McMinnville, OR

Howard Hughes’s Spruce Goose, the world’s largest propeller-driven seaplane, is housed at McMinnville’s Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum with exhibits and about 80 other historic aircraft. McMinnville is the Yamhill County seat, positioned in the Willamette Valley where the North and South forks of the Yamhill River meet; 34,319 people lived there in 2020. Linfield University traces its history to a private Baptist school opened in 1849 and chartered as Baptist College in 1858. It later became McMinnville College and Linfield College before adopting its current name in 2020. The city is also a center of Willamette Valley wine production. Each May, its UFO Festival commemorates locally photographed objects that prompted a long-running debate between researchers and skeptics.