The Oregon Trail of Trivia: 55 Facts About the Beaver State
Oregon — especially Portland — is where the magic really happens. Sure, Washington has Seattle and its coffee and those tech bros, but Portland, Oregon? Everybody knows that Portland is where creativity thrives, where donuts are works of art, and where every bike lane feels like a red carpet for individuality. Oregon as a whole is a treasure trove of weirdness, natural beauty, and genuine coolness that Seattle just can’t touch, no matter how many cups of Starbucks they serve. From the smallest park in the world to the best craft beer scene on the planet, the Beaver State isn’t just better — it’s in a league of its own. So grab your locally roasted coffee and your favorite thrifted flannel because here are 55 reasons Oregon, led by Portland, that quirky capital of cool, deserves all the love.
What is Oregon known for?
1. Portland! The state’s largest city is famous for its vibrant food scene, craft breweries, coffeeshops, and quirky counter-culture hipster vibe, earning the slogan “Keep Portland Weird.” There’s even a television show starring that dude from Saturday Night Live and the guitarist from Sleater-Kinney that affectionately pokes fun at how eccentric and unconventional and artsy and indie and alternative and clever people in Portland think they are.
2. The Goonies! Few films are more popular and beloved by xennials than Richard Donner’s 1985 motion picture The Goonies, shot in Astoria, Oregon with those big-ass rocks you see in the water of the scenes at the beach. As kids who grew up in the analog world of the 1980s but transitioned into the digital age as young adults, xennials cherish The Goonies for its treasure-hunting, bike-riding, out-with-friends-all-day energy that feels emblematic of their pre-internet youth, perfectly capturing the adventurous, scrappy spirit of their childhood. Click here to purchase The Goonies today!
3. The Oregon Trail! The video game is a beloved classic that has entertained and educated generations of players since its creation in 1971, tho many folks are much more nostalgic for the 1985 version. Originally designed as a teaching tool to help students learn about 19th-century pioneers traveling from Missouri to Oregon, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon — and it’s the very first video game many xennials can ever remember playing. The simple graphics and text-based gameplay made it a unique combination of fun and learning, and phrases like “You have died of dysentery” became iconic to a certain generation.
Early history of Oregon facts
4. In 1938, this archaeologist dude named Luther Cressman discovered some sandals made out of sage bark in Fort Rock, Oregon that shows humans inhabited Oregon as far back as 13,000 years ago.
5. Humans continued to establish themselves in the are and by 8000 BCE, there were settlements all over Oregon, particularly by the Columbia River.
6. Before the 1600s, Native peoples in Oregon included the Chinook, Bannock, Takelma, and Klamath.
7. The first white guy to spot Oregon land was the Spanish explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, who was sailing off the coast of the Pacific Ocean in 1543.
8. Juan de Fuca was a Greek sailor working for Philip II of Spain when he studied and mapped the coastline that included Oregon in 1592.
9. In 1603, Spanish explorer Martín de Aguilar was sailing an expedition led Sebastián Vizcaíno when his ship was separated from the others and ended up north of California along the coast of Oregon. His logs contain some of the first written descriptions of the state.
10. In 1792, the American sea captain Robert Gray explored around Columbia River.
11. In 1806, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark — having completed the expedition they began from Illinois nearly two years prior — began their return voyage from Fort Clatsop, Oregon.
12. The Oregon Treaty on June 15, 1846 formally settled the Oregon boundary dispute between the United States and England.
13. On February 14, 1859, Oregon became the 33rd state of the United States. Valentine’s Day!
14. Oregon recognized the impact that littering and pollution was doing to our environment before many others, as they were the very first state to introduce a bottle bill in 1971 where people pay a deposit when buying redeemable beverage containers.
What are the state symbols of Oregon?
15. The state of New York declared the beaver as their official mammal in 1975, but the state of Oregon did it first in 1969.
16. Milk! It is supposed to do a body good. We’ll let the scientists tell you about that but in the meantime, it’s also a state symbol for Oregon, as well as Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, and also Wisconsin.
17. The 1990-91 Portland Trailblazers of the NBA went 63-19 that included a 61-game winning streak and big contributions from a peak Clyde Drexler. The state of Oregon was so proud of the team that lost the Western Conference finals to the Los Angeles Lakers that they named this squad the official state team of Oregon.
18. In 1939, Oregon designated the Douglas fir as the official state tree. The tree is named after this Scottish botanist named David Douglas who traveled through Oregon in the 1820s.
19. Unofficially, the western meadowlark has been the state bird of Oregon since 1927 after a bunch of schoolchildren were polled, but it was never actually ratified by the Oregon Legislature until 2017. It’s also a state symbol of Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming.
20. Believe or don’t, Oregon has an official dance and it’s none other than the square dance, the same one many an American child was forced to learn in gym class in public education schools all across the country. It also happens to be the official dance of Alabama, Arkansas, and Colorado and Connecticut, as well as Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, and Missouri. And Nebraska, North Dakota, and Oklahoma, as well as Tennessee and Texas. And Utah. And Virginia. And also Washington state. It’s also the official folk dance of California, New Jersey, and South Carolina.
21. A conchologist is someone who studies shells and in 1846, a conchologist named John Howard Redfield gave a name to a predatory sea snail found all along the coast of Northwest North America: Fusitrition oregonensis. In 1989, Oregon declared this lil gastropod mollusk the official state seashell.
22. Oregon’s unique geographical location — influenced by the Pacific Ocean and the mountains — create an equally unique environment that is especially beneficial to growing hazelnuts. As such, the state designated the hazelnut as the official nut of Oregon in 1989.
23. A long long time ago during the Miocene age — which was like 5 to 25 million years ago — the Metasequoia redwood tree flourished all over present-day Oregon and left a whole bunch of fossils across the state. In 2005, the Oregon made the Metasequoia the official state fossil.
What famous people are from Oregon?
24. Few cultural touchstones have had more of an impact and influence than The Simpsons, the longest-running United States primetime series in the history of television, as well as the longest-running animated series. It was created by Matt Groening, who was born in Portland, Oregon in 1954, and the fictional town of Springfield was inspired by Springfield, Oregon.
25. Grant Park in Portland is home to statues of Ramona Quimby, Henry Huggins, and Ribsy, the popular characters created by the adored children’s author Beverly Cleary, who lived to be 104(!) and was born in McMinnville, Oregon on April 12, 1916.
26. Theresa Penelope Raines was born in 1964 in Eugene, Oregon, and met her husband Steve while doing wildlife rehab work in Australia. She became Terri Irwin, and now runs the Australia Zoo with their children, continuing the family’s work with conservation.
27. Mark Rothko was a pioneering abstract expressionist whose evocative color field paintings redefined modern art by focusing on emotional depth, spirituality, and the transcendent power of pure color and form. He was born in what is now Daugavpils, Latvia in 1903 under the Russian Empire, but moved to Portland, Oregon in 1913.
28. With his work in Stand by Me and Running on Empty and My Own Private Idaho, River Phoenix was on his way to becoming one of the most beloved and iconic actors of his generation when he sadly passed away on Halloween 1993. River was born in Madras, Oregon on August 23, 1970.
29. Figure skater Tonya Harding was the first American woman in history (and the second ever) to successfully land a triple axel in an international skating competition, tho was banned for life by the United States Figure Skating Association for her role in the aftermath of her ex-husband assaulting Nancy Kerrigan. Much was made of this incident, including the 2017 film I, Tonya starring Margot Robbie. Tonya was born in Portland in 1970.
30. With collections like Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love and Cathedral and Where I’m Calling From, Raymond Carver is considered one of the best short story writers in the history of American literature and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1989 shortly after his death. He was born in Clatskanie, Oregon on May 25, 1938.
Topography & geography of Oregon
31. The state capital of Oregon is Salem. It is a completely different town than the one in Massachusetts that thought they were putting witches on trial.
32. In addition to Portland and Salem, other major cities in Oregon include Eugene, Bend, Astoria, Springfield, and Beaverton.
33. Oregon has 36 counties! Bet you can’t name them all.
34. Nearly 8,000 years ago, Mount Mazama in Klamath County, Oregon erupted and then it collapsed and then it left behind a big-ass crater that was eventually filled with rainwater and melted snow that it ended up creating Crater Lake, the deepest lake in the United States at its maximum depth of 1,949 feet. The water is also clear and blue af.
35. It would be sound obvious to guess that the deepest gorge in North America would be the Grand Canyon in Arizona but Hells Canyon is actually like 2,000 feet deeper than the Grand Canyon.
36. Oregon is the 9th-biggest state in total area, with 98,831 square miles of water and land.
37. The width of Oregon is exactly 400 miles, while the length is 360 miles.
38. At 11,249 feet high above sea level, Mount Hood is the highest elevation point in the state of Oregon.
39. The lowest point in the state of Oregon is the Pacific Ocean, which, ofc, is zero feet above sea level.
40. At one point, the Guinness World Records people listed the 440-foot D River in Lincoln City, Oregon as the shortest river in the world, before they decided that the Roe River in Montana should have that title.
Where should I visit in Oregon?
41. Some of the best cheddar cheese in the whole world can be found in Oregon, and the folks at Tillamook Cheese Factory in Tillamook, Oregon are some of the best in the cheese business, cheesing it up for over 100 years. Cheese connoisseurs are encouraged to check out the cheesemaking and cheese-tasting tour that they have on offer.
42. The Freakybuttrue Peculiarium in Portland, Oregon does a great job of making sure Portland stays weird with its collection of oddball toys, shrunken heads, and haunted dolls. Established in 1967, this odditorium is dedicated to the bizarre and strange and surreal, with an alien autopsy display and a creepy Krampus statue that is popular for pictures with friends. Aesop Rock even shot a live video of his 2016 song “Lazy Eye” here.
43. The Kam Wah Chung State Heritage Site in John Day, Oregon is a Chinese herbal apothecary that has been preserved and listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its significance in telling the story of Chinese immigrants who settled in Oregon in the years after the Civil War.
44. The biggest independent bookstore in the world is considered to be Powell’s City of Books in Portland, part of the small chain of Powell’s Books that has several stores and warehouses in the area. Bookworms and bibliophiles come from all over to browse among the four million books they have on their shelves, and you should, too.
45. The World’s Tallest Barber Pole was erected in Lincoln Park located in Forest Grove, Oregon. According to their sign, it is 72 feet tall but for some reason all the sources describe it as 73 feet tall. Someone other than us should visit it and take exact measurements and set the record straight.
46. The Portland Art Museum (PAM) was built in 1932 and among its 40,000 works of art you’ll find The Ox-Cart by Vincent van Gogh, Nude with Beads (Frida Kahlo) by Diego Rivera, and River at Lavacourt by Claude Monet.
Fun, cool, interesting & weird Oregon facts
47. The smallest park in the world is considered to be Mill Ends Park in downtown Portland, Oregon, measuring at just 452 square inches. Please keep in mind that all dogs must be leashed when they are in this park.
48. There is a town in Oregon called Boring. It is located just outside Portland and it is named after a Union soldier named William Harrison Boring, who built a farm there in 1856.
49. Portland, Oregon was almost called Boston, Oregon. When the city was founded way back in 1843, these two businessdudes Asa Lovejoy and Francis Pettygrove tossed a coin to determine if the new place should be called Boston (Asa’s hometown) or Portland (Francis’s hometown). Ofc, Francis won.
50. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland was found in 1935 and has been a major force of theater ever since, putting on productions of plays by Tennessee Williams and Anton Chekov and Eugene O’Neill and Tom Stoppard and Lisa Loomer and Lauren Gunderson and Paula Vogel. World-renowned, the festival attracts Bard-loving actors, playwrights, and theater-goers from all over the world.
51. All of Oregon’s beaches and coastline is publicly owned, thanks to an act passed in 1913 by Governor Oswald West, and Hawaii is the only other state that has done this.
52. Thank goodness for the Grigg brothers! If you love tater tots — and whom among us does not? — then you should write a thank-you card to F. Nephi and Golden Grigg, a pair of brothers who invented our favorite entrée in Ontario, Oregon in 1953 as a way to repurpose and serve parts of the potato that would typically be trashed. The brothers also founded the Ore-Ida brand (the name combines Oregon and Idaho) and despite its colloquial generic use, the brand holds the trademark for the name “tater tot.”
53. With over 400 miles of cycling infrastructure throughout the city, Portland is considered one of the most bike-friendly places in the country. Their love of the outdoors only compounds the strong bike culture here.
54. The biggest known living organism in the whole wide entire world is this big-ass fungus called Armillaria located in the Malheur National Forest in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon. This goddam thing is almost 3.5 square miles underneath the forest floor, and it’s a kind of honey mushroom that slowly sucks the life of the trees growing on and around it, and so much grows from the inside of trees that it can push the bark out of the way. It’s not called the Humongous Fungus for nothing!
55. It was illegal to pump your own gas in Oregon until 2023. This law was a lot more common among states when automobiles and highways and gas stations were still pretty new but these laws were phased out as the act of pumping gas got safer and safer. Oregon was the next-to-last state to change this law, and New Jersey is now the lone holdout.
Cover Image Credit: Image by David Mark from Pixabay
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