Multnomah Falls

Multnomah Creek drops off the basalt rim of the Gorge in two falls, 620 feet in all, the tallest waterfall in Oregon, and a million or more people a year walk up to look at it. Simon Benson, the timber man who also paid for much of the old highway's scenery, gave the land, and his name is on the concrete footbridge built across the gap between the upper and lower falls in 1914. The stone lodge at the foot dates from 1925; it passed to the Forest Service in 1939 and still houses a restaurant and visitor center.

On the afternoon of September 2, 2017, a fifteen-year-old hiking the Eagle Creek Trail, about a dozen miles east, threw fireworks into the canyon during a burn ban. Two nights later the wind drove the fire west to the falls. Structural crews from the Oregon State Fire Marshal's office, with engines, a ladder truck and water tenders, kept the lodge wet through a storm of embers while the big trees around it torched; by the evening of September 5 the worst had passed. The fire burned some 48,000 acres, shut Interstate 84 for days and much of the Gorge's trail network for years. In 2018 a judge ordered the boy to pay $36.6 million in restitution, acknowledging in the same ruling that he could never pay it in full.

The burned slopes above the falls are greening again, and the Forest Service has strung rockfall fencing on the cliff behind the lodge. A short paved walk climbs to the Benson Bridge; the trail beyond switchbacks to the top. From late spring into early fall a timed-entry permit is often required to park at the falls, so check before you go.