Eugene, OR

Everyone knows Oregon is a unique state. Not only is it a bit strange, it is also full of intelligent and eclectic people. Perhaps no one exemplified that strangeness and intelligence better than Ken Kesey. He wrote stories about people who had been written off in a way that made us all relate to them.

He also transformed a broken-down bus into a hippy haven and drove across the United States as if to say there wasn’t only one who had flown over the cuckoo’s nest. Kesey was an adopted son of Eugene and they honored him with a statue reading to children within Broadway Plaza in downtown Eugene called Kesey Square.