Troutdale

A suburb just east of Portland, Troutdale—with a cute, walkable downtown—is the western gateway to the 74-mile-long Historic Columbia River Highway, U.S. 30 (also known as the Columbia River Scenic Highway and the Scenic Gorge Highway). In 1911, two years before work on the scenic road began, Troutdale became home to the Multnomah County Poor Farm, a massive Colonial Revival estate that housed Oregon's aged, indigent, and sick for most of the 20th century. After falling into disarray in the 1980s, the historic property was reinvented in 1990 as the decidedly offbeat McMenamins Edgefield resort, the town’s primary draw and a good base camp for beginning a tour of the Gorge.