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The Pacific Northwest (PNW, or PacNW) in its broadest definition is an area that includes part of the west coast of United States and Canada, including southern Alaska, all of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, western Montana and northern California and Nevada. In the United States its boundaries are imprecise but generally coincide with the area covered by the original Oregon Territory (created in 1848 - Washington, Oregon, Idaho and areas in Montana west of the Continental Divide). The Eastern Idaho region is sometimes excluded because of its cultural and economic ties to the Rocky Mountain region, particularly Utah.

Major Pacific Northwest cities in the United States include Seattle, Portland, Spokane and Boise. Vancouver and Victoria are the main Canadian cities of the region.

History

Initial exploration

British Captain and erstwhile pirate Francis Drake sailed off the Oregon coast in 1579 and during the early 1740s, Imperial Russia sent the Dane Vitus Bering to the region. Sometime in the same era a Greek captain in the employ of the Portuguese Empire is believed to have found the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which bears his name.

In 1774 Juan Pérez commanded a fleet of ships sent by the viceroy of New Spain up to lat. 55° N. This was followed by another Spanish explorer Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra who got it as far as Prince of Wales Sound, reaching 59° N in 1775. In 1776 English mariner Captain James Cook visited Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island and also voyaged as far as Prince William Sound. In the 1790s Captain George Vancouver charted the Pacific Northwest on behalf of Great Britain, including the bays and inlets of Puget Sound, the Strait of Georgia and the Johnstone Strait-Queen Charlotte Strait and the rest of the British Columbia Coast and Alaska Panhandle shorelines. In 1786 Jean François La Pérouse, representing France, sailed to the Queen Charlotte Islands after visiting Nootka Sound but any possible French claim to this region were lost when La Pérouse and his men and journals were lost in a shipwreck near Australia. Captain James Barclay (also spelled Barkley) also visited the area flying the flag of the Austrian Empire.

The United States' claim

The United States established a claim following the exploration of the region by the Lewis and Clark Expedition, partly through the negotiation of former Spanish claims north of the Oregon-California boundary. From the 1810s until the 1840s, modern-day Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and western Montana, along with most of British Columbia, were part of what Americans called the Oregon Country and the British called the Columbia District. This region was jointly claimed by the United States and Great Britain after the Treaty of 1818, which established a condominium 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. The famous slogan of this platform was Fifty-four Forty or Fight refers to 54 degrees latitude, 40 minutes north being the northward limit of the region a treaty between the Spanish and Russians had been set at (the Americans had bought the Spanish claim without realizing it was not a full claim, only an agreement to share with the British).. 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.

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, although official ratification of his unilateral action was several months in coming. 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 territories that were eventually admitted as states, the first of these being Oregon itself in 1859. See Washington Territory.

American expansionist pressure on British Columbia persisted after the colony became a province of Canada, even though Americans living in the province had next to no annexationist inclinations. The Fenian Brotherhood openly organized and drilled in Washington State, particularly in the 1870s and the 1880s, though no cross-border attacks were experienced. During the Alaska Boundary Dispute US 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 State Senator Slade Gorton called for the US Navy to "force" the Inside Passage, even though it is not an officially-international waterway.

Geography

The Pacific Northwest is dominated by several mountain ranges, including the Coast Mountains, the Cascade Range, the Columbia Mountains and the Rocky Mountains. Immediately inland from the Coast Mountains and the Cascade Range there is a broad plateau, narrowing progressively northwards, and also getting higher. In the US this region, semi-arid and often completely arid, is known as the Columbia Plateau, while in British Columbia it is the Interior Plateau, also called the Fraser Plateau. Because many areas have plentiful rainfall and a relatively low population density, the Pacific Northwest has:

The major cities of Vancouver, Portland, and Seattle 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.

The region has four U.S. National Parks: Crater Lake in Oregon, and Olympic, Mount Rainier, and North Cascades in Washington. Other outstanding natural features include the Oregon Coast, the Columbia River Gorge, Mt. St. Helens, and Hells Canyon on the Snake River between Oregon and Idaho. There are several Canadian National Parks in the Pacific Northwest, from Pacific Rim National Park on the west coast of Vancouver Island, and Mount Revelstoke National Park and Glacier National Park in the Selkirk Range alongside Rogers Pass, as well as Kootenay National Park and Yoho National Park on the British Columbia flank of the Rockies. Although unprotected by national parks and only a handful of provincial parks, the south-central Coast Mountains in British Columbia contain the five largest mid-latitude icefields in the world and Canada's highest waterfall (Hunlen Falls in Tweedsmuir Provincial Park).

Culture

The Pacific Northwest's culture is quite varied, and to a certain degree reflects the varied geography of the region. Though the majority of inhabitants of the farther western regions and large cities are considered socially progressive, the sparsely populated areas east of the Cascade Range are often lumped into Middle America, and inhabitants are often more conservative.

Environmentalism is very popular in most Pacific Northwest cities, from small towns such as Ashland, Oregon to large cities like San Francisco. Ecologically conscious services such as recycling and public transportation are fairly well-developed and generally available in the more populated areas as well. 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.

The rainy weather promotes an indoor culture of the Pacific Northwest. Video game usage is the highest per-capita than any other region of the country. The weather is a key factor. Suicide rates are also high, as the gray weather throughout the winter and spring season can be depressing among citizens.

Washington, Oregon and California are also known for supporting progressive political views relating to other--sometimes controversial--subjects. All three states have relatively liberal abortion laws, legalized medical marijuana, and are supportive of LGBT rights. Oregon was the first (and remains the only) U.S. state to legalize physician-assisted suicide, with the Death with Dignity Act of 1994.

The Pacific Northwest is also known for indie music, especially grunge and so-called alternative rock. Foods of the area include salmon, huckleberries, and chai.

Language

The Pacific Northwest English accent is considered to be "very neutral" to most Americans and Canadians. Although it does possess the low back vowel merger, or the Cot-caught merger it is one of the closest living accents to conservative General American English. It lacks the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, and does not participate as strongly in the California vowel shift or the Canadian vowel shift as do other dialects. Because of its lack of any distinguishing vowel shift, the accent is very similar to and hard to distinguish from conservative speakers in other dialect regions especially the Northern Midlands, California, and the prairies.

Chinook Jargon was a pidgin or trade language established among the indigenous inhabitants of the region. After contact with Europeans, French, English and Cree words entered the language, and "eventually Chinook became the lingua franca for as many as 250,000 people along the Pacific Slope from Alaska to Oregon". * Chinook Jargon reached its height of usage in the 19th century. Today its influence is felt mostly in place names and a handful of localized slang terms.

Religion and spirituality

The Pacific Northwest is the least church-going part of English-speaking North America, yet three of the four large international charities in the region are faith-based: Northwest Medical Teams International, World Concern, and World Vision International. The fourth is Mercy Corps. The archetype of the Skid Road mission, a shelter offering soup and sermons to down-and-out workers and inebriates, was launched on the skid roads of Seattle and Vancouver, with the Salvation Army having deep roots in Vancouver's Gastown district, dating back to the era of the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway (1880s) and attained prominence in the same centres during the Klondike Gold Rush.

Despite its low rate of church attendance, the region is also known as a magnet for unique Christian groups, ranging from the Doukhobors to the Mennonites of British Columbia, and countless religiously-based communal efforts by ethnic groups such as Finns, Norwegians, Danes and others. The Mennonite Disaster Relief fund is not based in the region, but enjoys a heavy rate of enlistment and donations from the strong Mennonite community in BC's Fraser Valley.

Exploration of eastern religions (especially Buddhism and Taoism) has been fashionable in the Pacific Northwest for many years, and Tibetan Buddhism in particular has a strong local following. Yogic teachings, Sufism, tribal and ancient beliefs and other philosophies are widely studied and appreciated. Because of immigration to Canada the Lower Mainland of British Columbia has a very large Sikh community and cultural presence as well as a major growth in Chinese Buddhist temples and congregations. There is a small Hindu population, a number of Parsee (Zoroastrians), and an emerging Muslim population from India, the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans, Southeast Asia and elsewhere.

Also attracted to the area are alternative religions and spirituality, such as New Age spirituality and Neo-Paganism. A more controversial example was the commune run by Brother Twelve in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia early in the 20th Century. Created in more recent times, the cult of the allegedly immortal being Ramtha is centred in Yelm, Washington. The followers of the Guru Rajneesh, the sannyasins, established a centre for their beliefs and lifestyle near Bend, OR, which included an ashram complex as well as, for a while, a near-takeover of the local economy. The Emissaries of the Divine Light are a notable presence in the region of 100 Mile House, BC.

See also

External links

Pacific Northwest | Regions of the United States | Regions within the American West

Pazifischer Nordwesten

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Pacific Northwest".

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