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 Maritime Fur Trade was a ship-based fur trade system that focused on acquiring furs of sea otters and other animals from the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast and natives of Alaska. The furs were mostly sold in China in exchange for tea, silks, porcelain, and other Chinese goods, which were then sold in Europe and the United States. The maritime fur trade was pioneered by the Russians, working east from Kamchatka along the Aleutian Islands to the southern coast of Alaska. British and Americans entered during the 1780s, focusing on what is now the coast of British Columbia. The trade boomed around the turn of the 19th century. A long period of decline began in the 1810s. As the sea otter population was depleted, the maritime fur trade diversified and transformed, tapping new markets and commodities while continuing to focus on the Northwest Coast and China. It lasted until the middle to late 19th century. Russians controlled most of the coast of what is now Alaska during the entire era. The coast south of Alaska saw fierce competition between, and among, British and American trading vessels. The British were the first to operate in the southern sector, but were unable to compete against the Americans who dominated from the 1790s to the 1830s. The British Hudson's Bay Company entered the coast trade in the 1820s with the intention of driving the Americans away. This was accomplished by about 1840. In its late period the maritime fur trade was largely conducted by the British Hudson's Bay Company and the Russian-American Company. The maritime fur trade brought the Pacific Northwest coast into a vast, new international trade network, centered on the north Pacific Ocean, global in scope, and based on capitalism but not, for the most part, on colonialism. A triangular trade network emerged linking the Pacific Northwest coast, China, the Hawaiian Islands, Britain, and the United States. The trade had a major effect on the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest coast, especially the Aleut, Tlingit, Haida, Nuu-chah-nulth, and Chinook peoples. There was a rapid increase of wealth among the Northwest Coast natives, along with increased warfare, potlatching, slaving, depopulation due to epidemic disease, and enhanced importance of totems and traditional nobility crests. The indigenous culture was not overwhelmed however but rather flourished, while simultaneously undergoing rapid change. The use of Chinook Jargon arose during the maritime fur trading era and remains a distinctive aspect of Pacific Northwest culture. The most profitable furs were those of sea otters, especially the northern sea otter. After the northern sea otter was hunted to local extinction, maritime fur traders shifted to California until the southern sea otter was likewise nearly extinct. The British and American maritime fur traders took their furs to the Chinese port of Canton, where they worked within the established Canton System.
John Albert Kitzhaber (born March 5, 1947) is a physician, member of the Democratic Party and a former Governor of Oregon, who resigned early in his fourth term. He graduated from South Eugene High School in 1965, Dartmouth College in 1969, and then Oregon Health & Science University with a medical degree in 1973. Kitzhaber practiced medicine from 1973 to 1986 in Roseburg, Oregon as an Emergency RoomPhysician. Kitzhaber began his political career serving in the Oregon House of Representatives from 1979 to 1981. In 1980, he was elected to the Oregon State Senate, where he served three terms from 1981 to 1993, and as President of the Senate from 1985 until 1993. Kitzhaber was elected governor in November 1994, defeating Denny Smith, and becoming the 35th Governor of Oregon, and was re-elected in 1998. Much of Kitzhaber's eight-year first tenure as governor was spent on the defensive with a Republican-controlled legislature. While Oregon's constitution prohibited Kitzhaber from seeking a third consecutive term in 2002, he was elected to a non-consecutive third term in 2010 and was reelected in 2014, becoming the first person in Oregon history to be elected to four terms as governor. Kitzhaber married Sharon LaCroix in 1995 and the couple had one son, Logan, born in October 1997. They divorced in 2003. From 2003 to 2010, Kitzhaber served as President of the Estes Park Institute, a Colorado-based education organization for community hospital and healthcare leaders. During the same period, he served as the Director for the Center for Evidence-Based Policy at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Oregon. Cylvia Hayes, with whom Kitzhaber became romantically involved soon after his 2002 campaign, became his live-in girlfriend. In 2011, when he again became Governor, Hayes became Oregon's first lady, although they remain unmarried.
... 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?
Representing the people of Oregon's Second District is an honor and a privilege. Covering more than 70,000 square miles in twenty counties throughout eastern, southern and central Oregon, our district is breathtaking and diverse.
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