Before interstates existed, Oregon built a highway just to show off the Columbia Gorge

America’s first road built to be beautiful

Before the interstate, before the highway bypass, before anyone thought to run a freeway through the Columbia River Gorge, there was a road built for one reason: to let you see it.

The Historic Columbia River Highway runs 73 miles through northern Oregon, and it still moves the way its builder intended, curving around cliffs, threading through basalt tunnels, and dropping you at the edge of falls you can hear from the parking lot.

What Lancaster built here in the early 1900s still holds.

The engineer who refused to scar the Gorge

Samuel C. Lancaster spent nearly a decade designing this road between 1913 and 1922, and his rule was simple: the Gorge came first. He said not one tree was felled or one fern crushed unnecessarily.

Samuel Hill pushed the project forward politically, but Lancaster shaped every curve with the landscape in mind. Italian stone masons built the walls and bridges by hand.

When the road opened with a dedication ceremony at Crown Point in June 1916, people called it the King of Roads. The name fit.

Crown Point rises 733 feet above the river

Early settlers called this basalt cliff Thor’s Heights, and standing on it, you understand why.

The rock drops 733 feet straight to the Columbia River, and the highway loops around the summit in a long, graceful arc.

You can look east and west along the Gorge from up here, watching the river shrink into the distance in both directions.

The National Park Service named Crown Point a National Natural Landmark in 1971, which means the government agreed it was worth keeping exactly as it is.

Vista House sits on the cliff like a crown

The eight-sided stone building at the top of Crown Point went up in 1918, dedicated on May 5 of that year.

Portland architect Edgar M. Lazarus designed it in Art Nouveau style as both a memorial to Oregon pioneers and a place for early drivers to pull over and rest.

Inside, marble floors and opalescent glass windows catch the light. The green-tiled roof is visible from the road below.

Today it holds a small museum, a gift shop, and an observation deck where you can step outside and feel the wind coming straight up the cliff.

Multnomah Falls drops 620 feet in two tiers

Nothing on this highway hits harder than Multnomah Falls.

It stands 620 feet tall, fed not by a river but by underground springs pushing down from Larch Mountain. The water breaks into two separate drops over a basalt cliff, and Benson Bridge crosses the gap between them.

You can walk to the bridge in about 10 minutes from the trailhead.

More than two million people make that walk every year, which makes this the most visited natural site in the Pacific Northwest. The spray reaches you long before you reach the base.

Latourell Falls glows yellow against black rock

Most waterfalls in the Gorge are surrounded by green. Latourell Falls is surrounded by yellow.

Bright lichen coats the dark basalt columns around the drop, and when the light hits right, the cliff looks lit from inside.

The falls plunge about 224 feet in a single clean drop, and a short paved path leads you to the base without much effort.

Latourell sits in Guy W. Talbot State Park near Corbett, and the columnar basalt here is some of the most geometric you’ll see anywhere in the Pacific Northwest.

Two bridges from 1914 frame two quiet falls

Bridal Veil Falls drops about 120 feet in two tiers, passing right under an arched stone highway bridge built in 1914.

About a mile west, Shepperd’s Dell has its own arched bridge from the same year, crossing above a narrow canyon that funnels the creek down to the river.

Both falls sit just off the main road, and short, easy walking paths get you close to both. The bridges are the story here as much as the water.

Lancaster built them to disappear into the rock, and they mostly do.

Wahkeena Falls tumbles 242 feet through the forest

The Yakama people named this waterfall Wahkeena, meaning most beautiful.

The falls drop 242 feet in a long tumbling cascade, and a stone footbridge crosses the creek right beside the rush of water.

Follow the trail a mile up from there and you reach Fairy Falls, a smaller cascade tucked into the forest. Wahkeena sits just a short drive from Multnomah, and most people stop at both on the same afternoon.

The stone footbridge is where people tend to stop and stay awhile.

Two tunnels carved into basalt cliffs near Mosier

A 4.5-mile stretch between Hood River and Mosier has no cars.

The road was cut off from traffic when Interstate 84 went in during the 1950s, and the tunnels that ran through the basalt cliffs got filled with rock and forgotten.

Then in 2000, crews dug them back out, restored the passages, and reopened the whole section as part of the Historic Columbia River Highway State Trail for hikers and bikers.

The route shifts between cool forest and open semi-arid land as you move east, and the river views through the tunnel openings are worth the trip on their own.

A lost tunnel from 1915 was just rebuilt

The original Mitchell Point Tunnel opened in 1915 with five arched windows cut into the cliff face. Its designer, John Arthur Elliott, took his inspiration from a road in Switzerland.

In 1966, crews blew the tunnel apart to make room for Interstate 84. For nearly 60 years, it was gone.

Then, on March 21, 2025, a new 655-foot tunnel opened on the same site, built for walkers and bikers, with the same five arched windows facing the river.

A $31 million federal grant paid for it, and the windows look the same as they did in 1915.

Rowena Crest shows you the Gorge from a plateau edge

The horseshoe loops of highway below Rowena Crest are one of the most photographed stretches of road in Oregon. Lancaster built those curves in 1919 to ease the steep drop from the plateau to the valley below.

From the overlook above, you can trace each loop with your eye as the road winds down. The ground around you belongs to the Tom McCall Nature Preserve, named for the former Oregon governor.

In spring, the plateau turns yellow and purple with balsamroot and lupine, and short trails lead you to the cliff edge where the Gorge opens up below.

The road Lancaster built is still mostly intact

Interstate 84 swallowed large sections of the original highway by the 1960s. The 1986 Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Act helped protect what was left.

Since then, Oregon has been stitching the missing sections back together as a car-free State Trail. Stone walls stand where Lancaster’s masons set them.

Arched bridges cross the same creeks. Tunnels cut through the same basalt.

What makes this road matter is not just what it shows you, but how it shows it. Lancaster believed a highway could fit inside a wild place without wrecking it.

Driving this road, you can see that he was right.

Visit Vista House at Crown Point in Corbett, Oregon

You can find Vista House at the top of Crown Point along the Historic Columbia River Highway in Corbett, Oregon. The address is 40700 Historic Columbia River Highway.

Entry is free, and the building holds a museum, a gift shop, and an observation deck with 360-degree views of the Gorge and the Cascade peaks beyond.

It stays open year-round, but winter hours run shorter because of high winds on the cliff. Check the official website before you go if you’re visiting between November and March.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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