Oregon Encyclopedia - Oregon History and Culture

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Applegate River

The sixty-mile-long Applegate River is one of three northward-flowing main tributaries of the Rogue River (the others are the Illinois River to the west and Bear Creek to the east). Although its ...

Union Peak, rising to an elevation of 7,709 feet, dominates the southwest corner of Crater Lake National Park. It is situated about six miles from the nearest portion of Mt. Mazama's caldera, which ...

Mt. Tabor Park

Southeast Portland's 196-acre Mt. Tabor Park sits on an extinct volcanic butte, one of thirty-two cinder cones in a thirteen-mile radius. The park offers visitors a forest-like setting and panoramic ...

Alsea River

The Alsea River originates in creeks flowing from the west side of Mary's Peak, the highest mountain in the Coast Range (elev. 4101 ft.), and in several streams in northwestern Lane County. The river ...

Rogue River National Forest

For over a century, the Rogue River National Forest has filled an important role in the economic development, watershed management, and recreational uses of southwestern Oregon. The forest, which in ...

McKenzie River

The McKenzie River, on the western slope of the Cascade Range, starts on the east at the volcanic Three Sisters and extends approximately ninety miles to the west. The main McKenzie River is joined ...

Portland Bridge Pedal

Bridge Pedal is an annual bicycle event in Portland, Oregon, that offers cyclists the opportunity to bike across the city's bridges while they are closed to automobile traffic. In 2007 it was the ...

Albany Timber Carnival

From 1941 through 2000, the Albany Timber Carnival was held almost every year in early July to celebrate Independence Day and to focus on the region's timber industry. In 1941, what was called the ...

Forest Park

Forest Park is a unique and impressive recreational and scenic area established in Portland as a city park in 1948. The park covers 5,170 forested acres within the city limits, is roughly one mile ...

Portland Rose Festival

In 1905, when Portland Mayor Harry Lane addressed a crowd at the Lewis and Clark Exposition, one memorable phrase emerged from his otherwise-forgotten speech. Lane, who served as mayor from 1905 ...

Lithia Park

Lithia Park in Ashland is a good example of what Fredrick Law Olmsted called "the genius of place." The park rambles from the edge of the city, along Ashland Creek canyon, to the slopes of Mount ...

Umpqua River

The Umpqua River, approximately 111 miles long, is a principal river of the Oregon coast, draining an expansive network of valleys in the mountains on the western slopes of the Cascade Range. The ...

Columbia River

The River For more than ten millennia, the Columbia River has been the most important and intensively used part of Oregon’s natural landscape. The river’s main stem gathers water ...

Cycle Oregon

In 1987, Jim Beaver, an Ashland innkeeper, imagined a long-distance bicycle tour to bring visitors to southern Oregon. The result was a week-long ride from Salem to Brookings. Organizers expected ...

Crater Lake National Park

As a focal point in the Cascade Range for almost a half million visitors each year, Crater Lake National Park is a place where beauty arose from cataclysmic events. Over seven millennia ago, the ...

Rogue River Roundup

In 1916, Ashland dedicated its much-expanded Lithia Park, a ceremony somewhat upstaged by the wildly popular Rogue River Round-Up. In the park dedication brochure for the Fourth of July celebration ...

Detroit Dam

Forty-five miles east of Salem, Detroit Dam rises 463 feet out of the North Santiam River, looming large in the landscape and history of the North Santiam Canyon and the Willamette Valley. By the ...

Crooked River

The Crooked River Basin lies in the heart of central Oregon, east of the Cascade Mountains and Deschutes River and south of the John Day River. The appropriately named Crooked River, fed primarily by ...

Harney County Fair, Rodeo, and Race Meet

The first “fair” in Harney County was a media event. On July 4, 1888, a local newspaper announced, “As no fair is held in this valley for the public exhibition of the growth and ...

Britt Music Festival

When the Britt Music Festival opened in Jacksonville, Oregon, on August 11, 1963, it was the only outdoor summer music festival in the Northwest. Since then, the festival has grown from a two-week ...

Chautauqua in Oregon

An 1874 summer camp to train Methodist Sunday school teachers seems an unlikely beginning for a cultural phenomenon that would spread across the country from Lake Chautauqua, New York, to towns such ...

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The OE History Nights

A collaboration of The Oregon Encyclopedia, McMenamins Pubs, the Des Chutes Historical Museum, and the Northwest Examiner. All events are free and open to minors (with adult).

Edgefield (Troutdale): Tuesday, June 25, 2013, 6:30 p.m. "Revealing Our Past: A History of Nineteenth-Century Vancouver Barracks Through 25 Objects." Presented by Greg Shine and graduate students from Portland State University's Department of History.

Old St. Francis School (Bend); Tuesday, June 25, 2013, 7:00 p.m. "The Chemawa Indian School of Salem, Oregon. Assimilation to Affirmation: 1880s to 2010s." Presented by Rebecca Dobkins.

Mission Theater (Portland): Monday, July 1, 2013, 7 pm. "The Roots of Beervana and Hoptopia: Oregon’s Thriving Brew and Hop Culture of the 1840s to Early 1900s." Presented by McMenamins historian Tim Hills, along with Peter Kopp, Asst. Professor, New Mexico State University, and author of forthcoming book, Hoptopia: Agriculture, Beer, and Place in Oregon's Willamette Valley. Plus the official Oregon Brewers Guild kick-off toast for Oregon Craft Beer Month, an appearance by Governor Barbara Roberts and a screening of OPB’s Beervana

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Hop Industry, by Peter Kopp

Hops are perennial, cone-producing, climbing plants native to Europe, Asia, and North America. While originally cultivated for ornamental or medicinal purposes over a thousand years ago, brewers across Europe began to use hops to flavor and preserve beer by the fifteenth century. The practice continues to the present as brewers worldwide use a resin from female hop cones, called lupulin.

Commercial hop production in the United States began in New York during the early nineteenth century. In 1867, William Wells of Buena Vista planted the first commercial hop yard in Oregon. Though hardly a major contributor to the global marketplace, Wells helped inspire others to invest in the specialty crop. READ MORE

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