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 U.S. 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 Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals is a non-profit museum in Hillsboro, Oregon, United States. Located just north of the Sunset Highway on the northern edge of Hillsboro, the earth science museum is in the Portland metropolitan area. Opened in 1997, the museum’s collections date to the 1930s with the museum housed in a home built to display the rock and mineral collections of the museum founders. The ranch style home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the first of its kind listed in Oregon. The museum sits on 23 wooded acres, with the main building containing 7,500 square feet (700 m2) of space. Collections include petrified wood, various fossils, fluorescent rocks, meteorites, and a variety of other minerals. With more than 4,000 specimens, the museum is the largest of its kind in the Pacific Northwest. The facility has around 25,000 visitors each year, many of whom are on school tours.
Betty Cantrell Roberts (1923–2011) was a politician and judge in the U.S. state of Oregon. She was the 83rd Associate Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, the highest state court in Oregon. She was the first woman on the Oregon Supreme Court, and had also been the first woman on the Oregon Court of Appeals. Roberts served from 1982 to 1986 on the high court and from 1977 to 1982 on the Court of Appeals. Roberts was born in Texas in 1923, growing-up in that state during the Great Depression of the 1930s. After attending Texas Wesleyan College for one year starting in 1941, she married and left school, eventually moving to Oregon. In 1958, Roberts earned a bachelor of science degree from Portland State University, followed by a masters degree at the University of Oregon, and in 1966, a JD from Lewis & Clark Law School. In 1964, Roberts the Democrat won election to the Oregon House of Representatives, serving until 1968 when she was elected to the Oregon Senate. During the 1975 legislature, Betty served in the Senate where both her step-daughter Mary Wendy Roberts and then-husband Frank L. Roberts also served. She was married three times, including to Frank and later to Keith Skelton, whom she would also serve with in the Oregon Legislature. Roberts lost her bid to become Oregon's governor in 1974, losing in the primary election, and then lost a campaign to become a United States Senator in the fall election. Then in 1977, Oregon GovernorRobert W. Straub appointed Betty Roberts as the first woman to the Oregon Court of Appeals. In 1982, Governor Victor G. Atiyeh appointed her as the first woman to the Oregon Supreme Court where she served until 1986. She was a private mediator and senior judge until her death due to pulmonary fibrosis.
... that Washington County Fire District 2 in Oregon began as the Hillsboro Rural Fire Protection District and is now headed by the Hillsboro Fire Department's chief?
... that Dick Magruder was elected to the Oregon House of Representatives at the age of 23 and came within one vote of being elected speaker before he was killed in a farm accident at the age of 31?
... that while George C. Brownell played no part in the Oregon land fraud scandal, a published cartoon showed him as the "Pretty Moth" that flew too close to the land fraud limelight?
... 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.
To the Legislative Assembly belongs the consideration of measures which may best tend to the development of the resources of the Territory. Oregon possesses within herself many of these, which with enterprise and industry will most surely render her a wealthy, powerful, and prosperous State. She has a fertile soil, and genial climate; she has [vast] forests and abundant fisheries, unlimited water power, pastures upon which even during winter, innumerable flocks and herds can subsist, with no other care than the mere herding; and prairies which could with only moderate labor, furnish the whole of our Pacific Territories with bread.
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