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The History of Springfield’s Forgotten Giant Hillside Sign and the One Little Detail Lost to Time
There’s an old photograph of Springfield that doesn’t look quite real at first. The Willamette River bends through the frame. Steel bridges span the water. Beyond them, houses scatter across a mostly open hillside, where the…
Der Rhinelander, The Old Portland Spot That Served German Dinner With Accordions and Yodeling
There are restaurants you remember because the food was good, and then there are restaurants you remember because a guy with an accordion might appear while you were halfway through a plate of schnitzel and suddenly…
Twilight Was Filmed in Oregon, and Fall Is the Perfect Time to Follow Its Moodiest Trail
By late September, Oregon starts doing half the work for a Twilight road trip. Evergreen hills turn nearly black beneath low clouds. The Columbia goes pewter. The Coast trades its summer brightness for salt spray, wind,…
Oregon Emptied Its Mental Hospitals but Never Fully Built the Safety Net It Promised
Oregon closed thousands of psychiatric hospital beds with a promise of community care. Historical records reveal what happened when that system never caught up.
Built in 1945, Oregon’s Widest Covered Bridge Has Been Hit by Trucks, Raised Six Feet, and Somehow Survived
There is something wonderfully Oregon about finding an old covered bridge where you least expect one. Drive east from Eugene and Springfield on Highway 58, following the road toward the forested foothills of the Cascades, and…
Oregon’s Drowned Towns Were Abandoned, Flooded, Razed, But Not Forgotten
Most Oregonians and tourists have driven right past them without a second thought. You've fished and boated there. Swam and picniced nearby. Beneath the deep blue water of some of Oregon's most familiar reservoirs lie hidden…
Six Of Oregon’s Greatest Unsolved Mysteries Are Of Lost Gold, Buried Riches, and Shipwreck Treasure
There’s something about Oregon that feels like it was designed for a treasure hunt. Maybe it’s the fog curling through the Coast Range. Maybe it’s the abandoned mining roads disappearing beneath sword ferns, the black-sand beaches,…