Good Morning Grants Pass

Good Morning Grants Pass - Original photographic artwork by Heidi Smith.... more

by Heidi Smith

Title

Good Morning Grants Pass

Artist

Heidi Smith

Medium

Photograph

Description

Good Morning Grants Pass - Original photographic artwork by Heidi Smith.

Grants Pass is a city in, and the county seat of Josephine County, Oregon, United States. The city is located on Interstate 5, northwest of Medford. Attractions include the Rogue River, famous for its rafting, and the nearby Oregon Caves National Monument located 30 miles (48 km) south of the city. The population was 34,533 at the 2010 United States Census.

Early Hudson's Bay Company hunters and trappers, following the Siskiyou Trail, passed through the site beginning in the 1820s. In the late 1840s, settlers (mostly American) following the Applegate Trail began traveling through the area on their way to the Willamette Valley. The city states that the name was selected to honor General Ulysses S. Grant's success at Vicksburg. Grants Pass post office was established on March 22, 1865. The city of Grants Pass was incorporated in 1887, a year after it had become the county seat.[citation needed]
The Oregon-Utah Sugar Company, financed by Charles W. Nibley was created, leading to a sugar beet factory being built in Grants Pass in 1916. Before the factory opened, Oregon-Utah Sugar was merged into the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company. Due to labor shortages and low acreage planted in sugar beets, the processing machinery was moved to Toppenish, Washington in 1918 or 1919.

In 1922, a group of local businessmen incorporated the Grants Pass Cavemen. Taking their name from the nearby Oregon Caves National Monument, this group was one of many groups of boosterism common in the United States at the time. For decades afterwards, this group would represent their city in countless public gatherings, dressed in furs and bearing clubs, performing such uncivilized acts as capturing female crowd members and politicians and putting them in their cages. To honor this group, in 1971 a fiberglass statue of a caveman was erected at the corner of Morgan Lane and Sixth Street. Grants Pass High School's mascot is also the caveman. The original monument was damaged by arson in 2004 and repaired in 2005.

True to its motto, "It's the climate!", Grants Pass has a Zone 7 climate with hot, long summers and mild but pronounced winters with sharply defined seasons without severe winter cold or humidity. This climate zone differs from the rest of Western Oregon in that there is less ocean influence, cooler winters, and warmer drier summers.

Summer days are sunny, dry and hot but it cools down dramatically at night; the average July high temperature is 90 F (32 C) and the low, 53 F (12 C). Winters are cool and fairly rainy with only occasional snow; the average January high temperature is 47.5 F (8.5 C) and the low, 32.5 F (0 C). It receives roughly 30 inches (760 mm) of precipitation per year, with three-quarters of it occurring between November 1 and March 31. The mild winters and dry summers support a native vegetation structure quite different from the rest of Oregon, dominated by madrone, deciduous and evergreen oak, manzanita, pine, chinquapin, and other species that are far less abundant further north.
The record high temperature of 113F was on July 23, 1928. The record low temperature of -1F was on December 9, 1972 until 1990 when it reached -3F. There are an average of 51.3 days annually with highs of 90F (32C) or higher and 77.5 days annually with lows of 32F (0C) or lower.

Measurable precipitation falls on an average of 110 days annually. The wettest year was 1996 with 55.64 inches of precipitation and the driest year was 1976 with 15.35 inches of precipitation. The most precipitation in one month was 20.63 inches in December 1996. The heaviest rainfall in 24 hours was 5.27 inches on December 29, 1950. There is an average of only 4.6 inches of snow annually. The most snowfall in one month was 34.1 inches in February 1917.

Source -Wikipedia

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August 28th, 2013