Not for gold, not for fur, not because they couldn’t stand their crazy neighbors who had settled the prairies, but those who blazed The Oregon Trail did so in search of hops to make killer beer. Okay, fine, that was just a happy residual effect once pioneers reached the Pacific, but when Lewis and Clark paddled up the Missouri River to its headwaters and ultimately down the Columbia River to the ocean, they discovered the fecundity of the Willamette Valley. Save for some early adapter furriers, the initial gold rush was a green rush.

Situated between the Cascade and Coast mountains, Oregon’s Willamette Valley is situated along the north forty-fifth parallel where the rainy, cool climate constitutes excellent growing conditions similar to Bavaria’s and, hence, lends itself particularly well to cultivating hops. It is the second largest hop-growing region in the country after Washington’s Yakima Valley.

Then there’s Oregon’s two-row barley (which is richer in extractable sugars compared to the cheaper six-row barley popular among corporate lagers). Capitalizing on the specialized crops and prime water source (snowmelt from nearby picturesque Mt. Hood), Portland is now home to about forty breweries, the most of any city in the world. There are well over a hundred brewing concerns that are members of the Oregon Brewers Guild. It’s no wonder it has been dubbed Beervana and Brewtopia. Mark your calendar because the Oregon Brewers Festival (OBF) falls on the last weekend in July where over eighty breweries—mostly from the Northwest—pour samples to a crowd of around eighty-thousand celebrants, making it one of the largest and oldest beer fests in the country.

As part of the exploration to charter the Louisiana Purchase and the American Pacific Northwest, predating Manifest Destiny and the ensuing Oregon Trail, Captain William Clark wrote of this area in 1805: “Welcome to the theater of majestic beauty — the Great Northwest.”

“Go west, young man” became a popular phrase, imploring young men from the overcrowded cities to leave the “idlers and imbeciles” behind — according to publisher Horace Greeley (though there is dispute who first uttered the idiom) — and take up agriculture. Tens of thousands of young pioneers, bachelors, and whole families pushed past the frontier towns of the west, making it the modern-day Midwest. However, the first brewery along the Pacific Coast wasn’t found in Oregon, but in California. Unsurprisingly, it was established in 1849, since nothing slaked the thirst of all those Forty-Niners like a little golden beer.

The direct benefit to the Oregon economy and the eventual Oregon Ale Trail is that settlers from Northern Oregon who panned and mined for gold in California quickly moved back to their families in Oregon flush with cash.

Henry Saxer established the Liberty Brewery in Portland in 1852. And Henry Weinhard contributed greatly to the local brewing evolution, launching his brewery here in 1856. By the end of the nineteenth century, he’d become such a successful beer magnate that he offered to pump in beer to flow from the Skidmore Fountain, today known as the area where the infamous Voodoo Donut is located.

While a few of the larger industrial breweries had outposts here such as Blitz-Weinhard Brewery (that bounced around in ownership among the conglomerates such as Stroh, Pabst, and Miller and is now the multi-use Brewery Blocks in downtown Portland’s Pearl District) it would take over a century for the Pacific Northwest to earn its place in the pantheon of epic brewing regions. This was thanks to the efforts of pioneers such as Kurt and Rob Widmer who launched their Widmer Bros. Brewery in 1984 in tandem with BridgePort followed by other stalwarts of craft brewing such as Full Sail (1987), Deschutes and Rogue (both 1988).

Born in 1951 and 1956, respectively, Kurt and Rob Widmer exemplify the roots of the pioneer’s and artisan brewer’s spirit. They sprouted from formulating their own root beer as kids to following in their Uncle Walter’s footsteps in the homebrewing hobby.

“Turning our hobby into a paying job sounded pretty good. And this just seemed like the spot to be in if you were going to start a brewery in the mid-eighties, around the Pacific Northwest, anyway,” Rob Widmer said, referencing harbingers of microbrewing like Northern California’s Sierra Nevada, which opened in 1980, and Washington’s Redhook, which opened in 1982.

His older brother Kurt added: “The reason craft brewing started here on the West Coast is not so much a link to the Old World as it is quality of life. And, of course, here we have beer drinkers who are receptive to new things. And that’s not the case in a lot of the country.”

Case in point, Portlanders consume craft beer at a rate of thirty percent. Compare that to the national average of five percent. And while I can’t find the numbers, I’m guessing that Pabst Blue Ribbon accounts for another thirty percent of Portland’s beer sales, since it’s hard to argue with dollar specials.

Beer lovers continue to go west to seek liquid prosperity. Beyond Beervana’s forty-odd breweries, the Central Oregon Visitor’s Association said that food-and-beverage tourism raked in $500 million last year, calling out the region’s breweries as a major factor. As for ale trails, Bend, Oregon touts their own Bend Ale Trail featuring eight breweries all within walking distance of each other, including Deschutes, the exciting and award-winning Bend Brewing, and the proudly-small 10 Barrel Brewing.

To immerse yourself in the Northwest beer culture a step beyond the pint, circumnavigate the farmlands in the Willamette Valley to a hop farm where the beauty of hop vines growing up trellises over ten feet high is superceded by the pungency of all that fresh Humulus lupulus. In fact, there’s a brewery called Oregon Trail Brewing in Corvalis — home to the USDA’s hop breeding program — that specializes in brewing with the freshest, whole hop cones imaginable.

Fear not, though. Portland’s focus remains on quality of output, not quantity of producers. The Cascade Brewing Barrel House is the nation’s first all-sour beer brewpub (well, a few other styles go on tap in the same way other brewpubs offer wine for the unconverted). At Burnside Brewing, not only does the chef experiment with molecular gastronomy on various menu items, but he is partnering with the brewmaster to apply those oddball notions to the beer. What does that mean exactly? Duck Confit Ale may show up on tap this year, though they already have a wheat beer brewed with apricots and Scotch bonnet peppers. And the man behind Ambacht Brewing is not only a keen brewer, he grows his own cherry trees whose fruit ends up in his beers; likewise the honey culled from his beekeeping hobby.

From the wellspring of tasty IPAs (if you think Pliny the Elder’s great, try Vortex from Ft. George Brewing in Astoria) made with plenty of local hops, to the continuing pioneering efforts of craft brewers such as the newly popular style of Cascadian dark ales  made with, well, tons of local hops (the first-ever gold medal for this style of beer at the Great American Beer Fest went to Turmoil brewed by tiny Barley Brown’s in Baker City), Oregon brewers have always and will always be trailblazers.