Oregon’s Designated Scenic Bikeways

‘The best road bike routes in Oregon’

By Rebecca Agiewich

Photo at right: Alex Phillips and Heidi Beierle, riding the Covered Bridges Scenic Bikeway. Photo courtesy of EugeneCascadesCoast.org

On a perfect October day, we pedaled a leaf-strewn trail lined with maples in myriad shades of gold and crimson. To our right, Dorena Lake gleamed a gentle blue. In the distance, we saw the rolling hills of the Umpqua National Forest.

If we’d been in our hometown of Seattle, this trail would have been crammed with other people enjoying the gorgeous day. Here, just outside Cottage Grove, Ore., we had the Covered Bridges Scenic Bikeway mostly to ourselves.

The best rides in Oregon

If you haven’t heard the term “designated scenic bikeway,” it’s because it doesn’t exist anywhere else in the country. Oregon pioneered the project, and now has eight scenic bikeways crisscrossing the state. The first was designated in 2005. Five were designated in 2011, and two more in 2012. Several more wait in the wings.

“These represent the best road bike routes in the state,” says Alex Phillips, Bicycle Recreation Coordinator for Oregon Parks and Recreation Department. If Phillips sounds proud, she has good reason.

It took five years for the project to gain momentum and involved collaboration with hundreds of volunteers, and dozens of organizations, including Cycle Oregon, Travel Oregon, the Oregon Department of Transportation and Oregon Parks and Recreation.

To ride every bikeway would be to experience the Beaver State in all its glory. You’d pedal over mountain passes, past lava flows, through deserts, alongside rivers, and past many historic sites.

Each route has a distinct personality and geography. This means riders of all stripes can find a bikeway to love, from the high, dry, challenging 108 miles of the Blue Mountain Century Scenic Bikeway, which starts in Heppner in northeast Oregon, to the gentler and more lush Metolius River Loops Bikeway near Sisters in the central part of the state.

A scenic bikeway designation means that a bike route has a wealth of resources online about it to help you plan your trip. You can search for rides by region or level of difficulty. You can also download cue sheets, maps, and information about lodging, camping, and restaurants from the Oregon Parks and Recreation website and the Ride Oregon Ride website.

The birth of the bikeways

In the bike-friendly Pacific Northwest, it’s easy to take biking infrastructure and these magnificent bike trails for granted. That would be a mistake. The truth is, almost every inch of trail or designated route represents a hard-won battle. Rights-of-way must be negotiated. Proposals must be submitted. Labor, much of it volunteer, must be performed.

The designated scenic bikeways of Oregon are no exception. No one knows this better than the folks at Cycle Oregon, a non-profit organization best known for its popular week-long ride through Oregon. Cycle Oregon first conceived of the scenic bikeways program in 2004.

“We wanted to become more than just the (annual ride) event,” says Jerry Norquist, executive director of Cycle Oregon. “We thought, let’s make it the best cycling state in the union—let’s create something that is longer lasting; that attracts cyclists to Oregon, and to its rural communities.”

The entrepreneurial cyclists tried to make the project happen but found unexpected resistance to it from stakeholders at some government agencies who felt they’d been kept “out of the loop.” Undeterred, Cycle Oregon went back to the drawing board. They forged a partnership with Oregon Parks and Recreation, which has since become the keeper of the scenic bikeway program.

Now, several long years later, Cycle Oregon’s dream has finally become a reality, with the help of the parks department and many local champions who advocate for bikeways in their own regions.

It takes a village to build a bikeway

One of those local champions is Erin Borla, executive director of the Sisters Area Chamber of Commerce. Borla was actively involved in helping create three designated scenic bikeways in Central Oregon.

Borla is particularly proud of the McKenzie Pass Scenic Bikeway, which follows an 1860s wagon route on a dramatic journey through ponderosa pine forests and past a 2,000 year-old lava flow, with an exhilarating 4,000-foot descent to the McKenzie River. This route is especially unique because cyclists can pedal part of it in spring before it re-opens to cars, as snow melts along the side of the road.

Borla is quick to point out how much work and collaboration was involved in the bikeways project. Besides community volunteers from the Sisters area, she also worked with organizations in the nearby towns of Bend and Redmond, as well as government agencies from three different counties.

“It really does take a village to do something like this,” says Borla, “Passionate people that say ‘I think we can make this work.’” In fact, she believes such passion has made Oregon a forward-thinking state on many issues, including biking.

“There are a lot of visionary people in the state of Oregon,” she says. “We’re not afraid to try new things. Rather than turning away if no one has done it before, we say ‘let’s give it a try.’ ”

Covered Bridges Scenic Bikeway

On the Covered Bridges Scenic Bikeway, we enjoyed the fruits of all this labor in blissful solitude. The trail starts in downtown Cottage Grove, known as “the covered bridge capital of Oregon,” where we had views of two of these photo-worthy bridges.

After we put our cameras away, we followed the bikeway along the gentle Row River Trail, a converted rail trail, for 17 miles past Dorena Lake. The route meanders through pastures and forests that are rich with railroad history. Several trestles provide lovely views of the Row River flowing underneath. This part of the ride is family-friendly and great for riders of all abilities.

The second half of our 34-mile route shifted onto shady and well-paved country roads on the south side of Dorena Lake. We passed three more picturesque covered bridges, all of which are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Finally, we shifted gears and gutted it up the killer hill at Garoutte Road, one you can skip if you choose. However, our hard work was rewarded with a thrilling descent that took us to Stewart Bridge, an ornate covered bridge that sits above one of the best swimming holes in the county.

Had it been a hot summer day, we might have jumped in. Instead, we followed the route back to the Row River Trail, and pedaled leisurely back into downtown Cottage Grove with the fading autumn sun on our faces.

We capped off the day with a beer at the Axe and Fiddle Public House, a local watering hole and live music venue in Cottage Grove. There we drank a toast to the fearless Oregonians who created the designated scenic bikeways for their state to profit from and all cyclists to enjoy.

If you go

About the bikeways

Oregon Parks and Recreation: www.oregonscenicbike ways.org/OPRD/PARKS/BIKE/index.shtml

RideOregonRide.com: http://rideoregonride.com/inspira tion/scenic-bikeways/

Covered Bridges Scenic Bikeway

Oregon Parks and Recreation: www.oregonscenicbike ways.org/OPRD/PARKS/BIKE/CBSB_main.shtml

RideOregonRide.com: http://rideoregonride.com/inspira tion/itineraries/covered-bridges-scenic-bikeway/

Eating and sleeping near the Covered Bridges Scenic Bikeway

Campbell House B&B, Eugene, Ore.: www.campbell house.com/main/

Cornucopia Restaurant and Catering, Eugene, Ore.: http://eugenecatering.com/

Village Green Resort, Cottage Grove, Ore.: www.villagegreenresortandgardens.com/

Axe and Fiddle Public House, Cottage Grove, Ore.: http://axeandfiddle.com/

Rebecca Agiewich travels the Northwest by foot, bicycle, kayak and skis, and writes about her exploits. She is the author of Breakup Babe: A Novel.

 

If you like this post, you might also enjoy:

Cycling Features Home Recent Articles Travel