be carried back to the wagon is 100 pounds. In later versions, as long as there were at least two living members of the wagon party, 200 pounds could be carried back to the wagon.

Oregon Trail went on to be a cult phenomenon − there's even a fancy new version − spawning everything from Facebook groups to t-shirts with the iconic wagon. You can download the game (at a cost), buy the CD for less than $10, or play it online for free.

Source: Article entitled, "Sequential al Identities," The Oregonian, February 14, 2009.

Oregon Economic Data

Oregon ranks 15th in the Progressive Policy Institute's New Economy Index, 23rd in PricewaterhouseCoopers' venture capital index and 27th in per-capita income according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Take a stroll through a detailed Web site called EconData. The site has links to anything that you want to count, measure, sort, or slice about the regional economy.

In 1950, forest products manufacturing − "lumber and wood products" and "paper and allied products" − employed 62 percent of Oregon's manufacturing workers. By 1997, it employed 25 percent.

Semiconductors, Solar Panels, and Data Centers

In 1994 and 1995, several companies announced their intention to build large semiconductor factories in Oregon within a few years. These factories would employ a total of several thousand people in the manufacture of microcomputer chips. By 1997, several of these new factories had been built and 28 percent of Oregon's manufacturing workers were employed in high technology companies. But these high-profile factories had a solid base of high technology on which to build. Intel's 15,000 - 17,000 Oregon workers are the largest number of Intel workers employed in any state. The suburban area and towns just west of Portland are collectively referred to as the Silicon Forest.

As early as 1946, Oregon became home to a prominent electronics company named Tektronix, a company that continues to play an important role in the state's high technology industry. Hewlett-Packard joined Oregon's growing high tech industry in 1975, followed by Intel in 1976. Many more prominent high technology companies opened factories in Oregon during the 1980s and 1990s. Some of them were spinoffs of Oregon's existing high technology companies.

Converting Chip Plants to Solar Panels

The chip industry has vacated some of their plants in the Washington County area and moved more of their operations to Asia. Some of these former chip plants are now producing solar panels. For example, Solarworld, a German company acquired a chip factory in Hillsboro in 2007 with plans to invest $397 million to double its solar-cell and wafer production by 2010 and add 1,000 new jobs. The Hillsboro factory will be the largest solar-wafer and cell factory in the United States.

In July, 2009, a Chinese startup vying for a piece of the U.S. solar market landed in Eugene, Oregon. It hopes to become a national player in the state's growing photovoltaic industry. Centron Solar will sell and distribute bargain-priced solar panels made in China to the U.S. market, expected to be the world's next big solar player. It leased its Eugene headquarters and 25,000-square-foot warehouse just in time to store it first million dollar shipment of solar panels from China.

Data Centers

Data centers arrived in Oregon in 2005. From Umatilla to Prineville to Hillsboro, server farms are sprouting across the state. They are the physical manifestations of the cloud that hosts your Gmail, movie streams and Facebook friends. Oregon didn't set out to recruit data centers, which aren't big employers as most employ 50-150 workers. Their technology and investment are nonetheless beginning to transform the rural communities where they operate.

This is Oregon's newest industry and, by some measures, may soon be among its biggest. Only chip-makers spend more on their Oregon facilities. They're here for the cheap power a big data center can gobble up more electricity than a small town − and the mild climate that keeps their hardworking computers cool. Google pays about 4 cents per kilowatt hour which adds up to about 13 million a year.

Above all, they're here for tax breaks that make Oregon a relative bargain for companies that can spend $1 billion or more on a single facility.

Data center are attracted by Oregon's lack of sales tax and the broad property tax exemptions earmarked for companies that build in special tax havens called enterprise zones. Wasco County estimates the enterprise zone saves Google $24 million a year in The Dalles, nearly twice the company's hefty power bill. Facebook and Amazon enjoy tax breaks in Prineville and Morrow County, respectively, while at least four other companies are scouting rural enterprise zones for possible data centers.

The biggest names on the Web, Facebook, Google and Amazon, are here, and others soon will be. As of early 2012, Apple is building a 10,000 square foot center in Prinville and Amazon and Facebook are both building additional centers in eastern Oregon. Rackspace, a San Antonia-based data hosting company is planning a data center on 99 acres at the Port of Morrow. Other builders, shrouding their identities behind code-names such as "Maverick," are scouting sites in eastern and central Oregon.

Agriculture

Oregon counties are among the national leaders in multiple crop categories, according to the state Department of Agriculture. Hood River leads the nation in pear production, while Malheur County has more acres planted in onions than any other U.S. county and Umatilla leads in pea production. In all, Oregon counties made the top 10 in acreage or sales value for 75 crops or commodities. The figures come from the 2007 Census of Agriculture. Oregon is the nation's leading producer of Christmas trees and it produces nearly all of the nation's hazelnuts.

In Oregon and the nation, cattle are among the top agricultural moneymakers. Cattle are the biggest consumers of corn. In 2008, the Oregon's cattle industry brought in about $644 million in gross sales (14% of the total state farm sales). In 2009, Oregon had 605,000 beef cattle in 11,500 operations, mostly in the southern and eastern parts of the state. Raising cattle on pastures consumes about 60 percent of the state's 17 million acres of farmland, according to an Oregon State University Extension Service report. Like logging, ranching has grown controversial and political. Environmental groups worry that cattle herds trample stream banks, causing erosion to salmon habitat. Debates wage over whether cattle should be allowed to graze on public lands, which make up a large portion of the state's pastureland. At the same time, consumers demand more natural beef raised on grass, without hormones or antibiotics. That requires more grazing land. And ranchers must adjust to a globalized marketplace where currency rates matter.

Oregon Voting: Initiative and Referendum

As a new Oregonian, you may be in shock when you receive your first "Voter Information" booklets from the Secretary of State. It can take days to digest the volumes - yes, you may get more than one book − and then ponder how to vote on numerous issues.

The Oregon System − the initiative and referendum − gained Oregon national recognition for the degree of citizen involvement in the processes of self-government. Passed by 91% in 1902, Oregon became the third State in the Union to adopt the process. Since then, Oregon voters have deliberated on over 300 measures, more than any of the other 22 states with similar citizen initiative abilities. Oregonians are serious about the Oregon System, and many politicians who have abused the law have suffered the consequence at the ballot box.

Initiatives are citizen-sponsored amendments to either the state constitution or to statutory law. Referrals are proposed laws that the legislature has sent to the voters to either approve or reject. Referendums give citizens the power to refer and vote on acts passed by the previous Legislative Assembly, as long as the act does not take effect earlier than 90 days after the end of the assembly. Initiatives are sponsored by any citizen or organization in the state, as are referendums. Referrals are sponsored by the state legislature.

What is the difference between a constitutional and a statutory amendment? A constitutional amendment amends the Oregon state Constitution, which affects all laws based on the amended portion of the constitution. A statutory initiative either amends state statutes or creates a new state statute, but has no effect on the Oregon constitution.

In order to place a statutory initiative on the ballot the petitioners must collect the signatures of qualified voters, equal to 6 percent of the total votes cast for all candidates at the most recent gubernatorial election. A constitutional amendment initiative, on the other hand, must contain signatures equal to 8 percent of the total votes cast for all candidates at the most recent gubernatorial election. In 2006, it takes 75,630 valid signatures from registered voters to change a state law via initiative and 100,840 to amend the Oregon Constitution.

For more detail information about Oregon's initiative and referendum law visit these Web sites:

• BallotMeasure.com An Oregon-based Web site that tracks initiatives.
• Oregon Voting Maintained by Ernie Delmazzo, a researcher and paralegal. Ernie's site provides news and information about Oregon voting including the election process and present and proposed law, including ballot initiatives. It's object is to educate the public in a nonpartisan manner. Ernie has written a number of General Election and Voting Systems Research reports. WARNING: the site is hosted on a "freebie" server so you have to content with the "popup" ads.
• 1996 City Club Report on Initiative and Referendum A public affairs education and research organization serving the Portland metropolitan area for over 80 years.
• Project Vote-Smart A national library of factual information on over 13,000 elected offices and candidates for public office − President, Governors, Congress and State Legislatures.

Oregon's Free Speech

Oregon is where speech is freer than anywhere else in the nation − or for that matter, perhaps the world. Written in 1857, Oregon's free-speech guarantee in an article of the state constitution. It reads:

"No law shall be passed restraining the free expression of opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write, or print freely on any subject whatever; but every person shall be responsible for the abuse of this right."

This language is broader − "any subject whatever" − than the First Amendment. During the 1980s, the Oregon court concluded that Article 18 absolutely forbids government from passing laws directed at the content of what residents express.

Expressive behavior such as speech, writing, film, video, etc. may sometimes injure specific individuals; the state constitution allows those people to receive damages for "abuse" of the right.

This jurisprudence has made Oregon's free-speech law the most protective in the nation. Nude dancing, for example, is a form of expression and under current reasoning can't be banned. In a court case, a judge dismissed charges against a nude bicyclist in November 2008 on the grounds that the city's annual World Naked Bike Ride was a well-established tradition in Portland.

Oregon's popular self-rule means local juries can't slap unpopular publications with huge punitive damages for libel. It means the Oregon Legislature can't pass laws outlawing disparagement of local crops. And it means police in Oregon can't arrest protesters on public property just because their message is unpopular.

Some Oregonians get upset by the wide-open market in images and words this law has spawned. Three times that minority has asked voters to change the state constitution to make an exception for sex and three times the voters have refused.

Oregon Bottle Bill

In 1971, Oregon passed the first bottle bill (also known as a deposit law) in the United States, requiring a five cent refundable deposits on all beer and soft drink containers. By 1986, ten states (over one-quarter of the U.S. population) had enacted some form of beverage container deposit law or bottle bill.

The first bottle bill was passed in Vermont in 1953. However, it did not institute a deposit system. It merely banned the sale of beer in non-refillable bottles. The law subsequently expired four years later after strong lobbying from the beer industry. British Columbia enacted the first beverage container recovery system in North America in 1970.

A nickel in 1971, when the bill was first passed, is worth 28 cents in 2011. So after years of debate and negotiation, lawmakers approved sweeping changes on 2011 to Oregon's iconic bottle bill. The bill makes three major changes:

• It puts a nickel deposit on nearly all glass, metal and plastic beverage containers from 4 ounces to 1 1/2 liters with the exception of those containing milk, wine or liquor. This goes into effect no later than Jan. 1, 2018.
• The bill increases the current nickel deposit to a dime − but only if statewide redemption rates fall below 80 percent two years in a row. The earliest this could happen would be 2017.
• It allows the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative to open a pilot redemption center that covers a wider area than the roughly 1.5-mile radius targeted by the two centers, which have been open for less than a year.

Oregon Health Plan

The Oregon Health Plan, begun in 1994, was Oregon's effort to expand Medicaid to include more low-income residents by giving priority to coverage of the most cost-effective treatments. The reform grew out of 47 "town meetings" in which citizens told officials what kind of care and coverage they valued most.

Oregon uses a list of hundreds of conditions and their treatments and higher priority is given to conditions that can be successfully treated. Also part of the plan is preventive care.

Oregon Public Beaches

In 1913 Gov. Oswald West signed a law that declared Oregon's beaches a public highway, and thus, public property, to provide citizens with access to "the great birthright of our people." It wasn't until 1966 that challenges to ownership of the dry sands above the median high tide mark came into focus. In 1966, Cannon Beach motel owner Bill Hay decided to test those rights. To protect his guests, he put a log barrier on the beach in front of his motel, the Surfsand Motel, and made people leave the area if they were not motel guests. A picnicking couple was told they were trespassing on the sand at a Cannon Beach motel, and the authorities who investigated their complaint were shocked to find that the state was in legal limbo to prevent similar trespassing charges.

In the remarkable 1967 legislative session, House Bill 1601, commonly known as "The Beach Bill," was introduced and passed making the entire Oregon coast public and removing any doubt of whether the public has access to the beaches. The bill's passage marked the beginning of an era of progressive conservation measures that provided a national, and even international, model and helped define Oregon's political, cultural and recreational life.

Oregon Beach Bill decreed that all land within sixteen vertical feet of the average low tide mark belongs to the people of Oregon and guarantees that the public has free and uninterrupted use of the beaches along Oregon’s 363 miles of coastline. A state easement exists up to the line of vegetation. Only one other state, Hawaii, guarantees public access from the surf line to the vegetation line. The Beach Bill also directed that the ocean shore be administered as a state recreation area. The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department is charged with the protection and preservation of the recreation, scenic, and natural resource values found on Oregon’s ocean shore.

Tom Olsen, who teaches filmmaking at Portland Community College, agreed to make a documentary film and compile an exhibit on the historic battle for the society to celebrate Oregon's 150th birthday next February 2009. Tom Olsen put his discoveries into "Politics of Sand," which premiered at the Northwest Film & Video Festival in November 2008.

Death with Dignity Act

In 1994 Oregon became the first state to legalize doctor-assisted suicide. Oregon voters narrowly approved the Death With Dignity Act in 1994 and reaffirmed it in 1997 by a 60-40 margin after legal challenges. In 2008, Washington State voters passed Initiative 1000 by nearly 60 percent. Their "Death with Dignity" law took effect in early March of 2009.

Under the Oregon law, doctors can prescribe a lethal drug dose to a terminally ill patient of sound mind who requests it both in writing and aloud, and meets other requirements. Since the law was passed in 1997, 525 (as of the end of 2010) patients have died from ingesting medications prescribed under the Death with Dignity Act.

In a August 22, 2006 article in The Oregonian, Dr. Susan Tolle, Director of the Center for Ethics in Health Care at Oregon Health & Science University, said that several unique factors contributed to Oregon's enactment of the nation's first doctor-assisted suicide law. "Among them: the state's tradition of rugged individualism, its strongly secular politics, its comfort level with uncharted political territory, and its early attention to end-of-life care, including hospice."

Even aside from assisted suicide, end-of-life care looks different in Oregon. Oregon ranks number one among states in use of home hospice care and fewer than one in four deaths in Oregon occurs in a hospital, half the national rate.

The U.S. Supreme Court's ruled in January 2006, in favor of Oregon and against the Bush administration, by a 6 to 3 vote. The high court's ruling did not address the right to end one's life, but it did end speculation that the Justice Department could punish doctors for prescribing in accordance with Oregon's Death With Dignity Act. The court decision was an interpretation of the Controlled Substances Act.

Gay Marriages in Oregon and Washington State

Since Oregon enacted its domestic partnership law in 2008, more than 4,000 same-sex couples have registered for domestic partnerships in the state, according to the latest numbers (early 2012) from the Oregon Health Authority.

Washington legalize same-sex marriage in February, 2012. Washington becomes the seventh state — and the only one west of the Rockies — to allow same-sex marriage. The debate in Washington is far from over. Opponents of same-sex marriage vow to fight the bill with a repeal measure. Signatures for a referendum are due June 6, 2012 and if enough are turned in on time, the enactment of gay marriage could be delayed until after the November election. A recent University of Washington poll revealed increasing support for gay marriage among Washington voters. Of those surveyed, 55 percent said they would uphold a same-sex marriage bill if it were to pass the Legislature and then come to a popular vote.

The Washington state law would open up the possibilities for those couples and others. Unlike domestic partnership in Oregon, gay marriage in Washington would have no residency requirements. But voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2004 that says that "only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid." Basic Rights Oregon, an advocacy group for same-sex couples, plans to introduce an initiative to repeal the amendment in 2014.

Oregon Demographics

From the 2010 Census

Oregon's population grew by 409,675 people over the decade, up 12 percent, according to Census figures. Oregon is up one notch, to 27th in the nation.

Even though Central Oregon suffered heavily in the recession, the boom that came before resulted in Bend gaining 47 percent in population over the decade, according to the figures released Wednesday. Bend's smaller Deschutes County neighbor Redmond nearly doubled in size. The county itself grew by 37 percent, and neighboring Jefferson County grew 14 percent. Among the largest cities, Grants Pass in Southern Oregon recorded a 50 percent growth rate, although one population expert noted that nearly half the new population was annexed into the city. Jackson County grew 12 percent, and its seat, Medford, the seventh-largest city grew 19 percent. Five counties in Northwest Oregon and the middle Willamette Valley were among the eight that had growth above the state average. Notable was the state's second-most populous county, Washington, at 19 percent. The others were Columbia and Linn at 13 percent, Polk at 21 percent and Yamhill at 17 percent.

Oregon State Flag

The Oregon state flag, adopted in 1925, is navy blue with gold lettering and symbols. Blue and gold are the state colors. Below the shield, which is part of the state seal, is written "1859," the year of Oregon's admission to the union as the 33rd state. The flag's reverse side depicts a beaver. Oregon has the distinction of being the only state in the union whose flag has a different pattern on the reverse side.

Oregon 55% Public Land

56% of the state of Oregon is publicly owned land and approximately half of the state is forested, which means we have almost 30 million acres of forests to play.

Western Meadowlark
State Bird

Beaver
State Animal

Grape
State Flower

Chinook Salmon
State Fish

Hazelnut
State Nut

Pear
State Fruit

Oregon Swallowtail
State Insect

Douglas Fir
State Tree

Oregon State Capitol

The Oregon Pioneer statue that tops the capitol building was done by Ulric Ellerhusen. This heroic figure represents the spirit of Oregon's early settlers. Cast in bronze and finished in gold leaf, it weights 8.5 tons and is hollow inside. The base of the 23-foot high statue is 140 feet above the ground.

The Gilkey Covered Bridge spans Thomas Creek in Linn County and until 1960, it stood next to a covered railroad bridge.
Oregon has 51 covered bridge, the most this side of the Mississippi River, The Oregon Covered Bridge Festivalis an annual event and the only one in the West.

Multnomah Falls is Oregon's highest at 620 feet.

Oregon's beaches are public property providing citizens with access to
362 miles of sand.

Klamath River looking downstream.

Oregon has two National Parks: Crater Lake National Park and Fort Clatsop. Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the nation at 1,949 feet. Fort Clatsop became a national monument in 1958 and was elevated to national historic park status in 2004, prior to the Lewis and Clark Expedition bicentennial. Fort Clatsop was where the Lewis and Clark Expedition wintered in 1806.

Oregon is the nation's biggest producer and exporter of Christmas trees, selling about 7.3 million trees a year, more than twice that of No. 2 North Carolina. Christmas trees represent a $101 million industry in the state.

In 1971, Oregon passed the first bottle bill (also known as a deposit law) in the United States, requiring a five cent refundable deposits on all beer and soft drink containers.

During Tom McCall years as governor of Oregon from 1967 to 1975 the state exploded with ideas, social experimentation, and novelty. The landmarks that Oregon is still known for − land-use planning, strong pollution controls, protection of public beaches, the bottle bill − all came during his eight years as governor.
The famous phrase that made him known throughout the country was at a Junior Chamber of Commerce Convention in 1971. He told the delegates: "We want you to visit our State of Excitement often. Come again and again. But, for heaven’s sake, don’t move here to live.

The Swoosh has become the living, vibrant symbol of Nike (an Oregon company) and it is totally recognizable as the company, everywhere. In the late 1960s, Carolyn Davidson, a graphic arts student, met Nike founder Phil Knight, then an assistant professor at Portland State University. Phil asked Carolyn to create a logo for the company he was about to start. Davidson created the swoosh and submitted her bill for $35. A few year later (before Nike went public in 1980) Knight caught Davidson by surprise during a shareholders meeting when he announced the Swoosh creator had been given 500 shares of stock, which she has never sold and is worth over $600,000 today.

Oregon is one of two states (the other is New Jersey) where only service station attendant can pump gas. The state law doesn’t ban people from pumping their own diesel gas, because diesel doesn’t qualify as a Class I flammable liquid as specified in the statute.