The Pacific Northwest

The coast was home to peoples who grew wealthy on salmon, shellfish and cedar: Coast Salish nations such as the Duwamish and Suquamish around Puget Sound, the Makah whalers at Cape Flattery, the Chinook traders at the mouth of the Columbia and the Tillamook on the Oregon shore. They built plank houses and carved canoes, and held potlatch feasts at which wealth was given away. Inland, the Yakama, Nez Perce, Cayuse and Umatilla lived on the plateau, and the Klamath of southern Oregon preserve stories of the eruption of Mount Mazama, which formed Crater Lake about 7,700 years ago.

Spanish and British explorers charted the coast in the late 18th century; George Vancouver named Mount Rainier and Puget Sound in 1792, the same year the American Robert Gray sailed into the Columbia River. Lewis and Clark wintered at Fort Clatsop near its mouth in 1805–06, and fur traders founded Astoria in 1811. Britain and the United States shared the region until the Oregon Treaty of 1846 fixed the border at the 49th parallel, after thousands of settlers had come west on the Oregon Trail. A dispute over the San Juan Islands, the so-called Pig War of 1859, was settled by arbitration in 1872. Treaties in the 1850s took most Native land while promising fishing rights, which a 1974 federal court decision finally upheld. Oregon became a state in 1859, with a constitution that tried to exclude Black settlers, and Washington in 1889.

Seattle boomed as the supply town for the Klondike gold rush in 1897. Boeing was founded there in 1916, and dams on the Columbia in the 1930s brought cheap power. In 1942 Japanese Americans, starting on Bainbridge Island, were removed and interned. Mount St Helens erupted in 1980, killing 57 people, and from the 1980s Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks turned Seattle into a global business centre.

The Cascades divide the region politically and culturally. Seattle, Portland and the western valleys are among the most liberal places in the country, while the ranching and farming towns of the east are conservative, and in eastern Oregon some counties have voted to explore joining Idaho. Outdoor life unites both sides: hiking, climbing, skiing, kayaking and fishing are part of ordinary weekends, and rain gear is worn without comment.

Native nations remain prominent, with 29 federally recognised tribes in Washington and nine in Oregon. Salmon ceremonies, carving, and the annual Canoe Journey, when tribal canoes paddle between coastal communities, are central to Coast Salish revival, and tribal art is part of Seattle's public spaces.

Seattle gave the world Jimi Hendrix and, in the early 1990s, the grunge of Nirvana and Pearl Jam; Portland cultivated an independent, eccentric image under the slogan "Keep Portland Weird", with Powell's City of Books and a large cycling culture. Coffee is taken seriously everywhere. The calendar includes Portland's Rose Festival in June, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival in April and the Pendleton Round-Up rodeo each September. Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, is a cheerful regional mascot in the forests.

About 12 million people live in the two states, roughly 8 million in Washington and 4 million in Oregon, and most of them live in the corridor from Everett through Seattle and Tacoma to Portland, Salem and Eugene. Seattle has about 750,000 people in a metropolitan area of around 4 million, and Portland about 630,000 in a metro area of about 2.5 million. Spokane, the largest city of the dry east, has about 230,000.

The economy is led by technology, with Microsoft in Redmond and Amazon in Seattle; aircraft, with Boeing's plants around Everett and Renton; Nike's headquarters near Beaverton; and chipmaking around Hillsboro. Agriculture remains important: Washington is the country's largest producer of apples and hops, Oregon grows nearly all of its hazelnuts, and timber and fishing still support coastal towns. The ports of Seattle and Tacoma trade heavily with Asia.

Current debates centre on housing costs, homelessness and addiction in the big cities, and Portland's efforts to revive its downtown. Oregon decriminalised possession of small amounts of drugs in 2020 and reversed most of that policy in 2024. Wildfire seasons have grown longer, including the fires of September 2020 that burned about a million acres in Oregon, and the heat dome of June 2021 pushed Portland to 116°F, far beyond any previous record.

Salmon is the defining food, from Chinook and sockeye to smoked salmon, and cooking it on a cedar plank follows Native tradition. The waters also yield Dungeness crab, razor clams dug on the Washington and Oregon beaches, the huge geoduck clam of Puget Sound, and oysters farmed in Willapa Bay and the inlets of the Sound, including the small native Olympia oyster. Seattle's Pike Place Market, open since 1907, is the showcase for all of them.

The farms supply apples, pears from the Hood River valley, Rainier cherries, huckleberries picked in the mountains, and the marionberry, a blackberry variety bred in Oregon and baked into pies. Tillamook on the Oregon coast is known for its cheddar and ice cream, and Oregon hazelnuts turn up in everything. Seattle has its own style of teriyaki, and Portland's hundreds of food carts serve dishes from every corner of the world.

Coffee culture runs deep: Starbucks opened its first shop at Pike Place in 1971, and independent roasters fill both cities. Oregon's Willamette Valley is known for Pinot Noir, and Washington's Columbia Valley and Walla Walla for Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah and Riesling. Portland has one of the highest numbers of breweries of any American city, using hops grown in the region, and cider and distilling have followed.

Seattle's sights are Pike Place Market, the Space Needle and the Chihuly Garden and Glass beside it, the Museum of Pop Culture, the Pioneer Square district, and ferry rides across Puget Sound to Bainbridge Island. North of the city, the San Juan Islands, reached by ferry from Anacortes, offer the harbour town of Friday Harbor, kayaking and orca watching from Lime Kiln Point. Further inland lie the jagged peaks of North Cascades National Park and the Bavarian-themed town of Leavenworth.

Olympic National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, covers the Olympic Peninsula's mountains, the moss-draped Hoh Rain Forest, Hurricane Ridge, Lake Crescent and wild beaches such as Rialto and Ruby. Mount Rainier National Park, about two hours south-east of Seattle, surrounds a volcano of about 4,390 metres, with trails through the meadows at Paradise and Sunrise; Mount St Helens' blast zone lies to the south-west.

Portland has Powell's City of Books, the Japanese Garden, the International Rose Test Garden and lively neighbourhoods on both banks of the Willamette. East of the city the Columbia River Gorge holds Multnomah Falls, and Mount Hood rises above Timberline Lodge. The Oregon coast, where a 1967 law keeps the beaches public, runs from Astoria past Cannon Beach's Haystack Rock, Tillamook, Newport's aquarium, Cape Perpetua and the Oregon Dunes to the sea stacks of the southern shore. In the southern Cascades, Crater Lake, about 590 metres deep and the deepest lake in the country, is circled by Rim Drive, with Wizard Island rising from the water. Bend, Smith Rock and the Painted Hills lie in the dry country to the east.