Frederic Homer Balch was the first Pacific Northwest fiction writer to cast Native Americans as major characters and the first to celebrate the region's geography …

Oregon Encyclopedia

Through both her creative and academic work, Gloria Bird helped establish a community of Native writers in Oregon and the Northwest. She is a founding …

Oregon Encyclopedia

The Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University has only been in existence since 1998, but it has quickly established itself as a venue …

Oregon Encyclopedia

Few names in the history of early nineteenth-century Oregon are better known than that of Jason Lee. As the first Protestant Christian missionary to the …

Oregon Encyclopedia

Although his time spent in Oregon was short, General John E. Wool was arguably the most important U.S. military officer to affect relations between Native …

Oregon Encyclopedia

Oregon City was the first incorporated city west of the Rocky Mountains and a main terminus of the Oregon Trail. Its historic center is …

Oregon Encyclopedia

Introduction In popular culture, the Oregon Trail is perhaps the most iconic subject in the larger history of Oregon. It adorns a recent Oregon highway …

Oregon Encyclopedia

Oregon white oak, Quercus garryana, grows along the Pacific Coast from southern California north through the interior valleys of western Oregon and the Puget Sound …

Oregon Encyclopedia

Pacific University, one of the oldest universities in the American West, was founded in 1849 in present-day Forest Grove, about twenty-five miles west of …

Oregon Encyclopedia

Pendleton Woolen Mills opened in 1909 in a defunct woolen mill that had been established in Pendleton in 1896. The town’s efforts to persuade the …

Oregon Encyclopedia