Oregon's outdoor capital — volcano skiing, Deschutes River trails, and more craft breweries per capita than anywhere
Bend sits on the eastern side of the Cascades in Oregon's high desert, where 300 days of sunshine and an extraordinary concentration of outdoor activities have turned a former lumber town into one of America's most envied mid-size cities. Ski Mount Bachelor in the morning, mountain-bike the Deschutes River Trail in the afternoon, and drink at one of 25+ craft breweries by evening. The Cascade volcanoes (South Sister, Broken Top, Mount Jefferson) form a dramatic backdrop, and Smith Rock State Park — one of American rock climbing's birthplaces — is 40 minutes away.
Bend was established in 1900 as a lumber town, taking advantage of the vast ponderosa pine forests east of the Cascades. The lumber economy collapsed in the 1980s and Bend reinvented itself around outdoor recreation and, later, remote-worker migration — a transformation that made it a national case study in small-city economic reinvention. The city's population quintupled between 1990 and 2020 driven by tech workers and the climate: the east-side rain shadow means Bend gets 156 sunny days more per year than Portland.