Surf breaking along the central Oregon coast at Otter Rock, sandstone in the foreground and a wooded headland beyond
Kirt Edblom / CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
A Road Trip Guide

Oregon

From the mouth of the Columbia to the sagebrush of the high desert — Crater Lake, the deepest lake in the country, the end of the Oregon Trail in the Willamette Valley, ocean beaches open to everyone by law, and the homelands of nine federally recognized tribal nations.

47 places · 9 regions · 9 stories · 6 drives · 1 itinerary · 69 markers

All of Oregon, One Map

Tap any dot to discover what makes a place worth the stop.

Architectural
Culinary
Cultural
Geological
Historical
Industrial
Natural

Plan a Trip

Day-by-day plans — real drive times, honest overnights, and the permit fine print sorted before you leave.

4-Day Itinerary

The Gorge, Mount Hood and the Coast in 4 Days

From Portland up the Columbia and back down to the Pacific: a highway laid out to arrive at views, a village that stayed, a WPA lodge on a volcano, a town the river took, and a lighthouse on a finger of old lava.

Days
4
Distance
425 mi
Best
spring · summer · fall
See the day-by-day →

Scenic Drives

The roads themselves — traced end to end, with the stops worth making along the way.

Scenic Byway

I-84: The Farewell Bend Crossing

From Boise west across the Treasure Valley and the Snake at Ontario, past Farewell Bend and up the Burnt River to the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center outside Baker City.

Distance
136 mi
Drive
2.5 hrs
Best
Spring · Summer · Fall
Plan this drive →
Scenic Byway

Klamath Falls to Crater Lake and the Rim Drive

US-97 along Upper Klamath Lake, through Chiloquin and Fort Klamath on OR-62, up to Rim Village and around the 33-mile Rim Drive above Crater Lake.

Distance
92 mi
Drive
3 hrs
Best
Summer · Fall
Plan this drive →
Scenic Byway

NV-140: The Denio Crossing

From Winnemucca up the Quinn River Valley on NV-140 to Denio and the Oregon line, then through Fields and the Catlow Valley to Frenchglen and Steens Mountain.

Distance
173 mi
Drive
4 hrs
Best
Summer · Fall
Plan this drive →
Scenic Byway

The Historic Columbia River Highway: Troutdale to The Dalles

Samuel Lancaster's 1913–1922 road through the Gorge: Vista House at Crown Point, the waterfall corridor and Multnomah Falls, then the Rowena Loops down into The Dalles.

Distance
75 mi
Drive
2 hrs
Best
Spring · Summer · Fall · Winter
Plan this drive →
Scenic Byway

U.S. 101: The Wild Rivers Crossing

From Crescent City north across the Oregon line, through the Boardman corridor and over the Rogue at Gold Beach, to Port Orford, Cape Blanco and Bandon.

Distance
109 mi
Drive
2.5 hrs
Best
Spring · Summer · Fall
Plan this drive →
Scenic Byway

US-101 on the North Coast: Astoria to Newport

The north half of the Oregon Coast Highway: Fort Clatsop and the Seaside salt works, Cannon Beach, Oswald West, Tillamook, the Three Capes, Depoe Bay and the Yaquina Bay Bridge.

Distance
134 mi
Drive
4 hrs
Best
Spring · Summer · Fall · Winter
Plan this drive →

Regions of Oregon

Each region gathers the parks, towns, drives, and roadside stops that define one corner of the state.

Region

Central Oregon

Warm Springs, Wasco and Paiute country east of the Cascades — the Deschutes, Bend and Newberry Volcano, Smith Rock, the Painted Hills, and Kam Wah Chung in John Day.

5 places to explore
Explore region →
Region

Crater Lake & the Klamath Basin

Klamath, Modoc and Yahooskin country — Crater Lake, the deepest lake in the country, Upper Klamath Lake and the c'waam, the Klamath Tribes at Chiloquin, and the Modoc graves at Fort Klamath.

5 places to explore
Explore region →
Region

Northeast Oregon

Cayuse, Umatilla, Walla Walla and Nez Perce country — Pendleton and the Round-Up, Tamástslikt, the Oregon Trail over the Blue Mountains, Baker City, and Old Joseph's grave at Wallowa Lake.

5 places to explore
Explore region →
Region

Portland & the Willamette Valley

Kalapuya country and the end of the Oregon Trail — Oregon City and Willamette Falls, Champoeg, Portland, Salem and Eugene, and the Grand Ronde tribe that bought the falls back in 2019.

5 places to explore
Explore region →
Region

Southern Oregon

Takelma country in the Rogue and Umpqua valleys — the Table Rocks, the gold-rush town of Jacksonville, Medford's orchards, Ashland and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and the Oregon Caves.

5 places to explore
Explore region →
Region

The Columbia River Gorge & Mount Hood

Wasco and Wishram country on the Columbia — Celilo Falls, drowned in 1957, the first scenic highway in America past Multnomah Falls, Sam Barlow's toll road around Mount Hood, and Timberline Lodge.

6 places to explore
Explore region →
Region

The North Oregon Coast

Clatsop and Tillamook country from Astoria south — Fort Clatsop where Lewis and Clark wintered, the oldest American town west of the Rockies, Cannon Beach and the Beach Bill, and the Siletz, restored in 1977.

6 places to explore
Explore region →
Region

The Oregon High Desert

Wadatika Paiute country in the Great Basin — Malheur Lake and the Burns Paiute, Steens Mountain and the Alvord Desert, the Owyhee canyons, and the ten-thousand-year-old sandals of Fort Rock.

5 places to explore
Explore region →
Region

The South Oregon Coast

Coos, Siuslaw and Coquille country from Florence to the California line — forty miles of the Oregon Dunes, Bandon's sea stacks, Cape Blanco's light, and Brookings, bombed from the air in 1942.

5 places to explore
Explore region →

Stories from Oregon

The histories behind the places — the people, the disasters, the inventions, and the long memory of the land.

The freighter New Carissa broken in two in the surf off the North Spit of Coos Bay in 1999
History

The Ship That Would Not Sink

In February 1999 a wood-chip freighter came ashore on the North Spit of Coos Bay. The government set it on fire, towed half of it to sea, shelled it and torpedoed it. The other half stayed on the beach for nine years.

Open Road Guide · 5 min read
Oregon 218 running into the small town of Antelope among sagebrush hills
History

The Town That Was Renamed Rajneesh

From 1981 to 1985 a guru's commune on the Big Muddy Ranch took over the town of Antelope, bused in voters and poisoned 751 people in The Dalles. Antelope voted its name back, and the post office never noticed it had changed.

Open Road Guide · 6 min read
Ridges of Hells Canyon fading into haze at sunrise
History

The Papers in the Safe

In 1887 a gang from Wallowa County murdered as many as thirty-four Chinese miners in Hells Canyon. No one was convicted, and for more than a century the county all but forgot. In 1995 a county clerk opened an old safe.

Open Road Guide · 5 min read
Red rock outcrops on a sage and juniper slope in the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge
Nature

The Mountain They Took the Cattle Off

Hart Mountain was set aside in 1936 for the last pronghorn herds of the high desert. It took nearly sixty more years, and a fight with the county, before the refuge stopped being grazed.

Open Road Guide · 5 min read
The smoke column of the 1933 Tillamook fire towering over the Coast Range, photographed from an airplane
History

The Burn That Came Back

Fire took the old-growth Douglas fir of the northern Coast Range in 1933, then returned every six years until 1951. The forest that stands there now was planted by hand, partly by schoolchildren.

Open Road Guide · 6 min read
The steel truss of the modern Bridge of the Gods crossing the Columbia at Cascade Locks
Geology

The Bridge of the Gods

In the mid-1400s the side of Table Mountain fell into the Columbia and dammed it. The people of the river remembered. It took science six centuries and several wrong dates to catch up.

Open Road Guide · 5 min read
All 9 stories from Oregon →

Historical Markers

Roadside history, plaque by plaque — every marker in Oregon, grouped by county and searchable.

Roadside History

Markers of Oregon

Browse every historical marker across Oregon — organized by county, each with its full plaque text.

69
markers
Browse by county →
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