11 Things Oregonians Do That Would Horrify the Rest of America

Oregon is the state that the rest of America either wants to move to immediately or regards with the mild suspicion reserved for places that seem to be operating on principles the mainstream hasn’t fully ratified yet — a place of extraordinary natural beauty, ferocious local pride, deeply held environmental conviction, and a relationship with the unconventional that ranges from genuinely admirable to occasionally bewildering even to people who live there. The Beaver State stretches from the rain-soaked coast to the high desert east of the Cascades in one long, dramatic geographic argument with itself, producing in its residents a regionalism so specific that people from Portland and people from Bend and people from the Willamette Valley and people from eastern Oregon sometimes seem to share only the state line and the general conviction that Oregon is correct about most things. It usually is. Sometimes it really isn’t. Oregon finds both possibilities interesting.

1. Pump zero of their own gas and feel genuine confusion when this changes

Oregon has been a no-self-serve gas state since 1951, and Oregonians have never pumped their own gas, were not raised to pump their own gas, and experience the suggestion that they should pump their own gas with the mild bewilderment of people being asked to perform a task that has always belonged to someone else. When Oregon partially relaxed its self-service ban in rural counties in 2018, the response from rural Oregonians — who you’d think would be more self-reliant about this — included genuine distress and a level of public commentary that suggested the gas pump had become deeply entangled with the Oregon identity in ways nobody had previously noticed.

2. Treat Powell’s Books in Portland like a sacred site that requires an entire afternoon

Powell’s City of Books in Portland — occupying an entire city block, containing approximately one million new and used books across multiple color-coded rooms, with its own map available at the entrance because you will need it — is not merely a bookstore to Oregonians. It is an institution, a pilgrimage destination, a love language expressed in square footage. Oregonians enter Powell’s with a vague intention and emerge three hours later having found things they didn’t know they were looking for and spent more money than they planned and feel entirely justified about both. Out-of-state visitors are given directions to Powell’s before they’re given directions to anything else. This is correct.

3. Drink more coffee per capita than almost anywhere in America and regard this as appropriate

Oregon — and Portland especially — has a relationship with coffee that makes Seattle look casual. The pour-over is not a trend. The single-origin bean is not pretentious. The specific roast profile is not excessive. These are simply the variables that matter when you are serious about coffee, and Oregonians are serious about coffee in the same way they are serious about local food, local beer, local everything — not as a lifestyle performance but as a genuine preference for things made with care by people who know what they’re doing. A drive-through coffee kiosk in Oregon is not a compromise. It is a well-staffed, ethically sourced, pour-over-capable operation in a small building by the road.

4. Hike in the rain without rain gear and explain that they’re “from here”

Oregonians — particularly west-of-the-Cascades Oregonians — have adapted to the persistent gray moisture of their climate with a philosophical acceptance that expresses itself partly as refusing to let rain alter plans and partly as a mild contempt for umbrellas. “You can always tell a tourist by the umbrella” is a real thing Oregonians say. Locals hike in the rain in fleece that is already waterlogged and feels fine. They camp in the rain in gear rated for the conditions because they bought the gear and intend to use it regardless. The rain is not weather to be managed. It is weather to be incorporated.

5. Take Crater Lake personally, as if they made it

Crater Lake — the deepest lake in the United States, formed in the caldera of a volcano that collapsed approximately 7,700 years ago, with water so blue it appears digitally enhanced, at an elevation of nearly 7,000 feet — is treated by Oregonians with a proprietary pride that goes beyond state tourism boosterism. It is theirs. They feel this. The first time a visitor sees it and goes quiet — the specific silence of encountering something that exceeds expectation — Oregonians watch with the satisfied expression of people whose recommendation has been validated, which it has been, and which they knew it would be, which is why they brought you here.

6. Support local with a commitment that constitutes a full consumer philosophy

“Local” in Oregon is not a grocery store marketing category. It is a value system. Oregon’s farm-to-table culture, its network of farmers markets, its craft beer scene (more breweries per capita than almost any state), its local roasters, its creameries, its independent bookstores, its maker spaces, its food cart pods — all of it reflects a genuine and sustained commitment to the local economy and local production that has been operating in Oregon long before “local” became a national trend and will continue operating after the trend has moved on. Oregonians who buy something from a large national chain when a local option exists experience a small, specific guilt. This is not peer pressure. It is internalized value.

7. Live in Portland and maintain a relationship with the rest of Oregon that requires careful navigation

Portland is Oregon’s largest city, its cultural center, its economic engine, and the source of a divide that rural and eastern Oregonians discuss with the patient frustration of people whose state is being characterized by a city that does not characterize them. Eastern Oregon is high desert, ranching, farming, and conservative politics. The coast is fishing and tourism and a different Pacific Northwest entirely. The Willamette Valley is agriculture and wine country and college towns. Portland is Portland — progressive, quirky, expensive, and increasingly in its own orbit — and the rest of the state maintains a complicated relationship with the city that produces both resentment and dependence in roughly equal measure.

8. Forage for mushrooms with the focused expertise of people doing something important

Oregon’s forests — particularly the Coast Range and the Cascade foothills — produce chanterelles, morels, matsutake, porcini, hedgehog mushrooms, and dozens of other edible species that Oregonians harvest with the purposeful efficiency of people who know what they’re looking for and where to look. Mushroom spots are not shared information. They are guarded with the territorial loyalty of people who found the spot, learned the season, and have no intention of crowding the forest with additional foragers. Oregonians who forage do so quietly, return home with baskets, and cook what they found with the satisfaction of a meal that cost only attention and knowledge.

9. Have opinions about the Columbia River Gorge that feel like they’re about something larger

The Columbia River Gorge — the dramatic river canyon cutting through the Cascades along the Oregon-Washington border, lined with waterfalls, hiking trails, and viewpoints that stop people in their tracks — is treated by Oregonians as one of the essential places, a landscape that means something beyond its scenic value. The Eagle Creek Fire of 2017, which burned through a significant portion of the Gorge’s trail system, produced in Oregon a grief response proportional to the loss of something genuinely beloved. Trails that reopened after restoration were returned to not with relief but with the particular joy of getting back something that had been taken.

10. Maintain a beach culture that has nothing to do with swimwear or tanning

The Oregon coast is not a warm beach. It is a dramatic, cold, windy, fog-laced edge of the continent where the Pacific arrives with full force against headlands and sea stacks and stretches of dark sand that look like the beginning of the world. Oregonians go to the coast to walk in the wind, eat clam chowder in a bread bowl, fly kites, watch storms from a rented house, explore tide pools, and stand at the edge of the continent feeling the particular feeling that the edge of a continent produces. Wearing a swimsuit at the Oregon coast is not impossible. It is a statement. The statement is that you are from somewhere warm and have not yet understood where you are.

11. Defend keeping Oregon weird before Austin made it a bumper sticker

Portland’s “Keep Portland Weird” ethos predates Austin’s version and reflects something genuinely structural about Oregon culture — a tolerance for the unconventional, a preference for the independent, a suspicion of corporate homogeneity, and a real pleasure in the eccentric that has made the state a destination for people who felt too unusual for wherever they came from. Oregon is full of people who moved here to be something specific — artists, outdoor athletes, brewers, farmers, writers, people who make things by hand — and the culture that results from this self-selection has a particular character that the rest of America variously celebrates, parodies, envies, and misunderstands. Oregon has noticed all four responses and found them all interesting.

Oregon will not stop being Oregon for any of the obvious reasons — the housing prices, the rain, the political tensions between its urban and rural halves, the recurring debates about what kind of place it’s becoming versus what kind of place it was. It will keep producing the wine and the beer and the mushrooms and the coffee and the literature and the outdoor athletes and the independent bookstores and the tide pool explorers and the people who hiked in the rain before it was a personality type. The Cascades are genuinely extraordinary. The coast is genuinely unlike anywhere else in America. Crater Lake will still stop you cold no matter how many times you’ve seen photographs of it, which is the specific promise of a place that has never needed photography to be what it is. Come in September when the rain hasn’t started yet and the light is the color of something you don’t have a word for. Powell’s will have a book about it. They have a book about everything.