Oregon

<p><span class="deck"> The tragic journey of the Donner Party</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> Man, Land, and History in the Deepest Gorge on Earth</span> </span></p>

<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> “Surveyor, mountain man, soldier, businessman, wanderer, captain of emigrants, farmer…he was himself the westward-moving frontier.”</span> </span></p>

<p><span class="deck">For many children who accompanied their parents west across the continent in the 1840s and '50s, the journey was a supreme adventure.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">A small but dependable pleasure of travel is encountering such blazons of civic pride as “Welcome to the City of Cheese, Chairs, Children, and Churches!”</span></p>

<p>The first caravans lumbered across 2000 miles of dangerous, inhospitable wilderness in 1843, the year of the Great Migration. To a surprising degree, it’s still possible to follow something very like their route.</p>

<p><span class="deck">The world about us is strewn with relics that are quietly eloquent of the struggle that ended half a century ago.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">It's a city framed by the breathtaking peaks of Mount St. Helens and Mount Hood, only a 30-minute bike ride from the lush farmland of the Willamette Valley, and driven by a powerful sense of community that allows its citizens to hold on to the best of its pioneer past while collaborating on the future. Randy Gragg explains why <span class="typestyle"> American Heritage</span>’s Great American Place Award goes to... </span></p>

<p dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-619cd7a5-d1e7-3410-8328-514fc270be4e" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;">President James K. Polk expanded U.S. territory by a third by war-making and shrewd negotiating.</p>