A Patriotic Family Road Trip in Oregon

Oregon State Capitol

Salem, OR

Salem's capitol skips the usual dome — it's topped instead by a 23-foot gilded bronze statue, "the Oregon Pioneer."

End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center

Oregon City, OR

Marks where wagon trains finished a 2,000-mile journey west, in Oregon City.

Crater Lake National Park

Crater Lake, OR

The deepest lake in America, filling the caldera of a collapsed volcano.

Multnomah Falls

Bridal Veil, OR

A 620-foot two-tier waterfall in the Columbia River Gorge, with a 1925 stone bridge across it.

Pittock Mansion

Portland, OR

The 1914 hilltop home of newspaper publisher Henry Pittock, who arrived on the Oregon Trail as a teenager.

McLoughlin House

Oregon City, OR

The home of Dr. John McLoughlin, the Hudson's Bay Company chief factor who aided American settlers and is called the Father of Oregon.

Bonneville Lock and Dam

Cascade Locks, OR

A New Deal dam on the Columbia finished in 1938, a National Historic Landmark with fish ladders you can watch from below.

Fort Rock Cave

Fort Rock, OR

The cave where sagebrush sandals more than 9,000 years old were found in 1938, among the oldest footwear ever discovered.

Oregon Historical Society Museum

Portland, OR

The state's history museum downtown, from the Oregon Trail to statehood in 1859 and the shipyards of World War II.

Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum

McMinnville, OR

Home of Howard Hughes's H-4 Hercules "Spruce Goose," the largest wooden aircraft ever built, plus a Titan II missile.

Oregon Maritime Museum

Portland, OR

A museum aboard the 1947 sternwheeler Portland, the last steam-powered sternwheel tugboat built in the United States.

High Desert Museum

Bend, OR

A museum of the high desert West with live animals, Plateau tribal history and a living-history 1904 ranch and sawmill.

Deschutes Historical Museum

Bend, OR

A history museum in Bend's 1914 Reid School, on the timber boom that built the town.

Vista House at Crown Point

Corbett, OR

A 1918 stone observatory high over the Columbia River Gorge, built as a memorial to the Oregon Trail pioneers.

Battleship Oregon Memorial

Portland, OR

The foremast of USS Oregon, famous for its 1898 dash around South America to fight at Santiago, standing on the waterfront.

Willamette National Cemetery

Portland, OR

A national cemetery on Mount Scott, dedicated in 1950, resting place of more than 150,000 veterans and family members.

Champoeg State Heritage Area

St. Paul, OR

The meadow where settlers voted in 1843 to form a provisional government, the first American government on the Pacific Coast.

Petersen Rock Garden

Redmond, OR

Miniature castles and bridges built from local rock by Danish immigrant Rasmus Petersen from 1935 to 1952.