THE OREGON TOWNS BLOG

NEWPORT Newport, at the very center of the O regon coast. This city is cool special and important. There is nothing about Newport that makes the entire city amazing but there are some t hings that make it cool. It's like that grizzled old grandpa of yours who has sailed all his life and has a lot of stories to tell. It is a tourist center of the Oregon coast and has attractions like The Oregon Coast Aquarium and the Nye Beach shopping district. When you visit Newport you are overloaded with things to do. It's just kind of like that. But it's not perfect, it has problems, it has a substantial crime rate. But if you look past the problems of this city it really is great. The historic bay front is really great to just walk around from the various piers to undersea gardens, there are truly some great businesses.  Some would call Newport the heart and soul of the Oregon coast, I would call it the gut. Newport is tough and touristy dull and quirky. It is a perfect imbalance of

SILVERTON  Silverton is the gold standard for any town in Oregon, and it is easily accessible from the big cities. Word has been spread about how great Silverton is, but you have to visit to truly experience it's magnitude. It is the small town in Oregon that all others should be compared too. It is a winner in both categories. It is a  cute small town with great architecture and stunning natural views. But it is also a healthy and well functioning city with many amenities and scores high livability points in my book and is a destination for many people seeking to escape from urban life in the western part of the state. It sits along the 45th parallel and is on the edge of the Salem metro area. It is about an hour from Portland and ten minutes from Salem. As with many Willamette valley towns it is surrounded with countryside. When you first arrived in Silverton, you see many nice houses in a neighborhood or two, but once you get into downtown it is the real deal.  You witness f

  PARKDALE  Parkdale isn't a city, I am aware of that, yet it is so deserving of city hood. It is so isolated within the valley and the orchards. So isolated that it avoids view. It has a population of 311 and that is really small. It has a ton of businesses for that population. It has a market and a pub and a couple restaurants. It's amazing and Mt. Hood is huge in the distance.  When I first came to this place, I took the exit from the highway and the the car bounded on the small road and into the middle of a huge pear orchard that extended for miles. Our car rode down the hill through the orchards and into this intersection that has a stunning view of mount hood. We rode on, past a fire station and we were looking for the town and wondering where it was. Then finally the businesses started trickling in, first the fish house then the artie shops and the bike store and the gas station in the center of town. It's like a little spot of sunlight in the darkened valley. It

OREGON CITY(THE SUBURBS) Oregon city, is now emerging as more than just a boring suburb, it's emerging as a hip suburb, over the next month, I will be covering Oregon's biggest cities and centers of culture as well as some of Portland's suburbs. Oregon city is really cool. It is one of the most historic places in Oregon, being the first proper city in the state and the end of the Oregon trail. Over the past few decades it has been dismissed as just another suburb of Portland. It used to be a land of pioneers, but it was surrounded by urban development. It's downtown remains historic with many restaurants and interesting shops to go into. It was once the state's capital city, and this leads one to believe that it has declined as a city somewhat. That is not true at all, it has still maintained that historic feel of a gleaming western city. The city is home to Willamette falls, and the Oregon city municipal elevator, a 89-foot ride to get to the upper part of the c

  TILLAMOOK  Tillamook, Oregon the cheese capital of our state and, well that's almost it. Just kidding. Tillamook is a lot more than just cheese, it's a place too. Listen, if you're from Oregon, you know I'm not going to oversell this place. Tillamook is a little bit complicated, it's the land of cheese and it's main tourist attraction is the cheese factory, and it gets thousands of tourists per year. Honestly this is what the town has always been associated with that and it always will be (probably.) Tillamook county has a rich history, and it is mostly wilderness, which is great, but there are a few small towns huddled near the coast on it.  Tillamook is the place to go in Tillamook county, they have the before mentioned cheese factory, the air, a great history museum and downtown. Downtown Tillamook is a rather complicated story. In the 1960s, it was a neon illuminated center of attention, with Chevys cruising the streets. It was not looking so great fo

BAKER CITY In the rural dessert lands with the Wallowas lying north and the dessert lying south, sits a gleaming city of wonders. The queen city of eastern Oregon, it is filled with great sights to behold. It has tall buildings and old ones and it maintains the European vibe a bit with some buildings but it looks like a small city in eastern Oregon. When you are driving to Baker city, you think it's either going to be crappy or sleepy if you don't know anything about it. But instead you find an amazing wonderful  place with so much star-studded greatness it's not like the environment around it, it's like Oregon's version of Dubai(except without the skyscrapers, futuristic technology, and huge dessert, I mean huge!) Arriving there, I was in awe, I never really thought it would look like what it actually was. Most people(I mean Portlanders) look at pictures of Baker city and say to themselves "hey! I'd like to go there some time maybe in a couple years..