Bend Sites

While less famous than its contemporary, Timberline Lodge, this New Deal sponsored mountain resort also is significant as an Oregon example of WPA log architecture. The Skyliner Lodge is located in the Deschutes National Forest, west of Bend. It was completed by WPA workers in 1936 for the Skyliners Club, a group founded in 1927 to promote winter recreation in the central Oregon Cascades as well as provide search and rescue services.  Thus, the facility became an important headquarter for a group associated with developing the region’s winter recreation industry and environmental education mission. As described in the National Register of...

Forty miles southeast of Bend, Oregon, the Cabin Lake Guard Station served as a district ranger station and headquarters for the Fort Rock Ranger District of the Deschutes National Forest from 1921 through 1945. Members of a Civilian Conservation Corps camp, located adjacent to the ranger station from 1934 to 1938, contributed to the area’s development for recreational use as well as improved its function for the Forest Service. The CCC camp members built seven buildings for the ranger station, including the existing guard station building.  Six of these structures (ranger residences, a warehouse, maintenance shop, and a gas station) remain...

CCC Camp Frederick Butte (DG 68) was one of seven Civilian Conservation Corps camps established in Oregon to work with the US Grazing Service in the implementation of the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934. The Taylor Act created grazing districts as a means to regulate use of public lands by Western ranchers with the goal of improving livestock management and the management of watersheds. CCC enrollees arrived at Frederick Butte in Deschutes County in 1937. As with other DG - or Public Domain Grazing - designated camps, the CCC men planted grasses, eliminated pests believed detrimental to the rangeland, managed the...

This former ranger station was erected in 1933 by the CCC and originally existed in Bridgeport, CA. It was later moved to Reese River Valley and remained active until the 1980s. After falling into neglect, a volunteer group of former National Forest Service employees known as the 'Smokeys' were able to relocate this ranger station to Bend, OR at the High Desert Museum where it was fully restored and put on display in 2009. According to the architectural historian for the (Bend) region's national Forest Service, this station is the only surviving building of its type that has not been subjected...