A Primer on Oregon's Land Use Laws and the Scarcity of Rural Retreat Properties
"The working assumption for the last few thousand years is that psychedelics are done in nature," stated Arnold. "And we are talking deep dives here: The transformational trips that people pay to travel to the only legal places in the US."
"Oregon has some of the nation's best (or worse, depending on your point of view) land use laws. First, we have urban growth boundaries that prohibit urban expansion. Any time in the last fifty years if you flew into an airport, the farmland nearby is still mostly farmland. Oregon's Willamette Valley (where 70% of the state lives) is some of the best farmland on planet earth due to a geographical freak accident in the last few ice ages. The Willamette Valley stole a lot of its topsoil from Idaho and eastern Washington when ancient glacial Lake Missoula's ice dam broke. During the ice ages, glaciers blocked the Rocky Mountains and periodically the dam broke scourging the bad lands in Idaho and ripping down the Columbia River. The last ice age flood was so devastating that it filled the Willamette Valley with water hundreds of feet high (you can see the vegetation line at the top of Mary's Peak near Corvallis) and roared upstream (uphill) along with all the topsoil (and icebergs clad in Rocky Mountain basalt).
"When the water receded back to Portland and then on to the ocean, it left behind up to 200 feet of soil in places. Hence, we have some of the best soil with some of the best irrigation and disease- and weather-free growing seasons on the planet. Oregon state laws jealously protect this non-renewable natural resource.
"What this means is we don't pave over farmland in Oregon, and we can only grow communities upwards into the air or closer together (through densely packed mixed zoning residential/commercial urban zoning and multi-family dwellings) within the urban growth boundaries. This is why property prices grow and grow in Oregon, because there is no more substantial development without legislative change. And in Blue State Oregon, this likely is not going to happen."
