We’re pretty lucky in Portland, there is a lot of good riding within an hour of the city center. We’ve got Mt Hood and all the off-road and on-road that it offers, the Clackamas Highway or Hwy 224, Skyline and Germantown Rd in the North-West Hills, Tillamook National Forest and all of the amazing OHV areas and Forest Service roads it has to offer, Twisty Highway 6 that leads to the coast, Oregon’s version of Lolo Pass an amazing rocky pass with a great view of Mt. Hood, and last but not least we’ve got the Historic Columbia River Highway.
For the sake of this blog post not being an hour long I’m just going to focus on that last one.
The remarkable thing about the Columbia River Highway, isn’t just that it’s a fantastic motorcycle road, but also because it was made with the intention of creating a beautiful road that moved with the landscape instead of cutting through it.
Work began on the highway in 1913 and was completed in 1922. Making it the oldest scenic highway in the United States. It was designed and executed by Samuel Hill and Samuel Lancaster.
Sam Hill has a major significance in the shaping of what we know as the Columbia Gorge today, because he’s also responsible for the Maryhill Stonehenge War Memorial and the Maryhill Art Museum. He created the Good Roads Association, and experimented with road construction on his own property at his own expense, creating 10 miles of twisty slab that is now called the Maryhill Loops.
The Highway is marked by multiple significant buildings and waterfalls, but coming from Portland the first thing that really marks the Columbia River Highway is the Vista House, which has also been called the $100,000 Outhouse. Because that’s essentially what it is, it’s a rest area, that sometimes has a little coffee shop open downstairs near the bathrooms. Vista House was built between 1916-1918, in Samuel Lancaster’s words it was to serve as an “Isle of Safety to all the visitors who wish to look on that matchless scene.”
Mostly it’s just a tourist trap now.
Fun fact, this is the road I learned to do tight turns on in the first few months that I learned to ride. I also wrote a paper on the Vista House in college, yes I went to art school, no I don’t remember what class I wrote the paper for.
Let me know in the comments what roads you ride on a regular basis, and if you live in the Portland Metro area let me know what roads are your favorites.
More information about the Columbia River Highway http://columbiariverhighway.com/