Emily Grosvenor

Words like “epic” might get thrown around a lot, but for Bend, the label fits. An active weekend in Bend without a car provides just enough time to soak in Central Oregon’s legendary sun, explore the Cascade Range, lap up life on the river and relax in the state’s great logger-turned-lager town. More

Set amid rolling hills of green and gold, verdant mountains, and the orchards and farms just southwest of Portland, Yamhill County does two things best: world-class wine and walkable small towns. With more than 300 wine producers calling the area home and regular buses to regional destinations, getting there isn’t a problem — but never wanting to leave might be. More

Here’s one thing you can say about the lasting legacy of the Oregon Trail, a fact that has lodged the 2,170-mile migration in the minds of generations: The struggle was real. The numbers alone are enough to chill. Of the estimated 500,000 settlers who made the five-month journey from Missouri to Oregon in the 1840s to 1860s, one in 10 would never arrive, having succumbed to all manner of mid-journey surprises: snake bites, gunshot wounds, drowning, starvation and, of course, dysentery. Those who did make...

Oregon’s frontier history is a series of booms and busts. It’s no wonder some have alleged that the state has more ghost towns than any other. And while it’s nearly impossible to prove a statement like that true, it’s a fact that dozens of once lively and now abandoned communities dot the landscape — specters of America’s restless heart, shadow monuments to the West’s dreamy-eyed ambition. More