The Oregon Water Resources Department was established in its present form in 1975 from the merger of the State Water Resources Board and the State Engineer's Office. The primary responsibility of the Department is to monitor and regulate the state's water resources. The Department's predecessor organizations were established in 1909 with passage of the Water Code, which declared that all water in the state of Oregon belonged to the public.
The Oregon Drainage Basin Maps include statewide maps and maps for individual basins (also referred to as watersheds). The maps define basin boundaries and depict the rivers and streams within each basin. Maps for these individual basins are included in the collection: Deschutes, Goose and Summer Lakes, Grande Ronde, John Day, North Coast, Powder, Rogue, Umatilla, Umpqua, and Willamette. Major roadways and towns are also shown on the maps. Land use maps for the Deschutes and Willamette Basins are included. These indicate acreage for irrigated and non-irrigated agricultural land, range, forest land, and urban areas. One of the Willamette Basin maps also depicts recreation areas.
The maps within this collection range in scale from 1 inch = 2 miles (1:125,000) to 1 inch = 40 miles (1:2,500,000). Most of the maps in the collection have a scale of 1 inch = 5 miles.
Collection is open for research.
This collection is arranged in two series: I. Statewide Maps, 1962-1970 and II. Basin Maps, 1957-1992.
Oregon Drainage Basin Maps (MAPS Drainage), Oregon State University Special Collections & Archives Research Center, Corvallis, Oregon.
These materials were transferred from the Oregon State University Libraries' maps collection to the Special Collections & Archives Research Center in 2014.
Additional maps of Oregon rivers and basins are available in the
Series I consists of maps depicting all the drainage basins in the state. The map of water use programs indicates the minimal perennial stream flow in cubic feet per second (cfs).
Series II consists of maps of individual basins or watersheds. Land use maps for the Deschutes and Upper, Middle, and Lower Willamette Basins are included. These were prepared as part of a statewide land use inventory and depict irrigated and non-irrigated agricultural land, range, forest land, and urban areas. The land use maps include a table providing the acres for each land use classification by county in the basin. One of the Willamette Basin maps depicts recreation areas.
Includes maps of the Upper, Middle, and Lower Willamette Basins and the full Willamette Basin as well as the Sandy Basin.