Highway 99W

2009-Autumn-Oregon-Travel-Road-Trip-Willamette-Valley-wine-barrels
Willamette Valley wine barrels.

Follow your nose through the Pinot Passage, the floodgate to the Willamette Valley wine country. Here’s a sip of history to pair with your next oenophile journey into Oregon’s Burgundian region. Send us your ideas about a fascinating stretch of the road for our next Road Reconsidered to [email protected].

Howard Hughes’ Flying Boat

In 1942, legendary plane designer Howard Hughes raced to fill the tall WWII mandate of building an aircraft that could cross the Atlantic in a single bound carrying troops or tanks to help in the war effort. Due to wartime metal rationing, Hughes built this airplane out of wood, earing it the moniker, Spruce Goose. This hulking piece of history and many others are displayed at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville. (evergreenmuseum.org)

Oh Confectioner, Where Art Thou?

In a quiet little monastery in Amity, resides the quiet little order of Brigittine monks who quietly go about their prayers while artfully making some of the world’s best fudge. The brethren are now building a new $3.5 million confectionary on the priory grounds to make more blessed fudge. The brethren at the Priory of Our Lady of Consolation are now building a new $3.5 million confectionary on the priory grounds to make more blessed fudge. Amen. (brigittine.org)

Oregon’s First Cattleman

The father of Oregon cattle, Ewing Young, left his cabin in the Red Hills of Chehalem Valley for the Mexican territory of California to buy 600 head of cattle in January 1837. His death led to the beginning of the organization of the Provisional Government in 1843 to settle his estate. On May 6, 1846 Miranda Bayley and Sidney Smith planted an acorn here on his grave near his cabin. (Location: 3 miles west of Newberg on 240)

Oregon Wine Made on Montana Soil

The ice dam restraining Glacial Lake Missoula let rip an enormously powerful flood more than 13,000 years ago, sending water at speeds of 60 mph down the Columbia River collecting and then dumping vast volumes of silt, clay and rich soils into the Willamette Valley. Oregon’s wine growers in the Valley owe owe their success, in part, to this cataclysmic event. This rock, known to geologists the Valley’s largest glacial erratic, was transported through water and ice in the massive flood. (oregonstateparks.org)

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