Oregon's Willamette Valley

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There are, in fact, over 150 days of sunshine a year in the Willamette, averaging 5.4 days in December and 25.6 in July. To get a jump on gardening and to cope with light deprivation, skylights, greenhouses, and solar window boxes are enormously popular and—despite winter overcasts—remarkably efficient. (Commercial greenhouses are big business, and Oregon's nursery production now ranks fourth in the nation.) Solar energy is encouraged by state tax credits and by low-interest solar-installation loans from utilities.

And the winter rains are a blessing, since they provide water for irrigation during the sunny, dry growing season. Wells can generally be brought in at between 50' and 100' at a cost of around $7 a foot.

A climate so encouraging to plant life is not, however, an ideal one for those with pollen allergies. Furthermore, the valley's grass-seed farmers (who produce much of the nation's fescue, Kentucky bluegrass, and other grass-seed varieties) spend much of August burning their fields in order to sterilize the soil. This, along with the yearround burning of slash left over from clearcut logging of privately owned timber and of the huge national forests that border the Willamette valley, creates unwelcome air pollution.

Economics and Crime

Oregon suffered less than most states during the Great Depression, but—because forestry and agriculture are now its largest industries—the 1980s recession hit earlier and has lasted longer. Oregon lost 70,000 jobs in retailing, wood products, and construction alone, 60,000 of which paid more than $10 an hour. Recently, 11,500 of the 15,000 lost retail jobs have been regained, but wages for those employees are $5 to $6.50 an hour. Currently, Oregon's average private sector per capita income is $12,000, compared to a national average of $18,400, but in valley communities, the range is from a high of only $10,826 to a low of $8,240. Incomes in the Portland area (city population, 371,500; metropolitan area, 1.2 million) north of the valley average $13,000.

Economic hardship usually brings increases in crime, and for the first three months of 1986, crimes against people were up in the valley, but crimes against property dropped (perhaps due to active neighborhood watches). The figures are still impressively low. For example, in Lane County, of which Eugene (Oregon's second largest city with a population of 106,000) is the county seat, crimes against persons totaled just 765 per 100,000 people. In Benton County (county seat Corvallis; population, 41,500) there were 150, while Portland's Multnomah County had 4,726, and the 1984 national average was 5,222 per 100,000.

In the 1970s, Oregon had a no-growth governor and a profusion of "Californians, Go Home" stickers, but the economic downturn changed all that. Since 1980, the valley's population has decreased. Most of these people left to look for jobs, some went in search of sun, and others, needing more room, took off for British Columbia or Alaska.

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