Jefferson (Pacific State)

The State of Jefferson is a proposed U.S. state that would span the contiguous, mostly rural area of southern Oregon and Northern California, where several attempts to separate from those states have taken place.

This region on the Pacific Coast is the most famous of several that have sought to adopt the name of Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States. Jefferson, who sent the Lewis and Clark expedition into the Pacific Northwest in 1803, envisioned the establishment of an independent nation in the western portion of North America that he dubbed the "Republic of the Pacific"; hence, the association of his name with regional autonomy. The independence movement, rather than statehood, is known as Cascadia.

The name "Jefferson" has also been used for other proposed states: the name was proposed in the 19th century for Jefferson Territory (roughly modern Colorado), as well as in 1915 in a bill in the Texas legislature for a proposed state that would be created from the Texas Panhandle region. The Pacific Jefferson was proposed in a 1941 petition to Washington, DC, which was pushed aside when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor later that year and diverted national attention elsewhere.

If the proposal were ever approved, the new State's capital city would have to be determined by a constitutional convention. Yreka, California, was named the provisional capital in the original 1941 proposal, although Port Orford, Oregon, had also been up for consideration. Some supporters of the more recent revival have also identified Redding, California, as a potential capital, even though Redding is not included in all versions of the proposal and its own city council voted in 2013 to reject participation in the movement.

Jefferson in "Typecasting"
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