The proposed country or region largely would consist of the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon, including the major cities of Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland.

As measured only by the combination of present Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia statistics, Cascadia would be home to more than 17 million people, and would have an economy generating more than US$1.1 trillion worth of goods and services annually.

[7][8] There are several reasons why the Cascadia movement aims to foster connections and a sense of place within the Pacific Northwest region and strive toward independence.

The main reasons stated by the movement include environmentalism, bioregionalism, privacy, civil liberties and freedom,[9] increased regional integration, and local food networks and economies.

[10] The designer of the Doug flag, Alexander Baretich, claims that Cascadia is not necessarily about secession but is rather about survival after the collapse of peak oil, global warming, and other pending environmental and socioeconomic problems.

"[19] As late as the 1820s James Monroe and Thomas Hart Benton thought the region west of the Rockies would be an independent nation.

Oregon pioneer John McLoughlin was employed as the Chief Factor (regional administrator) by the Hudson's Bay Company for the Columbia District, administered from Fort Vancouver.

Members of the ultra-American party insisted that the final lines of the Organic Act would be "until such time as the USA extend their jurisdiction over us" to try to end the Oregon Territorial independence movement.

The leader of California's federal forces at the outset of the Civil War was himself a supporter of the Confederate cause, but that movement proved weaker than its opposition.

For his role in convincing Californians to remain in the Union, Thomas Starr King was honored as one of the two "heroes of California" in the U.S. Capitol's National Statuary Hall Collection[28] until 2009, when his statue was replaced by one of Ronald Reagan.

[29] While independence movements during this time failed to take root, Adella M. Parker, president of the University of Washington Alumni Association, argued in her speech at the groundbreaking of the Seattle campus that the Pacific Northwest should build a new regional culture: That the West should un-falteringly follow the East in fashions and ideals would be as false and fatal as that America should obey the standards of Europe.

During 1940 and 1941, organizers attracted media attention by arming themselves and blockading Highway 99 to the south of Yreka, California, where they collected tolls from motorists and passed out proclamations of independence.

[31] A perceived lack of attention and resources from their state governments led to the adoption of a flag design bearing a gold pan and two X's, a "double cross.

[32] Ernest Callenbach's environmental Utopian novel Ecotopia (1975) follows an American reporter, William Weston, on his tour through a secretive republic (the former Washington, Oregon, and northern California) 20 years after their secession from the U.S. At first wary and uncomfortable, Weston is shown a society that has been centrally planned, scaled down, and readapted to fit within the constraints of environmental sustainability.

Current Cascadian bioregionalists use this framework as an argument for independence, autonomy and what they feel better represents the communities and area as an alternative to capitalism and the nation state.

It is intended to be a direct representation of the bioregion, with green for the forests, blue for the waters, and white for the snow-capped mountains, with a Douglas Fir tree to symbolize the resilience of the region.

It is not a flag of blood nor of the glory of a nation, but a love of the bioregion; our ecological family, natural boundaries & the place in which we live & love.The idea of Cascadia as an economic cross-border region has been embraced by a wide diversity of civic leaders and organizations.

[47] Schell later defended his cross-border efforts during the 1999 American Planning Association convention, saying "that Cascadia represents better than states, countries and cities the cultural and geographical realities of the corridor from Eugene to Vancouver, B.C.

[56] Cascadian independence has seen a resurgence in popularity following the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States on November 8, 2016, with a secession referendum proposed in Oregon.

respondents told the Angus Reid Group they had the most in common with Washington) More telling, in 1991, there was a much greater degree of mutual recognition between British Columbia and Alberta, and other parts of Canada.

[67] In January 2025, Elizabeth May, a Canadian Member of Parliament for the Green Party, referenced the Cascadia movement and related academic research in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s remarks proposing the acquisition of Canada as the 51st state.

[72] This builds on earlier work by Zogby International, which in 2018 conducted a national poll that found that 39 percent of Americans support the idea of independence, with 68 percent of people being open to a state's or region's right to peacefully secede from the United States, the highest rate since the American Civil War.

[47] In January 2011, Time magazine included Cascadia number eight on a list of "Top 10 Aspiring Nations", noting it "has little chance of ever becoming a reality".