Cascade Locks is located along The Columbia River Gorge and is the ideal location to enjoy water sports. If sailing, boarding, water-skiing, or simply swimming in the Columbia River is not your idea of a great time Cascade Locks also has great hiking trails, the Bridge of the Gods and more. Check out Grant’s Getaway: Heart of the Gorge at Cascade Locks in the video above and learn more about what Cascade Locks Oregon has to offer, below.
Howell is also the Development Manager for the Port of Cascade Locks and said it isn’t a matter of finding enough to do in the Gorge, but rather finding enough time to do it all.
We visited the newest public venue for hikers and bikers called the “EasyClimb Trail” on the eastern edge of town. The new 3-mile loop trails is awash in color right now with brilliant blue camas and chocolate lilies, plus an unmatched view to the Columbia River. We also enjoyed a view to a nesting pair of osprey that are raising their young. “The trail was built by volunteers who gave more than 1200 hours of labor to design and build a family friendly trail to draw people to the sport of mountain biking but it has been embraced by a lot of our locals who enjoy walking their dogs too,” noted Howell.
The Cascade Locks Marine Park is a spacious public setting for a picnic lunch and also the launching point for 2-hour river trips aboard the Columbia Gorge Sternwheeler. The park also offers visitors a chance to learn more about the “real” Cascade Locks in the local Historic Museum. Pat Power is the volunteer care-taker of the small museum that offers a stunning photo collection that chronicles the building the locks.
“Before the locks were built,” noted Power, “boats from Portland could only come up the Columbia River to an area near the Bonneville Dam area – there they would dock and everything was off-loaded and transported up here to bypass the dangerous Cascade Rapids. From here, they could get onto another sternwheeler and continue further east.”
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