A few reasons. One is there isn’t much flat land; most of it is hilly and even mountainous and covered in thick forests. The flat areas are occupied with farms and towns but the space is small and not enough for big cities to grow. The hills and mountains are heavily forested and there has never been a big enough population to need to encroach on them. It’s also not great for building and farming, unless grazing animals.
The other big reason is there are no natural deep sea ports in that region. It’s either marshy or the estuary of the river Colombia. Small fishing towns would be fine, but not big industrial ports that drive city growth (or did in the past). Meanwhile, Portland sits further back up the river with plenty of flat land and access to the water, so makes a natural port. And Seattle sits on the bay further north and is coastal, and a good port.
The dynamic got set up of big cities further back, and those areas never really grew. Once the land became part of state forests, then that restricts growth even more.
[Portland, Maine] was formally founded in 1786 and named after the English Isle of Portland. In turn, the city of Portland, Oregon, was named after Portland, Maine.
I failed at finding how the Isle of Portland got its name but saw this:
In Dorset, England:
The origin of the name “Portland” on the Isle of Portland is uncertain, but theories include:
It may be a corruption of the Celtic word “Port Lann” ("harbor by the cliff").
It may derive from the Old English “portelond” ("land by the harbor").
One of the founders (Francis Pettygrove) was originally from Portland Maine, and the other was from Boston. They both wanted to name the new city after their hometown.
It’s entirely possible that part of Pettygrove why wanted to name it after his hometown is because he thought it would be fitting for river port city. But idk if he ever stated anything to that effect.
All good points but you also forgot to mention another key factor. This is more or less the rainiest region in the country. It’s extremely wet and most people don’t like that.
It really is shitty out there most of the year. Even in summer it can be 95 degrees in the valley and raining on the coast. Most of the people living out on the coast are natives, retirees, and Trump supporters as there isnt much work outside of casinos, gas station/fast food, and logging. There’s also tourism but thats also just the beach, the casinos, and your standard saltwater taffy shop, antique shop, kite shop trio repeating over and over all up and down the coast.
Yes. The temperate rainforest region of Pacific Northwest is a horror show. 300+ days of rain. And the others are just cloudy. You can’t swim in the ocean. It’s constantly below 80. Don’t move here. It’s horrible.
What they said but also, that’s the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Faced disastrous drop in land level back in the 1700s. Dunked the whole coast into the Pacific
we just went to that area yesterday!! its very rocky and lots of cliffs on the coast, and super super hilly and forested in the interior.
many absolutely do live there, and those municipalities marked on your map there are reasonably populated. but the terrain is not super great for building large stuff, and they really do not like deforestation either. it is also farther away from freeway I-5, where most stuff on the west coast is freighted by truck, and is more expensive, at least from our experiences.
Other comments give a good tl;dw already, but in case anyone wants a video with pictures and examples, Geography By Geoff has done this topic a few times. Here’s one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqyM54CNSsY
Basically, that’s not where the farmland is (or, when it was first being settled, the fur, which provided the major economic incentives for why that area was settled in the first place). You also have to think about how the land was settled. Settlers from the east used mountain valleys to get around. Mountain valleys in that circled area aren’t easily traversable and don’t go anywhere or lead anywhere useful. Settlers from the southwest used ships and followed shipping routes up the coast. When you consider both these settlement methods simultaneously (and they were in fact used almost simultaneously) you will come to the conclusion that these are some of the most remote areas to be settled in the continental US, and their relative remoteness has a lot to do with why they were settled the way they were.
Meanwhile, from the perspective of a ship sailing up the coast there are few good protected anchorages to use as a sheltered waystation or safe harbor in case of inclement weather directly along the coast, but if you go just a little further you’ll reach good port lands (it’s literally called “Portland") or Seattle and you might as well journey just a little further to stop there instead if you possibly can. When you consider people taking a long and perilous journey around the horn of South America (there was no Panama Canal) you’re almost at the end of the line, and you aren’t going to want to stop 99% of the way, you’re so close that you’ll push on to the end, and that’s why Portland, Seattle and Vancouver developed where they did. The farmland got worse the further north you went and became increasingly unsustainable so nobody really went much further before the gold rush provided yet another economic incentive to draw people there, but that’s a different story.
This isn’t an informed guess, but I’d imagine it has to do with ground suitability, as well as risks caused by the ocean and weather. I recently read an article that major cities in the area, away from the coast, are causing the ground to sink below their weight.
There is clearly a secret Bigfoot preserve or if you believe scp-1000 a super advanced civilization of hyper-inteligent homonids we colloquially refer to as bigfoot
Why do you think almost no one lives there just because you don’t know of a major city in the area?
It’s simple logistics, there’s no reason for a major city to be there.
You have Seattle, Vancouver, Victoria in the same region. And if anything is coming to the area it’s going to that region already, and if it’s going farther south you have better ports in Oregon.
Genuinely curious what made you interested in this idea or where it came from
I’ve had similar thoughts. It’s ocean-side cities along America’s West coast, it’s along the same coast as some of the most desirable locations to live in the world (SF, LA, and many cities in between and beyond.) it seems strange that the population moves further inland when you look on a map.
If you do a quick look at the terrain option on Google maps. I think it’s very obvious that there were advantages places for larger populations to settle around. That particular section of the west coast is fairly inhospitable. Look at the coastal sea floor as well. It paints a fairly clear picture on its own, especially when comparing it to the east coast. Secondly find a timelapse of the how north American was settled as colonies. Stuff mostly came from the east and eventually made it’s way to the west. Railroads are big big part of how the west was colonized and there wasn’t much use for north south railways as things progressed as there was to get things to and from the east.
That locks in or at least reinforces the locations of where major populations can establish themselves.
It’s only been about 135 years since trans Pacific trade started(quick google info please be kind if that’s wrong) in the year 2000 it was still inside the lifespan of a single living human that international trade across the Pacific was really anything at all
And it was with people’s that had absolutely no relation with the European colonists. And they were also very xenophobic culturally and didn’t develop very advanced in deep ocean sailing due to lack of interest.
The old world was east of the Americas, mystery and the unknown was the Pacific. There be monsters there!
So all in all it seem to make a lot of sense that there wasnt much economic pressures requiring big coastal economies until well after established communities and regions developed.
I think Astoria is one of the older major coastal trade cities, but it faltered as Seattle and Portland developed.
And to your point about being inland a ways, they are in much most hospitable regions for farming and agriculture to support a large population
They didn’t know it when the states were formed, but I think a lot of the modern hesitancy comes from ‘the big one’ that we now know will certainly occur. I love visiting Newport - but you can’t ignore the tsunami safety zone makers and evacuation route signage everywhere you look. There are plenty of houses and tons of space to build, but because these coastal towns are far away from the major hubs, no one is going to commute from there either, imho.
The harbor/bay at the north of that circle is Aberdeen and Hoquiam. It used to be a larger city and a major port, but with Seattle’s development, the railroads from the east terminating at Puget Sound, and the boom of WW2 making the region a military base, it became overshadowed and neglected for the last 100 years.
Not sure if this applies to the entire northwest coast but I had a friend from a small town in the northwest who said the water was colder and there were more sharks in those waters. So it wasn’t like beachfront property where people would regularly go swimming.
Also like the other comment mentioned those areas also tend to be steeper, more cliffs, etc so I imagine developing property around there could get expensive, and that’s ignoring if any of those areas are park / natural preserve areas.
Sharks? Lol, no. At least I’ve never heard of any, and I’ve lived in the northwest for a long time. But the water is cold, yes. Also I think tsunamis are possible in that area, though uncommon. The main highway runs north-south along the coast rather than turning inland, so it might be hard to evacuate if there was one.
There’s a mountain separating House of Oregon oh well I’m old valley, which is the good agriculture land in the state. The city of Portland is located where the Willamette River reaches the Columbia river. The mouth of the Columbia, where Astoria is, is not navigable. The mouth of the Columbia river is famously called the graveyard of the Pacific because it’s so treacherous to try and cross by boat. The coastal Oregon is hilly without natural ports
One reason I haven’t seen mentioned: it’s hard to get there. The best you get is a two-lane highway (as in one lane for eastbound and one for westbound). Also because you have to go over a mountain range, there’s actually very few highways to even use.
For the Oregon Coast, in that circle you have 4 highways: 6, 18, 26 and 30. If you want to go to, say, Newport you pretty much have to go to Lincoln City and then head South.
First, I’ve been to Astoria Oregon, and I assure you that people live there. It’s not Vancouver, but it’s a legit town.
But I get your question. I think the answers are complex and technical, but my understanding is that people migrate and settle, and then population centers often grow based on a mix of natural features and where human-made resources like centers of education are constructed. So it’s really more of a question of why were the locations of Portland and Seattle better.
I’m not a geographer, so I don’t know the precise features, but my guess is that Portland and Seattle were located in areas that offered most of the benefits of this coastal region in terms of access to the ocean but had greater benefits and fewer downsides. I’m just speculating here, but my first guess would be that the weather inland is less intense. It might also provide better access to freshwater and arable land.
But people do live there. And if you live in Newport or Lincoln City you’re two hours from an international airport. That’s not exactly undeveloped wilderness. People just chose to settle a bit more inland along bays, which considering how rough the weather in the coastal Pacific northwest can be, seems sensible.
Based on the voting districts alone, those areas aren’t the least populated in the state, but they’re also definitely not cities.
Since those areas also don’t have hiking trails unlike a huge swath of the state, I’m going guess the terrain along the coast there is not easily traverseable.
Generally speaking, there is very little percentage of either state’s population living directly on or near the actual ocean facing Pacific coast… WA is basically the Seattle metro area, OR is basically the Portland metro area.
Why do few people live on the Pacific Coast?
Short answer is basically there aren’t really any great places for serious ports there.
In addition to what the other commenters have said about being hilly, the water side is also difficult to live on without a good boat. Might be an up and coming spot in the water world though.
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A few reasons. One is there isn’t much flat land; most of it is hilly and even mountainous and covered in thick forests. The flat areas are occupied with farms and towns but the space is small and not enough for big cities to grow. The hills and mountains are heavily forested and there has never been a big enough population to need to encroach on them. It’s also not great for building and farming, unless grazing animals.
The other big reason is there are no natural deep sea ports in that region. It’s either marshy or the estuary of the river Colombia. Small fishing towns would be fine, but not big industrial ports that drive city growth (or did in the past). Meanwhile, Portland sits further back up the river with plenty of flat land and access to the water, so makes a natural port. And Seattle sits on the bay further north and is coastal, and a good port.
The dynamic got set up of big cities further back, and those areas never really grew. Once the land became part of state forests, then that restricts growth even more.
EDIT: Here is a topographical map showing in blue the flat land: https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/world/?center=38.54817%2C-119.79492&zoom=6
I just realized why it’s called Portland.
In my defense, I’ve never seen a map of it before.
Nope, the name was decided with coin flip. Lol Could ended up as Boston.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Penny
i thought you were kidding until i saw the wikipedia link. that’s fascinating, and very cool that they still have the penny
Going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole:
I failed at finding how the Isle of Portland got its name but saw this:
https://etymologyworld.com/item/portland
Its the first time I’ve seen the site though and that page feels a bit AI generated
That’s a little disappointing.
Inland port -> Portland seemed nice and tidy
But why was Portland one of the options?
One of the founders (Francis Pettygrove) was originally from Portland Maine, and the other was from Boston. They both wanted to name the new city after their hometown.
It’s entirely possible that part of Pettygrove why wanted to name it after his hometown is because he thought it would be fitting for river port city. But idk if he ever stated anything to that effect.
All good points but you also forgot to mention another key factor. This is more or less the rainiest region in the country. It’s extremely wet and most people don’t like that.
It really is shitty out there most of the year. Even in summer it can be 95 degrees in the valley and raining on the coast. Most of the people living out on the coast are natives, retirees, and Trump supporters as there isnt much work outside of casinos, gas station/fast food, and logging. There’s also tourism but thats also just the beach, the casinos, and your standard saltwater taffy shop, antique shop, kite shop trio repeating over and over all up and down the coast.
Yeah people love to complain about rain in Seattle but some parts of the coast here get around double that amount of rain.
Yes. The temperate rainforest region of Pacific Northwest is a horror show. 300+ days of rain. And the others are just cloudy. You can’t swim in the ocean. It’s constantly below 80. Don’t move here. It’s horrible.
So… no high speed fiber access then?
cant swim in the ocean
Windsurfers rejoice!
Nope too dangerous for that too. Definitely don’t move to this hellscape.
Uhhh all ocean water is below 80 degrees otherwise humans will near boil when going near it.
Yep. The ocean is both too cold and near boiling. The PNW is awful!
I think they were measuring it in burger units.
Mostly because no one wants to deal with twinkling vampires.
What they said but also, that’s the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Faced disastrous drop in land level back in the 1700s. Dunked the whole coast into the Pacific
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_subduction_zone
Maybe too hilly or steep cliff coast ( = bad when you want fishing or an harbor)
we just went to that area yesterday!! its very rocky and lots of cliffs on the coast, and super super hilly and forested in the interior.
many absolutely do live there, and those municipalities marked on your map there are reasonably populated. but the terrain is not super great for building large stuff, and they really do not like deforestation either. it is also farther away from freeway I-5, where most stuff on the west coast is freighted by truck, and is more expensive, at least from our experiences.
the sunset on the coast is SO pretty though :)
Other comments give a good tl;dw already, but in case anyone wants a video with pictures and examples, Geography By Geoff has done this topic a few times. Here’s one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqyM54CNSsY
Maybe the same reason there are so few ports on the African West Coast.
i think that when locals call a place “the land that god made in anger”, it might be wise to not settle there
Because somebody put a giant red fence around the area, nobody can get in.
These places feel normally populated for the geography when you drive through them.
The Northwest Sasquatch tick can grow to 6” in size and kill a person overnight.
I was there yesterday. It’s cold AF all year.
The Goonies: am I a joke to you?
NGL I’d move to Astoria in a heartbeat if I had a remote job and a place to land lined up, but the Epstein class has decided that can’t happen
I freaking loved Astoria, such a mood. Totally get why you’d move there. Maybe one day…
Basically, that’s not where the farmland is (or, when it was first being settled, the fur, which provided the major economic incentives for why that area was settled in the first place). You also have to think about how the land was settled. Settlers from the east used mountain valleys to get around. Mountain valleys in that circled area aren’t easily traversable and don’t go anywhere or lead anywhere useful. Settlers from the southwest used ships and followed shipping routes up the coast. When you consider both these settlement methods simultaneously (and they were in fact used almost simultaneously) you will come to the conclusion that these are some of the most remote areas to be settled in the continental US, and their relative remoteness has a lot to do with why they were settled the way they were.
Meanwhile, from the perspective of a ship sailing up the coast there are few good protected anchorages to use as a sheltered waystation or safe harbor in case of inclement weather directly along the coast, but if you go just a little further you’ll reach good port lands (it’s literally called “Portland") or Seattle and you might as well journey just a little further to stop there instead if you possibly can. When you consider people taking a long and perilous journey around the horn of South America (there was no Panama Canal) you’re almost at the end of the line, and you aren’t going to want to stop 99% of the way, you’re so close that you’ll push on to the end, and that’s why Portland, Seattle and Vancouver developed where they did. The farmland got worse the further north you went and became increasingly unsustainable so nobody really went much further before the gold rush provided yet another economic incentive to draw people there, but that’s a different story.
Wildly wet. Tons of rain. Geographic reasons for it.
This is why i want to move there lol (not to detract from your point)
sings “I’m only happy when it rains…”
If I remember correctly, they talk about it in this YouTube video. It basically boils down to the terrain and it being bad for ports.
https://youtu.be/oojpwa5bfqg
There’s a city named “Newport” smack dab in the center of the circle ironically enough.
It has been blocked off by a ring of lava
It’s a Bigfoot reserve.
This isn’t an informed guess, but I’d imagine it has to do with ground suitability, as well as risks caused by the ocean and weather. I recently read an article that major cities in the area, away from the coast, are causing the ground to sink below their weight.
they are populated. gorgeous drive up the coast. did a week in the banana belt near the turn of the millenium. it was a very nice municipality.
My buddy lives in Lincoln city. He’s a glass blower
glass and your buddy must be very happy together.
I’ll add to all the maybe’s by saying maybe Bigfoot.
This
There is clearly a secret Bigfoot preserve or if you believe scp-1000 a super advanced civilization of hyper-inteligent homonids we colloquially refer to as bigfoot
Why do you think almost no one lives there just because you don’t know of a major city in the area?
It’s simple logistics, there’s no reason for a major city to be there.
You have Seattle, Vancouver, Victoria in the same region. And if anything is coming to the area it’s going to that region already, and if it’s going farther south you have better ports in Oregon.
Genuinely curious what made you interested in this idea or where it came from
I’ve had similar thoughts. It’s ocean-side cities along America’s West coast, it’s along the same coast as some of the most desirable locations to live in the world (SF, LA, and many cities in between and beyond.) it seems strange that the population moves further inland when you look on a map.
It’s just weird that it’s the West Coast of North America and the major cities (seattle and Portland are well inland)
Just a little further south and it’s one of the mot populated regions (SanFran, San Jose, LA etc)
If you do a quick look at the terrain option on Google maps. I think it’s very obvious that there were advantages places for larger populations to settle around. That particular section of the west coast is fairly inhospitable. Look at the coastal sea floor as well. It paints a fairly clear picture on its own, especially when comparing it to the east coast. Secondly find a timelapse of the how north American was settled as colonies. Stuff mostly came from the east and eventually made it’s way to the west. Railroads are big big part of how the west was colonized and there wasn’t much use for north south railways as things progressed as there was to get things to and from the east.
That locks in or at least reinforces the locations of where major populations can establish themselves.
It’s only been about 135 years since trans Pacific trade started(quick google info please be kind if that’s wrong) in the year 2000 it was still inside the lifespan of a single living human that international trade across the Pacific was really anything at all
And it was with people’s that had absolutely no relation with the European colonists. And they were also very xenophobic culturally and didn’t develop very advanced in deep ocean sailing due to lack of interest.
The old world was east of the Americas, mystery and the unknown was the Pacific. There be monsters there!
So all in all it seem to make a lot of sense that there wasnt much economic pressures requiring big coastal economies until well after established communities and regions developed.
I think Astoria is one of the older major coastal trade cities, but it faltered as Seattle and Portland developed.
And to your point about being inland a ways, they are in much most hospitable regions for farming and agriculture to support a large population
They didn’t know it when the states were formed, but I think a lot of the modern hesitancy comes from ‘the big one’ that we now know will certainly occur. I love visiting Newport - but you can’t ignore the tsunami safety zone makers and evacuation route signage everywhere you look. There are plenty of houses and tons of space to build, but because these coastal towns are far away from the major hubs, no one is going to commute from there either, imho.
The harbor/bay at the north of that circle is Aberdeen and Hoquiam. It used to be a larger city and a major port, but with Seattle’s development, the railroads from the east terminating at Puget Sound, and the boom of WW2 making the region a military base, it became overshadowed and neglected for the last 100 years.
Cold, wet, rocky.
Not sure if this applies to the entire northwest coast but I had a friend from a small town in the northwest who said the water was colder and there were more sharks in those waters. So it wasn’t like beachfront property where people would regularly go swimming.
Also like the other comment mentioned those areas also tend to be steeper, more cliffs, etc so I imagine developing property around there could get expensive, and that’s ignoring if any of those areas are park / natural preserve areas.
Sharks? Lol, no. At least I’ve never heard of any, and I’ve lived in the northwest for a long time. But the water is cold, yes. Also I think tsunamis are possible in that area, though uncommon. The main highway runs north-south along the coast rather than turning inland, so it might be hard to evacuate if there was one.
There’s a mountain separating House of Oregon oh well I’m old valley, which is the good agriculture land in the state. The city of Portland is located where the Willamette River reaches the Columbia river. The mouth of the Columbia, where Astoria is, is not navigable. The mouth of the Columbia river is famously called the graveyard of the Pacific because it’s so treacherous to try and cross by boat. The coastal Oregon is hilly without natural ports
There’s lots of small chill beach towns, seems like a lovely place to live really. Been considering moving there actually 😆
Correlation between geography and population density
Also most of the time that people live on coasts in dense areas is because they’re shipping ports or some other very specific reason
These are ceremonial, organ-harvesting sites.
Best to stick to the main roads.
Because they live somewhere else
One reason I haven’t seen mentioned: it’s hard to get there. The best you get is a two-lane highway (as in one lane for eastbound and one for westbound). Also because you have to go over a mountain range, there’s actually very few highways to even use.
For the Oregon Coast, in that circle you have 4 highways: 6, 18, 26 and 30. If you want to go to, say, Newport you pretty much have to go to Lincoln City and then head South.
Ask the people in Astoria and the other cities there.
First, I’ve been to Astoria Oregon, and I assure you that people live there. It’s not Vancouver, but it’s a legit town.
But I get your question. I think the answers are complex and technical, but my understanding is that people migrate and settle, and then population centers often grow based on a mix of natural features and where human-made resources like centers of education are constructed. So it’s really more of a question of why were the locations of Portland and Seattle better.
I’m not a geographer, so I don’t know the precise features, but my guess is that Portland and Seattle were located in areas that offered most of the benefits of this coastal region in terms of access to the ocean but had greater benefits and fewer downsides. I’m just speculating here, but my first guess would be that the weather inland is less intense. It might also provide better access to freshwater and arable land.
But people do live there. And if you live in Newport or Lincoln City you’re two hours from an international airport. That’s not exactly undeveloped wilderness. People just chose to settle a bit more inland along bays, which considering how rough the weather in the coastal Pacific northwest can be, seems sensible.
The Olympic Exclusion Zone is expanding
Based on the voting districts alone, those areas aren’t the least populated in the state, but they’re also definitely not cities.
Since those areas also don’t have hiking trails unlike a huge swath of the state, I’m going guess the terrain along the coast there is not easily traverseable.
That’s Washington. OP circled the Oregon coast
Technically they circled both. That’s basically the entire PNW coast
Nah the PNW coast includes Canada too
Saw Seattle, didn’t think further.
2024 Presidential Race
WA by county:
WA by congr. district:
WA by precinct:
OR by county:
OR by congr. district:
OR by precinct:
Generally speaking, there is very little percentage of either state’s population living directly on or near the actual ocean facing Pacific coast… WA is basically the Seattle metro area, OR is basically the Portland metro area.
Why do few people live on the Pacific Coast?
Short answer is basically there aren’t really any great places for serious ports there.
In addition to what the other commenters have said about being hilly, the water side is also difficult to live on without a good boat. Might be an up and coming spot in the water world though.
Go live there yourself.
Oh, you don’t want to? Why not?
There, you have your reason now.
What the hell lmao. You made an argument for why people don’t live in New York because I don’t move to New York.
And implied that literally everywhere else in the world besides where I live has reasons why “*nobody*” lives there because I don’t live there.
The logic isn’t strictly wrong per se, it’s just something akin to a tautology, it means nothing.
New York has a greater number of points of interest than the Oregon coast.
Oregon coast is beautiful, don’t get me wrong. Great place to vacation. Not terribly exciting place to live, though.
80% of the things people say on here are (somehow) contrarian tautologies.
That explains how places get bigger, but not why they don’t exist…. Which doesn’t exactly answer OP’s question.