Salem

Salem sits in the middle of the Willamette Valley, the fertile lowland between Oregon's Coast Range and the Cascade Mountains that drew settlers at the end of the Oregon Trail. Founded by Methodist missionaries in the 1840s, it became the territorial capital in 1851 and state capital at statehood in 1859. The valley's rich soil and mild, rainy climate made it the agricultural heart of the Pacific Northwest.

The Willamette River runs through the city, north toward Portland and the Columbia. Surrounded by farmland, orchards, and vineyards, with the snow-capped Cascade volcanoes visible to the east, Salem is a government and agricultural-processing center, the second-largest city in Oregon after Portland.

• Oregon
  The Beaver State, from rainforest coast to high desert located in
• Portland
  A Pacific Northwest city where two rivers meet same state