Oregon Trivia & Tidbits - Page 13

Looking for Oregon trivia? Try our list Oregon little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

Bonneville Dam, 40 miles east of Portland, links Oregon to Washington. Completed in 1937, the 197-feet high and 2,690-feet long dam controls the lower Columbia River, generating power to the Pacific Northwest and allowing large ships—and salmon—to travel much of the waterway. The dam is named for Washington Irving’s The Adventures of Captain Bonneville.

first appeared: 2/2/2003

Lincoln City (pop. 7,437) holds many distinctions. It’s called the Kite Capital of the World, reportedly has more hotel rooms than any other coastal city between Seattle and San Francisco, and is home to Oregon’s oldest covered bridge—the 1917 Upper Drift Creek Bridge. The state’s oldest glass-blowing studio, Alderhouse Glass, was established here in 1971, and the world’s shortest river—the D River—listed in the Guinness Book of World Records at 440 feet, is in town.

first appeared: 1/26/2003

Celilo Village in Wasco County is believed to be Oregon’s oldest town. Archeological digs prior to the completion of the nearby Dalles Dam showed that American Indians had occupied the site for at least 11,000 years.

first appeared: 1/19/2003

Oregon State University, the oldest state-supported institution of higher education in Oregon, began as Corvallis College in Corvallis (pop. 49,322) in 1858. Its Weatherford Hall is the oldest dormitory west of the Mississippi River.

first appeared: 1/19/2003

Portland’s annual Homowo Festival of African Arts, the largest cultural event of its kind in the Pacific Northwest, was established in 1989 by Obo Addy, a master drummer from Ghana, West Africa, who settled in Portland in 1978. Homowo began as a harvest celebration for the Ga people of Ghana. The term means “hooting at hunger.”

first appeared: 1/12/2003

The façade of the Oregon History Center in Portland is be-decked with eight-story trompe l’oeil (trick of the eye) murals, which give the illusion of depth on a two-dimensional surface. Inside are tens of thousands of artifacts documenting Oregon’s history.

first appeared: 1/5/2003

Oregon’s 140-mile Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway begins near Klamath Falls (pop. 19,462) and continues on to Lassen Volcanic National Park in California. Along the way is Crater Lake National Park, where the eruption of Mount Mazama 7,700 years ago left a six-mile-wide space, which now cradles Crater Lake, the deepest lake in America.

first appeared: 12/29/2002

Born in Salem in 1884, A.C. Gilbert invented Erector Sets—one of America’s most famous construction toys. An Olympic gold medalist in the pole vault, he also was the first president of the worldwide Toy Manufacturers Association. A.C. Gilbert’s Discovery Village, founded in 1989 in Salem, features hands-on exhibits to spark children’s curiosity in science.

first appeared: 12/22/2002

Barbara Roberts, born in Corvallis in 1936, became Oregon’s first woman governor on Jan. 14, 1991. She was elected secretary of state in 1984, becoming the first Democrat elected to that post in 114 years. In 1998, Roberts took a position at Portland State University’s Hatfield School of Government.

first appeared: 12/22/2002

Bethenia Owens-Adair, who lived much of her life in Astoria (pop. 9,813) and Roseburg (pop. 20,017), was a leading Oregon doctor in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Because of her family’s frequent moves, she started school at age 12 but went on to complete her medical training at the University of Michigan Medical School in 1880. She was a pioneer of many social movements, including women’s suffrage.

first appeared: 12/15/2002

Begun in 1965, the Cannon Beach Sand Castle Contest is said to be the first and oldest sandcastle contest in the continental United States. It began after a tidal wave hit the town, causing great damage. Contest organizers used the media attention to draw crowds there, which helped Cannon Beach (pop. 1,588) rebuild.

first appeared: 12/8/2002

The round barn at Barton Lake in southeast Oregon was built by rancher Pete French around 1880 as an indoor corral for training horses during winter. The barn is on the National Register of Historic Places.

first appeared: 12/1/2002

Settlers traveling the Oregon Trail often had to wait hours for buffalo herds to pass. “We saw them in frightful droves as far as the eye could reach,” wrote one pioneer.

first appeared: 12/1/2002

Lithia Park, the 93-acre “jewel of Ashland” (pop. 19,522), contains two fountains of slightly sulfurous-tasting lithium mineral water, which also emanates from the area’s mineral springs. The park, which also includes a Japanese garden and two duck ponds, is a National Historic Site designed in part by John McLaren, once the superintendent of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

first appeared: 11/24/2002

Carolyn Davidson, a Portland State University graphic design student, designed the Nike swoosh in 1971 after a chance meeting with future Nike president and CEO Phil Knight, then an accounting teacher at the university. Davidson charged Knight $35 to create the famous logo.

first appeared: 11/17/2002

Oregon will provide the nation’s Capitol Building with its holiday tree this year, along with 56 smaller ones for Senate and House offices. At least 4,000 ornaments made in communities throughout the state will decorate the trees. The 70-foot Capitol Building tree will come from the Umpqua National Forest and be transported by truck to Washington, D.C., along a route that includes the historic Oregon Trail.

first appeared: 11/10/2002

The first football player west of Texas to win the Heisman Trophy was Oregon State’s Terry Baker in 1962. He also was named to 11 All-America teams and won Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year Award. That same year, Baker captained his 1962-63 OSU basketball team to the NCAA Final Four.

first appeared: 11/3/2002

As a boy in Arlington (pop. 524), bandleader Doc Severinsen was nicknamed “Little Doc” after his father, a dentist. Severinsen originally wanted to play the trombone but had to settle for the only horn available in his small community—a trumpet.

first appeared: 10/27/2002

Alvord Desert is Oregon’s driest place, averaging just 7 inches of rain a year. Its sun-baked, lifeless surface lies in the shadow of Steens Mountain, near whose 9,700-foot summit lies Wildhorse Lake, one of Oregon’s most remote and unlikely bodies of water.

first appeared: 10/20/2002

The Oregon swallowtail butterfly—a striking yellow insect framed and edged in black—was designated the official state insect in 1979. The swallowtail, a true Northwest native, inhabits the arid canyonlands east of the Cascades, with strongholds in British Columbia, Washington, Idaho, and Oregon along the Columbia and Snake River drainages.

first appeared: 10/13/2002

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