The Willamette Valley
The Willamette Valley is is what most people think of when they think of Oregon. A lush, flat valley marked on the west by the rainy Coast Range mountains and on the east by the snowy Cascades, the Valley is a place of one small town after another, their regularity interrupted only by a handful of big towns on or near I-5: Eugene, Salem and Corvallis.
Compared to the rest of the state, the Valley is liberal, churchy and educated. Outside of the towns, the Valley is all farmland. Woody Guthrie once sang about going “up north to Oregon to gather your hops.” That was here. So are berries — strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and wild blackberries all grow in profusion in the moderate Northwest climate of rainy winters and summer drought. Much of the crop picking now is done by immigrants instead of children. But the hops farms have given way to grass seed farms. And despite once decent land-use planning laws — recently savaged by Measure 37 (aka the Let’s Hurry Up and Turn Oregon into Arkansas Act) — many fields and forest tracts are being suburbanized.