Deschutes National Forest: Lava, Juniper, and the City That Decided It Was Outdoors

Bend, Oregon sits at the eastern foot of the Cascades where the ponderosa pine forest gives way to high desert. The Deschutes National Forest wraps around the city to the west and south, covering more than one and a half million acres of the central Oregon Cascades and the volcanic plateau that extends east from the range. The forest is why Bend became what it became.

The Deschutes includes the Three Sisters Wilderness on its western edge, Mount Bachelor at nine thousand sixty-five feet, and the Newberry Volcanic National Monument on its southeastern margin. Newberry Volcano is a shield volcano that most people drive past on Highway Ninety-Seven without recognizing it. The caldera at its summit holds two lakes, Paulina Lake and East Lake, separated by an obsidian flow that was erupting as recently as thirteen hundred years ago, well within the timeframe of human occupation of the region.

Bend itself was a small lumber town until the late twentieth century. The closing of the Brooks-Scanlon mill in the nineteen nineties, for the same reasons that closed mills throughout the Pacific Northwest, the combination of automation, old-growth depletion, and environmental protection, left Bend with an economic problem that its residents converted into an outdoor recreation economy. The forest that had supplied the mill became the asset that supplied the tourism industry.

The Deschutes River, which runs through the city, originates in the national forest and carries snowmelt through lava flows and meadows before entering Bend. The upper river is managed as a fly-fishing destination. The lower river, below Bend, runs through a canyon that the lava created.

The forest is also notable for its juniper woodlands, which have expanded dramatically in the last century as fire suppression has altered the ecosystem. The juniper is the visible record of a hundred years of management choices.