November 14, 2025
by Lucky
Oregon is a wonderland - from rugged coastal cliffs, to ancient rainforests, to volcanoes, to barren desert dry lakes, Oregon is 98,381 square miles of wilderness, managed semi-natural land, farmland, pasture, lakes, streams and urban areas in the northwestern United States - about 2,100 times the size of San Francisco in area but with only five times the population.
It's a place where people live in proximity to deer, cougars, and coyotes, populated by both urban progressive folk and rural traditionalists (and everything in between). A place where the climate is usually mild (at least in lower elevations fairly close to the sea), but often dark and not sunny.
You can travel a couple hours and be in a totally different world in many parts of the state. Although Oregon is often thought of as "rootless", people have an insatiable hunger for connection to the land and each other here.
To learn more about Oregon I suggest Geography King's primer here.