Mark Graves/The Oregonian/OregonLive

The city of Portland tried to secede from the rest of the U.S. last month -- on the comedy series "Portlandia," that is. Not that everyone thinks it should be a joke. Back in the 1990s, various southern Oregon residents lamented "Portland rule" over the rest of the state and sought to do something about it. Medford businessman Jack Adkins proposed having every part of Oregon with the 541 area code split off to form a new state. "All the 503s would become Portland," he said. "The 541s would be Oregon."

The sentiment was nothing new. Oregonians have been trying to run off with their own personal chunk of Northwest heaven ever since Oregon became a state in 1859. Here’s a short history of Oregon’s longtime secession obsession...

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Library of Congress

A Pacific Republic

The government of the new state of Oregon remained loyal to the Union during the American Civil War, with many Oregonians -- including Sen. Edward D. Baker, who died in battle -- donning blue uniforms and heading east. But there was also significant pro-Confederacy sentiment here. Oregon Sen. Joseph Lane was John Breckinridge's Southern Democrat vice-presidential running mate in 1860. Breckinridge went on to become the Confederacy's secretary of War. Then there was the secret society The Knights of the Golden Circle. "In the confusion of hearsay recollections ... the Knights at one time at least tentatively planned to 'seize' Oregon," Oregonian historian Lancaster Pollard wrote in 1961, "and they did promote the secession of the Pacific Coast states to form an independent but pro-Southern union."

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Gen. Sherman (Library of Congress)

Gen. Sherman wasn't welcome

Oregon members of The Knights of the Golden Circle mostly kept their treasonous activities quiet, but that wasn’t the case for every Confederacy supporter in the state. In 1861, a brazen Yamhill County display of Confederate flags (and rumors of a large weapons cache by rebel sympathizers) led to calls for a federal judge to intervene. Nine years later, with the war long over, some members of the Oregon Legislature made clear they weren’t happy with how the conflict turned out. The state senate refused to support a House resolution inviting Gen. William T. Sherman to the capital. This slap at the great Union hero sparked outrage in Oregon and beyond. Editorialized the Idaho Statesman: “It is a very mean way to show a very mean disposition to exhibit the lurking Kuklux [sic] malice that rankles in their hearts.”

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The Oregonian

The two cities of Portland

The Broadway Bridge is a Portland landmark, as familiar and constant as the river it spans. But of course it wasn't always there. And, believe it or not, the early 20th-century political battle to get it built gave rise to east Portland threats to secede from the rest of the city. Members of the North East Side Improvement Association warned in May 1910 that if the bridge project derailed, "an independent municipal government should be set up east of the river." The Oregonian found the suggestion puzzling, writing: "It is not easy to see how two cities, one each side of the river, would solve the vexatious bridge problem better than one city." The newspaper, situated on the west side, added with a wink that if such a split did come to pass, it hoped the eastern city "would not go to the extreme of suspending diplomatic, commercial, social, physical, governmental and all other relations with the old town."

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The New York Times

Siskiyou and Tyler too!

Secession fever swept through the Rogue River Valley -- as well as the northernmost bits of California -- in the early years of the 20th century. Word of it even reached the East Coast, causing the New York Times editorial board to raise an alarm. "Already we hear war cries and breathings of slaughter," the nation's paper of record wrote in 1909. "Fathered by California, mothered by Oregon, unfilial Siskiyou emerges with threatenings and violence from its parental confines." Siskiyou County, of course, is in California, but The Oregonian pointed out that the movement's headquarters was Medford. The Portland paper warned: "It is said a supply of arms and ammunition has been laid in to be used if the base legislative caitiffs at Salem and Sacramento resist the secession movement."

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Library of Congress

The Siskiyou empire

Some interested observers believed the potential “vast empire” in northern California and southern Oregon had what it took to make it on its own, either as a separate U.S. state or an independent one. The New York Times pointed out that it would be a land “endowed with ocean harbors, with mineral wealth, with scenic attractions and tall timber.” Locally it became known, not entirely satirically, as the “hypothetical commonwealth of Siskiyou.”

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The Oregonian

The Yreka promise

The secession drive’s leader declaimed regularly from the pages of Medford’s Mail-Tribune newspaper. “What he is mad about doesn’t matter,” The Oregonian wrote, mocking the effort in humorous editorials. “Should open war break out,” The O added, “the Medford paper is assured of the alliance and support of the two saloonkeepers and two grocerymen of Yreka, Cal. The man who runs the Chinese laundry is said to be neutral.” Why were so many of the little Siskiyou County town’s business leaders supportive of the Oregon scribe’s pique? A supposed promise to Yreka “to build the new Capitol on the lot now occupied by the mossy ruins of its once palatial drugstore.”

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Crater Lake (Library of Congress)

The road to Crater Lake

The promise to Yreka, if there ever was one, might have been empty. In February 1910, The New York Times, as obsessed with Medford then as it is with Portland today, weighed in again: “If Siskiyou proposed ever becomes Siskiyou in fact, the Crater Lake road will be built, for one thing. Medford will get that coveted Federal building, and perhaps the state capitol.” The Oregonian decided to go ahead and acknowledge that it actually could happen; it wished Siskiyou the best of luck, writing that it would “in due season blossom under a new and more sovereign name.” Despite the Portland newspaper’s blessing, the secession movement’s momentum, coming up against treacherous state-constitutional hurdles, petered out.

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Near the Oregon-Idaho border (Library of Congress)

Idegon? Oredaho?

Secessionists spent years, starting late in the 19th century, trying to join up eight northern Idaho counties with part of eastern Washington to create the State of Lincoln. And for a while there early in 1913 the effort looked like it might succeed -- if the rest of Idaho could snag 10 eastern Oregon counties to make up for the loss of its northern block. Eastern Oregon, however, mostly wasn't interested, and so Idaho's legislature put the kibosh on Lincoln, refusing -- by a vote of 35-20 -- to send a secession request on to the U.S. Congress.

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Klamath Falls (Library of Congress)

The Klamath conspiracy

In 1919, a proposal was floated for Klamath County to secede from Oregon and either go its own way or join up with California. The secessionists’ chief complaint: that Portland, Salem and the rest of the state often forget it’s there. “Klamath is big enough territorially to make a state of the union,” The Oregonian acknowledged. “It is five times as large as Rhode Island, twice as large as Delaware, and nearly as large as either New Jersey or New Hampshire.” The paper insisted Klamath deserved more of urban Oregon’s attention: The county’s feeling of isolation “is entirely physical, and is not sentimental, nor historical, [and] can be cured.” The answer to keeping Klamath in the Oregon fold, it wrote, was roads and railroad tracks.

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Google Maps

Power to the people -- cheap power

In the late 1930s, residents of Stevenson, Wash., believed power delivered to the town from the new Bonneville Dam should be cheaper -- and they blamed their state’s governor for the high prices. There was only one obvious answer to the problem. “Secede? Well, I think we’d better!” declared John Harris, president of the town’s chamber of commerce. Ultimately, secession didn’t happen. The reason: “If we seceded,” Stevenson banker George F. Christensen said, “we’d have to join Oregon.”

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Gov. Olson (AP)

California dreaming

Port Orford Mayor Gilbert E. Gable led a 1941 effort to have Curry County secede from Oregon and then join California. The pro-California campaigners complained that Oregon was “slow in developing mineral resources in the state’s southwestern corner.” California Gov. Culbert L. Olson actually expressed support for the idea. “The dissatisfied Oregon county has not applied for a transfer,” Colson said, “but we are glad to know that they think enough of California to want to join it.” Olson met with Gable and the other secession leaders in Sacramento and told them he’d happily champion their addition to California if they first received Oregon’s permission to leave the Beaver State.

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Library of Congress

A state without a high school

Not everyone in mineral-rich Curry County backed the breakaway plan. Despite Mayor Gable’s heralding Curry as “Oregon’s Cinderella county,” one wag said: “It is surprising that Curry County would bother to secede, for in spirit it has never even been part of the United States.” Port Orford High School principal Ruth Clark, meanwhile, wrote to Oregon Gov. Charles Sprague to assure him that the school would refuse to be part of a new Curry state. “The Port Orford school will withdraw from Curry county if it secedes, and if Oregon spurns us, we shall attempt to obtain a corridor to Montana,” she wrote. “Montana will take us, chromite, termites and all.”

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The Cavemen at work. (The Oregonian)

Troglodytes unite!

As the Curry effort gained publicity, everybody started to weigh in. The Grants Pass-based Oregon Cavemen, a booster club that involved men dressing up in furs and carrying “Flintstones”-style clubs, lobbied for the secessionists to forgo California for a better option. “Instead of Curry County joining California, Josephine and Curry counties should combine and form a new state to be called Cavemania,” the group stated. They showed up in Sacramento and protested outside the building where Port Orford Mayor Gable and the other secession backers met with Gov. Colson.

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Library of Congress

Welcome to Jefferson

The Curry secession movement revived Siskiyou’s long-dormant desire to be free from Sacramento’s authority. In November 1941, the California county’s commissioners appropriated $100 “to survey the advisability” of establishing the 49th state. California’s Del Norte, Lassen and Trinity counties joined Siskiyou’s effort, and Oregon’s Curry, Jackson and Josephine counties, to one degree or another, jumped onboard. A special committee was charged with coming up with a name for the new state, and it ultimately settled on Jefferson. The secessionists said they needed to go their own way because California and Oregon had not developed the counties’ mineral resources or maintained the roads. Secession committee spokesman R.S. Smith warned Oregon and California leaders not to dismiss the movement as a joke, insisting it could become “as funny as the Boston Tea Party.”

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The Oregonian

Jefferson's independence

Mayor Gable sent a letter to Gov. Sprague demanding to know what the State of Oregon had done for Curry County lately. He received no official reply. On Nov. 27, 1941, the secessionists issued a Proclamation of Independence. They printed it on handbills, set up roadblocks on U.S. 99 and handed them out to motorists. The handbill began: "You are now entering Jefferson, the 49th state of the Union. Jefferson is now in rebellion against the states of California and Oregon. ... For the next hundred miles as you drive along Highway 99, you are traveling parallel to the greatest copper belt in the Far West, seventy-five miles west of here. The United States Government needs this vital mineral. But gross neglect by California and Oregon deprives us of necessary roads to bring out the copper ore."

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The attack on Pearl Harbor (AP)

Bear with us

The push for secession became a regional sensation, with the counties involved setting up a "provisional territorial assembly." On Dec. 4, 1941, in Yreka, Judge John L. Childs of Crescent City was "sworn in" as the first governor of Jefferson. "Led by two full-grown bears," The New York Times reported, "a torchlight parade rolled down the bunting and flag-draped Main Street." Two days later, The Associated Press reported: "'Moral support' for the southern Oregon-northern California secession movement to form the 49th state of Jefferson was voted Friday by the Medford and Ashland chambers of commerce meeting jointly. The Ashland chamber invited 'rebel leaders' to attend a forum here soon." That forum never happened. The next day, Dec. 7, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, throwing the U.S. into World War II and ending all Jefferson statehood efforts for the duration.

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Upper-crust Oswegans (The Oregonian)

Uproar by the Lake

Rising property taxes -- they had trebled in about half a decade in some of the wealthier neighborhoods -- caused some Oswego and Lake Grove residents in 1943 to agitate for their towns to withdraw from Clackamas County and join Multnomah County. The towns’ elected leaders moved swiftly to knock down the secession talk. “Everyone has not been polled, but so far I have found no one in the city of Oswego who wants to withdraw from Clackamas County,” Councilman Colin Livingstone said. He added: “We are all residents of the state of Oregon, and I believe this is no time to have bitterness between communities.” The towns of Oswego and Lake Grove joined in 1960.

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Mt. Shasta (Library of Congress)

Northern California tries again

A property manager led a new northern California revolt in 1956. The secession group put forward eight counties to become the state of Shasta, hoping to piggyback on the Alaska and Hawaii statehood bills in Congress. The grounds for bolting the Golden State: “self-protection.” Said Beverly Mason, the property manager: “Southern California is getting all the consideration regarding water supplies. We have become merely a satellite state without sufficient voice to protect ourselves in Sacramento.” This time, no southern Oregon counties, perhaps wedded to the Jefferson name, showed serious interest in joining the revived movement.

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The Oregonian

Locks and loaded

In 1965, the city of Cascade Locks endeavored to leave behind Hood River County and join Multnomah County. The mayor told The Oregonian that “residents of the city believe they should be tied to Multnomah County where they will get more political backing of the area.” The city remains part of Hood River County.

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The Oregonian

The great state of Wallowa

Wallowa County, “in hopeful seriousness,” pushed to separate itself from Oregon in 1970. “The rest of the state knows we exist only at hunting season and income-tax time,” Joseph businessman James Cheatham said. Cheatham, president of the town’s chamber of commerce, said it “all started over a cup of coffee with Don Swart, news editor of the Wallowa County Chieftain. The next thing I knew people were spontaneously passing around petitions to secede from the State of Oregon.” The secessionists wanted to call the state, simply, Wallowa. They argued that the natural resources in the far-eastern county, sometimes called “the Switzerland of America,” “are under excessive control by outside public and private interests.” Cheatham acknowledged that the drive for statehood wasn’t actually going to succeed but declared “the world will know we mean business.”

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The Oregonian

Eco-Oregon

Ernest Callenbach originally self-published his 1975 utopian novel “Ecotopia.” In the book, Callenbach envisioned California, Oregon and Washington state breaking away from the rest of the U.S. This new nation was a prosperous place that embraced recycling and cycling and largely isolated itself from the outside world. Consumer advocate Ralph Nader heralded this vision of the future that was “focused on the quality of living rather than the quantity of things. After secession, the GNP dropped but people were better off.” Nader thought the country’s political leaders would be well-advised to read the novel. “Maybe we ought to start developing a more comprehensive sensitivity to where are as a society,” he wrote, “where we are heading and, most importantly, where we would like to be going.”

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Wyden and Smith (The Oregonian)

Gordon Smith or bust

Talk of the State of Jefferson popped up again in 1996 thanks to ... the election of Ron Wyden to the U.S. Senate. His victory over Pendleton’s Gordon Smith in a special election to finish out Bob Packwood’s term reignited the widespread belief in Oregon’s wide-open spaces that the state’s urban dwellers liked to keep their boots on rural Oregonians’ necks. But Smith then ran for Oregon’s other senate seat later that year and won, becoming the first U.S. senator elected from the eastern part of the state in nearly 60 years.

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California Gov. Jerry Brown (AP)

Jefferson returns once again

The dream of Jefferson dies hard. In 2013, the California counties of Modoc and Siskiyou passed resolutions calling for secession, citing the “increasing tendency by the State of California to exercise legislative and fiscal malfeasance” and “assaults upon Second Amendment rights.” They apparently sent out feelers to Klamath and Lake counties, but their Oregon brothers did not pass similar resolutions. California Gov. Jerry Brown said: "I'm going to definitely talk to the people of Jefferson and tell them to stick around." In 2014, Siskiyou and another California county, Del Norte, rejected secession ballot measures, while a secession vote passed in the California county of Tehama.

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Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (The Oregonian)

Eco-Oregon redux

After President Donald Trump's election last November, two Portlanders submitted an Oregon Secession Act ballot measure. They ended up withdrawing the proposal, but it showcased how secession talk has largely swung to the ideological left over the past 40 years, led by the Cascadia movement. Secession proposals, University of Oregon history professor Steven C. Beda wrote recently, now "speak to a persistent belief in our regional culture: we in the Northwest are different. We value nature, we value diversity, and you other regions don't." Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a leader in efforts to resist Trump's agenda, told The New Yorker last month that she didn't want Oregon to secede, but "when I was in college I did read 'Ecotopia,' and I want to go back and read it now."

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The Portlandia nation

This brings us back, inevitably, to “Portlandia.” Or should we say, “Port-Langeles”? That’s the possible future for the city that the show’s mayor wants to avoid. The IFC series’ secessionists want to stop the influx of outsiders with “different” values. “They actually want to work,” Carrie Brownstein points out in the episode, “and that’s changing our way of life.”

-- Douglas Perry