Saturday, April 8, 2017

Culture

Although the dominant culture in the Pacific Northwest today is Anglo-American, Anglo-Canadian, and Scandinavian American, there is significant Mexican and Chinese influence. 23% of Vancouver, B.C. is Chinese, and 50% of residents of the City of Vancouver do not speak English as their first language.[68] Parts of Oregon and Washington are bilingual in both English and Spanish, and Native American culture is strong throughout the Pacific Northwest. The hippie movement also began in California and the Pacific Northwest. There have been proposals for certain parts of the Pacific Northwest becoming its own country because of the shared ecoregion and culture,[69][70] the most well-known being Cascadia. However, the region is strongly divided by the international border, and this division has grown more rather than less powerful over the 20th century.[71] Carl Abbott argues that, given the twin factors of limited economic integration vis-a-vis NAFTA, and cultural similarities, he views the major cities as "going their separate ways" as east-west gateways of commerce, competing with each other, rather than forming north-south connectors of a tentative "megaregion.[71] "
Cannabis use is relatively popular, especially around Vancouver, B.C., Bellingham, Seattle, Olympia, Spokane, Portland and Eugene. Several of these jurisdictions have made arrests for cannabis a low enforcement priority. Medical marijuana is legal in British Columbia,[72] Washington[73] and Oregon,[74] as well as in Alaska, though that state prohibits its sale and has no licensed dispensaries,[75] and in the Yukon, although less than 50 of the territory's residents are licensed to use medical marijuana and no legal dispensaries operate within its borders.[76] As of December 6, 2012, possession of less than an ounce of marijuana for recreational use by persons over 21 years of age became legal in Washington state as a result of state ballot measure Initiative 502, which was approved by the state's voters on November 6, 2012, by a ten-point margin. As of July 1, 2015, recreational marijuana use was legalized in Oregon as well.[77][78]

Environmentalism

Environmentalism is prominent throughout the region, especially west of the Cascades. Environmentally conscious services such as recycling and public transportation are widespread, most notably in the more populous areas. A 2007 statistical analysis ranked the 50 Greenest Cities in the United States, placing Portland, Oregon first, Eugene, Oregon fifth, and Seattle, Washington eighth.[79] The region as a whole is also known for its bicycle culture as an alternative form of transportation; Portland is considered by Forbes Traveler to be the second most bicycle-friendly city in the world.[80] Portland is also the hub of American bicycle manufacturing; as a whole it generated over $68 million in revenue in 2007 alone.[80] Seattle, Washington has also garnered a reputation for its contributions to public transportation with the Puget Sound Transit system, including an underground light rail system and a 38.9% worker commute rate as of 2011.[81] Politically, the Pacific Northwest is actively involved in environmental efforts. The international organization Greenpeace was born in Vancouver in 1970 as part of a large public opposition movement in British Columbia to US nuclear weapons testing on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians. Liberal and Conservative Northwesterners, such as former U.S. Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA) and moderate Democrats like former Speaker of the House Tom Foley (D-WA), have been prominent in the development of conservative approaches to environmental protection. Seattle in particular is also home to a large number of publications and institutions concerned with the environment and sustainability, including both Worldchanging and Grist.org, the U.S.'s two largest online green magazines. The Pacific Northwest is also noted for a large number of gardening clubs, with Victoria having an annual flower count in February.
The direct-intervention oceanic protection group known as the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has its headquarters in Friday Harbor on San Juan Island.[82]
In British Columbia environmentalist fought to protect Clayoquot Sound in the 1980s and 1990s. More recently the province has agreed to environmental protections in the Great Bear Rainforest.

Music

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Economy

Aluminum smelting was once an important part of the region's economy due to the abundance of once-cheap hydroelectric power. Hydroelectric power generated by the hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River powered at least ten aluminum smelters during the mid-20th century. By the end of World War II these smelters were producing over a third of the United States' aluminum. Production rose during the 1950s and 1960s, then declined. By the first decade of the 21st century the aluminum industry in the Pacific Northwest was essentially defunct.[67] The Alcan smelter at Kitimat continues in operation and is fed by the diversion of the Nechako River (a tributary of the Fraser) to a powerhouse on the coast at Kemano, near Kitimat.
The region as a whole, but especially several specific areas are concentrated high-tech areas: Seattle eastern suburbs, the Portland Silicon Forest area, and Vancouver, BC. These areas are also leading "creative class" economic drivers, feeding thriving cultural sectors, and include many knowledge workers and numerous international advertising, media and design firms present.

Education

Colleges and universities in the Pacific Northwest:
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Politics

A major divide in political opinion separates the region's greatly more populated urban core and rural areas west of the mountains from its less populated rural areas to their east and (in British Columbia and Alaska) north.[63] The coastal areas—especially in the cities of Vancouver, Victoria, Bellingham, Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Portland, Eugene, and Ashland—are some of the most politically liberal parts of North America, regularly supporting left-wing political candidates and causes by significant majorities, while the Interior and North tend to be more conservative and consistently support right-wing candidates and causes. It should be noted that the religious right has far less influence throughout the region than elsewhere in the U.S., and that certain areas of the BC Interior, particularly the West Kootenay and some areas of Vancouver Island and the BC Coast, have long histories of labour, environmental and social activism (see History of British Columbia#Rise of the labour movement).
The urban core in addition to certain rural districts is known for supporting liberal political views, perceived as controversial in much of the rest of North America. Many jurisdictions have relatively liberal abortion laws, gender equality laws, legal cannabis, and strong LGBT rights, especially British Columbia, where gay marriage has been legal since 2003, Washington, where it has been legal since 2012, and Oregon, where same-sex marriage was made legal in May 2014. Oregon was the first U.S. state to legalize physician-assisted suicide, with the Death with Dignity Act of 1994. Washington State was the second when I-1000 passed in 2008. Colegio Cesar Chavez, the first fully accredited Hispanic college in the U.S., was founded in Mount Angel, Oregon in 1973. In 1986 King County, Washington, which contains Seattle, renamed itself in honor of Martin Luther King.
These areas, especially around Puget Sound, have a long history of political radicalism. The radical labor organizers called Wobblies were particularly strong there in the mines, lumber camps and shipyards. A number of anarchist communes sprung up there in the early 20th century (see Charles Pierce LeWarne's Utopias on Puget Sound, 1885-1915 for an overview of this popular yet forgotten movement). Seattle is one of a handful of major cities in North America in which the populace engaged in a general strike (in 1919) and was the first major American city to elect a woman mayor, Bertha Knight Landes (in 1926).[64] Socialist beliefs were once widespread (thanks in large part to the area's large numbers of Scandinavian immigrants) and the region has had a number of Socialist elected officials. So great was its influence that the U.S. Postmaster General, James Farley, jokingly toasted the "forty-seven states of the Union, and the Soviet of Washington", at a gala dinner in 1936 (although Farley denied ever saying it).[65]
The region also has a long history of starting cooperative and communal businesses and organizations, including Group Health,[66] REI, Puget Consumer's Co-ops and numerous granges and mutual aid societies. It also has a long history of publicly owned power and utilities, with many of the region's cities owning their own public utilities. In British Columbia, credit unions are common and popular cooperatively owned financial institutions.
East of the Cascades, in eastern Washington and eastern Oregon, the population is much more conservative. The eastern portions of Washington and especially Oregon, due to their low populations, do not generally have enough voting power to be competitive at the state level, and thus the governorships and U.S. Senate seats of both Oregon and Washington are usually held by the Democrats. Conservatism in the eastern part of the Pacific Northwest tends to be distrustful of federal government interference and strongly protective of gun rights.
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Population

Most of the population of the Pacific Northwest is concentrated in the Portland–Seattle–Vancouver corridor. This area is sometimes seen as a megacity (also known as a conurbation, an agglomeration, or a megalopolis). This "megacity" stretches along Interstate 5 in the states of Oregon and Washington and Hwy 99 in the province of British Columbia. As of 2004, the combined populations of the Lower Mainland region (which includes Greater Vancouver), the Seattle metropolitan area and the Portland metropolitan area totaled around eight million people. However, beyond the megacity with few exceptions, the PNW region is characterized by a relatively low density population distribution. Some other regions of greater population density outside this corridor include the Okanagan Valley in the British Columbia interior (about 350,000 people centered around the city of Kelowna, which has close to 200,000 people) and the greater Spokane area (close to half a million). Large geographical areas may only have one mid-sized to small sized city as a regional center (often a county seat) with smaller cities and towns scattered around. Vast areas of the region may have little or no population at all, largely due to the presence of extensive mountains and forests, and plateaus containing both extensive farm and range lands, much of which is protected from development in large parks and preserves, or by zoning use regulation related to traditional land use. For example, all cities within the portion of California included in the Pacific Northwest have populations less than 100,000, with that portion of the state containing millions of acres of national forests and parks.

List of largest cities by population in the Pacific Northwest

City State/Province Population Metropolitan Area
Seattle Washington 668,342[37] 3,905,026[38]
Portland Oregon 632,309[38] 2,389,228[38]
Vancouver British Columbia 631,486 [39] 2,463,431[39]
Surrey British Columbia 517,887 [40] [n 1]
Burnaby British Columbia 223,218[41] [n 1]
Boise Idaho 214,237[42] 616,561[38]
Spokane Washington 210,721[37] 471,221[43]
Tacoma Washington 198,397[37] [n 2]
Richmond British Columbia 190,473[44] [n 1]
Vancouver Washington 161,791[37] [n 3]
Eugene Oregon 156,185[45] 351,715[38]
Salem Oregon 154,637[45] 390,738[38]
Bellevue Washington 136,420[37] [n 2]
Abbotsford British Columbia 133,497[46] 170,191[46]
Coquitlam British Columbia 126,456[47] [n 1]
Kent Washington 125,560[37] [n 2]
Kelowna British Columbia 117,312[48] 179,839[48]
Saanich British Columbia 109,752[49] [n 4]
Gresham Oregon 105,594[45] [n 3]
Langley (Township) British Columbia 104,177[50] [n 1]
Everett Washington 103,019[37] [n 2]
Delta British Columbia 99,863[51] [n 1]
Renton Washington 95,448[37] [n 2]
Hillsboro Oregon 91,611[45] [n 3]
Yakima Washington 91,067[52] 243,231[52]
Beaverton Oregon 89,803[45] [n 3]
Kamloops British Columbia 85,678[53] 98,754[54]
North Vancouver (District) British Columbia 84,412[55] [n 1]
Nanaimo British Columbia 83,810[56] 98,021[57]
Nampa Idaho 81,557[42] [n 5]
Bellingham Washington 80,885[37] 201,140[58]
Victoria British Columbia 80,017[53] 344,615[59]
Chilliwack British Columbia 77,936[51] 92,308[59]
Bend Oregon 76,639[60] 170,705
Maple Ridge British Columbia 76,052[61] [n 1]
Kennewick Washington 76,244 268,200
Meridian Idaho 75,092[62] [n 5]
Medford Oregon 74,907[60] 207,010
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Climate

The Pacific Northwest experiences a wide variety of climates. An oceanic climate ("marine west coast climate") occurs in most coastal areas, typically between the ocean and high mountain ranges. An Alpine climate dominates in the high mountains. Semi-arid and arid climates are found east of the higher mountains, especially in rainshadow areas. The Harney Basin of Oregon is an example of arid climate in the Pacific Northwest. Humid continental climates occur inland on windward sides, in places such as Revelstoke, British Columbia. A subarctic climate can be found farther north, especially in Yukon and Alaska.
Under the Köppen climate classification, a cool-summer version of the dry-summer mediterranean (Csb) designation, is assigned to many areas of the Pacific Northwest as far north as central Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, including cities such as Victoria, British Columbia, Seattle, and Portland.[35] These zones are not associated with a typical mediterranean climate, and would be classified as Temperate Oceanic (Cfb), except dry-summer patterns typical to the Pacific Northwest meet Koeppen's minimum Cs thresholds. Other climate classification systems, such as Trewartha, place these areas firmly in the Oceanic zone (Do).[36]

Ecoregions

Much of the Pacific Northwest is forested. The Georgia Strait–Puget Sound basin is shared between British Columbia and Washington, and the Pacific temperate rain forests ecoregion, which is the largest of the world's temperate rain forest ecozones in the system created by the World Wildlife Fund, stretches along the coast from Alaska to California. The dryland area inland from the Cascade Range and Coast Mountains is very different from the terrain and climate of the coastal area due to the rain shadow effect of the mountains, and comprises the Columbia, Fraser and Thompson Plateaus and mountain ranges contained within them. The interior regions' climates largely within eastern Washington, south central British Columbia, eastern Oregon, and southern Idaho are a northward extension of the Great Basin Desert, which spans the Great Basin farther south, although by their northern and eastern reaches, dryland and desert areas verge at the end of the Cascades' and Coast Mountains' rain shadows with the boreal forest and various alpine flora regimes characteristic of eastern British Columbia, northern Idaho and western Montana roughly along a longitudinal line defined by the Idaho border with Washington and Oregon.
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Geography

The Pacific Northwest is a diverse geographic region, dominated by several mountain ranges, including the Coast Mountains, the Cascade Range, the Olympic Mountains, the Columbia Mountains, and the Rocky Mountains. The highest peak in the Pacific Northwest is Mount Rainier, in the Washington Cascades, at 14,410 feet (4,392 m). Immediately inland from the Cascade Range are broad, generally dry plateaus. In the US, this region is known as the Columbia Plateau, while in British Columbia it is the Interior Plateau, also called the Fraser Plateau. The Columbia Plateau was the scene of massive ice-age floods, and as a consequence, there are many coulees, canyons, and the Channeled Scablands. Much of the plateau, especially in eastern Washington, is irrigated farmland. The Columbia River cuts a deep and wide gorge around the rim of the Columbia Plateau and through the Cascade Range on its way to the Pacific Ocean.
Because many areas have plentiful rainfall and mild summers, the Pacific Northwest has some of North America's most lush and extensive forests, which are extensively populated with Coast Douglas fir trees, the second tallest growing evergreen conifer on earth. The region also contains specimens of the tallest trees on earth, the coast redwoods, in southwestern Oregon, but the largest of these trees are located just south of the California border in northwestern California. Coastal forests in some areas are classified as temperate rain forest.
Coastal features are defined by the interaction with the Pacific and the North American continent. The coastline of the Pacific Northwest is dotted by numerous fjords, bays, islands, and mountains. Some of these features include the Oregon Coast, Burrard Inlet, Puget Sound, and the highly complex fjords of the British Columbia Coast and Southeast Alaska. The region has one of the world's longest fjord coastlines.[34]
The major cities of Vancouver, Portland, Seattle, and Tacoma all began as seaports supporting the logging, mining, and farming industries of the region but have developed into major technological and industrial centers (such as the Silicon Forest), which benefit from their location on the Pacific Rim.
If defined as Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, the Pacific Northwest has four US National Parks: Crater Lake in Oregon, plus Olympic, Mount Rainier, and North Cascades in Washington. If a larger regional definition is used, then other US National Parks might be included, such as Redwood National and State Parks, Glacier Bay National Park, Wrangell–St. Elias National Park, Grand Teton National Park, and parts of Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park. There are several Canadian National Parks in the Pacific Northwest, including Pacific Rim National Park on the west coast of Vancouver Island, Mount Revelstoke National Park and Glacier National Park in the Selkirk Range alongside Rogers Pass, Kootenay National Park and Yoho National Park on the British Columbia flank of the Rockies, Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve in Haida Gwaii, and the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve in the Strait of Georgia. There are numerous protected areas in British Columbia and in the United States.
Other outstanding natural features include the Columbia River Gorge, Fraser Canyon, Mount St. Helens, Malaspina Glacier, and Hells Canyon. The south-central Coast Mountains in British Columbia contain the five largest mid-latitude icefields in the world.
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Boundary disputes

Initial formal claims to the region were asserted by Spain in 1513 with explorer Nuñez de Balboa, the first European to sight the Pacific Ocean from the Americas. Russian Maritime Fur Trade activity, through the Russian-America Company, extended from the farther side of the Pacific to Russian America. This prompted Spain to send expeditions north to assert Spanish ownership, while Captain James Cook and subsequent expeditions by George Vancouver advanced British claims. As of the Nootka Conventions, the last in 1794, Spain gave up its exclusive a priori claims and agreed to share the region with the other Powers, giving up its garrison at Nootka Sound in the process.
The United States established a claim based on the discoveries of Robert Gray, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the construction of Fort Astoria, and the acquisition of Spanish claims given to the United States in the Adams–Onís Treaty.[30] From the 1810s until the 1840s, modern-day Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and western Montana, along with most of British Columbia, were part of what the United States called the Oregon Country and Britain called the Columbia District. This region was jointly claimed by the United States and Great Britain after the Treaty of 1818, which established a co-dominion of interests in the region in lieu of a settlement. In 1840 American Charles Wilkes explored in the area. John McLoughlin, Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, headquartered at Fort Vancouver, was the de facto local political authority for most of this time.
This arrangement ended as U.S. settlement grew and President James K. Polk was elected on a platform of calling for annexation of the entire Oregon Country and of Texas. After his election, supporters coined the famous slogan "Fifty-four Forty or Fight", referring to 54°40' north latitude—the northward limit of the United States' claim.[31] After a war scare with the United Kingdom, the Oregon boundary dispute was settled in the 1846 Oregon Treaty, partitioning the region along the 49th parallel and resolving most but not all of the border disputes (see Pig War).
The mainland territory north of the 49th parallel remained unincorporated until 1858, when a mass influx of Americans and others during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush forced the hand of Colony of Vancouver Island's Governor James Douglas, who declared the mainland a Crown Colony. The two colonies were amalgamated in 1866 to cut costs, and joined the Dominion of Canada in 1871. The U.S. portion became the Oregon Territory in 1848. It was later subdivided into Oregon Territory and Washington Territory. These territories became the states of Oregon, Idaho, Washington and parts of other Western states.
American expansionist pressure on British Columbia persisted after the colony became a province of Canada, even though Americans living in the province did not harbor annexationist inclinations. The Fenian Brotherhood openly organized and drilled in Washington, particularly in the 1870s and the 1880s, though no cross-border attacks were experienced. During the Alaska Boundary Dispute, U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt threatened to invade and annex British Columbia if Britain would not yield on the question of the Yukon ports. In more recent times, during the so-called "Salmon War" of the 1990s, Washington Senator Slade Gorton called for the U.S. Navy to "force" the Inside Passage, even though it is not an official international waterway. Disputes between British Columbia and Alaska over the Dixon Entrance of the Hecate Strait between Prince Rupert and Haida Gwaii have not been resolved.[32]

Geology

Further information: Geology of the Pacific Northwest
The Northwest is still highly geologically active, with both active volcanoes and geologic faults.[33]
Active volcanoes in the region include Mount Garibaldi, Mount Baker, Mount Rainier, Mount Saint Helens, Mount Hood, Mount Jefferson, and Mount Shasta.
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