The Lazy Person's Guide to Oregon
Celebrating Oregon’s 150th birthday party.
By: Ann Terry Hill 03/01/2009
Rendezvous at These Fur Outposts
Fort Clatsop, Lewis & Clark’s winter encampment near Astoria, comes to life with re-enactors beginning in mid-June and ending Labor Day weekend. The replica may have burned down in 2005, but the spirit of history lives on. That same year, the Fort-to-Sea Trail opened, re-creating the route the Corps may have taken to reach the Pacific from the fort. (If you’re visiting the third weekend in August, take a detour to Seaside, where a Salt Makers party is held to commemorate the salt camp the Corps built to augment their provisions for the trek home.)
Clatsop is not the only fort remembered. The city of Astoria is named for fur trader John Jacob Astor, who established the headquarters for his Pacific Fur Company here in 1811. You can visit a replica of this fort.
By the 1830s, the Hudson Bay Company dominated the Pacific Northwest. The chief factor of its Columbia District was John McLoughlin, known today as the “Father of Oregon.” His kindness in providing supplies to settlers on the Oregon Trail eventually cost him his job, and he retired in Oregon City, where you’ll find McLoughlin’s restored home today. (The End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center is 10 blocks north of this site.)
Do-Not-Miss Blowouts
Flowering shrubs and 50,000 pink Caroline Testout roses decorated the Lewis & Clark Exhibition in 1905. Portland knew how to exhibit roses, as locals had been part of a rose society since 1888. After the Lewis & Clark event drew in crowds, Portland Mayor Harry Lane decided to put on what is today the Portland Rose Festival. The event has flowered ever since 1907, and this year’s festival will be held on May 28-June 14.
The Pendleton Round-Up (September 16-19) is a PRCA rodeo gearing up for its 2010 centennial celebration, and it is enhanced by the Indian pageant Happy Canyon. All-in-all, the event is a testament to the native and cowboy cultures that have survived in Oregon for more than a century.
Smaller happenings worth checking out are the Dufur Threshing Bee, where late 1800s equipment threshes the wheat (August 8-9), and the Hells Canyon Mule Days in Joseph, where local ranchers celebrate the sturdy pack animal that has served Oregon Country since the U.S. Army and gold rushers depended on them back in the 1850s (September 11-13).
Oregon, the Beautiful
The state is a kaleidoscope of diversity: the untamed Oregon coast, the high desert of Central Oregon, the agricultural plateau east of the Cascade Mountains, the gold rush area surrounding the National Historic Landmark Community of Jacksonville in southern Oregon and the Painted Hills, part of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in eastern Oregon.
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