Population:

city, 825,000 in 2000; metro area (Nehalem, Tillamook, Columbia and Clatsop Counties), 955,900.

Statistical Abstract:

Ravensgate is the 12^th-largest city in the US, between San Francisco and San Jose in size, and the largest in Oregon.  Portland’s metropolitan area, however, is twice the size of Ravensgate’s; Portland-Vancouver-Salem is ranked 22^nd in the US, Ravensgate-Astoria-Tillamook 51^st. The Nehalem County Metro Area ranks 97th out of the 100 most populous US cities in per-capita income, second in crime rate (exceeded only by Washington, DC), and first among all cities on the Forbes magazine list of the 400 richest Americans.

Ravensgate covers 187 square miles—-a factoid not lost on some sardonic California transplants—-and has a population density of 4418 per square mile.  One little-known fact about the area is that it has the largest concentration of meta-humans in the nation, estimated at 13.1 per 10,000 population.  This is three or more times the concentrations in Las Vegas and Albuquerque, which were near most of the US mainland’s atomic-bomb test sites.

Area Codes:

541 for telephones and faxes, 971 for cellular phones and MODEMs.

Major Industries:

Manufacturing, services, brewing and distilling, fishing, shipping and alternative-energy products.  Chief manufactured goods are metals, electronics, prefabricated housing, semiconductors, processed food, timber products, and paper. 

Public Transit:

Nehalem Transit runs 61 bus, 23 elevated-rail and 15 surface-rail routes in Nehalem, Tillamook and Clatsop Counties.  City-owned liquid-hydrogen refineries fuel the transit system, either directly or via municipal power generators.  Local taxi companies are Coastal Cab, Nehalem Taxi, PacifiCab, Radio Taxi, Tillamook Taxi, Ravensgate Motorcar, Total Taxi and Cosmopolitan Cab.

Hospitals:

17, including the TPU Health Sciences Center, Nehalem General (East Skyway), Yeager Air Guard Medical Center (Airport Heights), Mercy Street Medical Center (Rust City), Providence (Downtown) and Horizon View (Downtown).

Print Media:

Oregon Journal daily, six weekly and 35 neighborhood and community newspapers (11 languages).  The most prominent of the non-daily newspapers are the Ravensgate Mercury Weekly and Nehalem Commerce Daily.

Broadcast Media:

Six television and 17 radio stations—-including KRGO UPN-11, KOJ Fox-5, KOIL WB-40, KPAC CBS-9, KOJ-AM 960, KRVN-FM 104.9, KRVN-AM 660 and KAOS-FM 89.9.  Other media include RGCN (Ravensgate Cable News) and Ravensgate-journal.net, both owned by Oregon Journal MediaCorp through KOJ.

Cultural: 

The retractable-roof Town Square Performing Arts Center (PAC) seats 6500 and is home to the Nehalem Bay Philharmonic Orchestra (NBPO).

City Government:

Strong mayor balanced by a representative 11-member Municipal Assembly. The head of the city (and county) government is the Office of the Mayor of Metropolitan Ravensgate (OMMR), currently held by Salome Throckmorton-D’Aubaine (b. 10/31/71, Ravensgate). The Assembly of Supervisors appointed her to complete her deceased uncle’s term, August 2000, and she won her first term in a January 2003 runoff election.

Colleges and Universities:

Most colleges in Ravensgate started up to exploit variations of the GI Bill.

·         Throckmorton Polytechnic University, private independent, founded 1937:  Originally an engineering and hard sciences school, it has branched out into medicine, social sciences, business and broadcasting.

·         University of Ravensgate, private (Jesuit) university, 1948:  UR’s strengths are religion, law and education.

·         Oregon State University at Ravensgate, state, 1962:  TPU and UR more or less make OSUR superfluous—unless you can’t afford, or can’t qualify for, the other two.

·         Nehalem Community College, municipal two-year college, 1973.

·         Oregon Coast Community College, municipal two-year college, 1951.

·         Packwood College, municipal (city) four-year liberal-arts college, 1985.  Located at Rockaway Beach, it is a mainstay of Rolling Stone’s Top 10 US Party Schools list.  Naturally, it has a kick-ass political-science program, the only one at PC that offers graduate degrees.

Local Sports:

41,000-seat Brewers Field, home of the Pacific Coast League (AAA) Ravensgate Brewers, is no more as of early 2003. Now Raven Park, it is the home to the National League’s Ravensgate Ravens—-recently relocated from Canada. Sharing the park are the Breakers, a two-year-old Major League Soccer expansion team. Devereaux Municipal Arena seats 15,000 and is home to the NHL-expansion Outlaws and arena-league football Boilermakers. The four local colleges and universities share both venues for their indoor and outdoor sports.

NOTE: Nehalem County is fictional, but Nehalem Bay is not. Ravensgate would be somewhere between Garibaldi and Tillamook.