Oregon

Oregon is the state where the Oregon Trail ended – and even today, arriving here feels like a fresh start. A trip to Oregon takes you to a wild, publicly accessible Pacific coastline, to the deep-blue Crater Lake, to the vineyards of the Willamette Valley, and to Portland, the city of bicycles, food trucks, and bookstores.

Coast, Cascades, and High Desert

The Cascade Range divides Oregon into two very different worlds. To the west, it is wet and green: rain forests of Douglas firs, ferns, and mosses stretch all the way to the roughly 360-mile coastline. Most of the cities and wineries lie in the fertile Willamette Valley between the Coast Range and the Cascades. The Cascades themselves are a chain of volcanoes; at about 11,250 feet, Mount Hood is the highest peak and is snow-covered year-round. East of the mountains, it hardly rains at all. Pine forests, juniper steppe, and high desert begin there, with canyons such as Hells Canyon on the Idaho border, one of the deepest canyons in North America, and the colorfully striped Painted Hills.

Sights in Oregon

Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the US at nearly 2,000 feet. It fills the caldera of Mount Mazama, a volcano that erupted about 7,700 years ago, and glows in an almost unreal blue. The Columbia River Gorge east of Portland is a canyon with dozens of waterfalls, including the two-tiered Multnomah Falls. Along the coast, one highlight follows another: Haystack Rock off Cannon Beach, the lighthouses at Heceta Head and Yaquina Head, the Oregon Dunes near Florence, and the rugged southern coast near Brookings. A 1967 law made the beaches public, so almost the entire coast is freely accessible. Near Bend, lava fields, caves, and Smith Rock State Park, an internationally known climbing area, invite exploration.

Portland, Eugene, and Bend

Portland sits at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers and has cultivated a quirky image with the slogan "Keep Portland Weird." Powell's City of Books fills an entire city block, the Japanese Garden in Washington Park is considered one of the most beautiful outside Japan, and the International Rose Test Garden earned the city the nickname "City of Roses." The Pearl District, Alberta, and Hawthorne neighborhoods are known for their cafés and secondhand shops. The suburbs of Beaverton and Hillsboro are home to Nike and Intel, and Gresham lies at the foot of Mount Hood. Eugene is a university town and calls itself "TrackTown USA" because of its running tradition. Salem, the capital, has a striking Art Deco capitol with a golden pioneer atop its dome. Bend is the base for skiing at Mount Bachelor, mountain biking, and rafting on the Deschutes River, while Medford in the south is the gateway to Crater Lake and the vineyards of the Rogue Valley.

History at the End of the Trail

Between the 1840s and the 1860s, hundreds of thousands of settlers traveled west along the Oregon Trail, drawn by fertile land in the Willamette Valley. Oregon became a state in 1859. Before that, numerous Indigenous peoples lived here, and the Lewis and Clark expedition reached the mouth of the Columbia River in 1805. Timber, fishing, and agriculture long shaped the economy; today it is technology, sporting goods, and tourism.

Food and Drink

The Willamette Valley is known worldwide for Pinot Noir, which thrives here much as it does in Burgundy. Portland has one of the highest concentrations of breweries in the US, along with a coffee-roasting culture and food-cart pods serving cuisines from around the world. Typical local foods include Dungeness crab, salmon, marionberries – a blackberry bred in Oregon – and hazelnuts, of which Oregon supplies almost the entire US harvest.

Best Time to Visit and Getting There

From July to September, it is dry and sunny west of the Cascades, which is the best time to visit the coast and the mountains; the road around Crater Lake is usually fully open only from July to October. Fall and winter are rainy in the west, but then skiing at Mount Hood beckons. Portland International Airport (PDX) is the main gateway. Incidentally, Oregon has no sales tax.