Do you believe in destiny? Part of me likes to think so, and I’d like to think destiny is also why you’re reading this article.

My connection to the great state of Oregon could have everything to do with destiny, too, stemming all the way back to my Midwestern childhood, when I grew up playing a computer game called The Oregon Trail.

This game was designed to teach schoolchildren about the realities of 19th-century pioneer life on the Oregon Trail. Each player assumed the role of a wagon leader guiding a party of settlers from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon’s Willamette Valley, using a covered wagon during the Gold Rush of 1848. The interactive game required players to complete simple math equations, make navigation decisions, hunt for food, shop for supplies, know when to rest, and, most importantly, to daydream about frontier life.

Fast forward to 2007, 20 years after my last game of Oregon Trail, and I’d found myself living in Oregon, helping guide mountain bikers on the trails covering our vast landscape. Oregon boasts a perfect blend of ecology, geology and topography, resulting in terrain that feels designed for the mountain bike. It’s the place you dream of riding.

The crown jewels of Oregon's riding are it’s trail surfaces. Seasonal accumulation of diverse organic material sustains the soil and produces remarkable riding conditions across the state. While skiers dream of blower powder, those of us on two wheels revel in the gleeful flow of brown powder and the duffy berms of Oregon’s expansive trail systems. But you need not be a soil scientist to get the most out of riding here: The simplicities of laughing and riding with friends, floating through the forest and experiencing the kindness of local communities frame our Oregon mountain biking experiences. If you choose Oregon as your next place to ride, you’ll likely find exceptional dirt, never-ending singletrack ribbons, glorious volcanic peaks, waterfalls, sweet jumps and old-growth trees deep in the backcountry.

Northwest Oregon alone features a staggering concentration of world-class riding destinations, from the bustling city of Portland to smaller towns such as Bend, Hood River, Oakridge and Pacific City. While all of these places have different landscapes, climates and community vibes, they are bound together by their exceptional mountain biking options. Many of northwest Oregon’s riding areas are in the foothills, but the joint influences of the Cascade Range and the Pacific Ocean are the primary factors contributing to the state’s diverse climate.

The Cascades extend from Mount Lassen in Northern California to the confluence of the Nicola and Thompson rivers in British Columbia, Canada, bisecting Oregon from north to south. A unique band of thousands of small, young volcanoes comprise the range, with a few strikingly large volcanoes dominating the landscape. West of the Cascades, temperate rainforests cover the land, providing a voluptuous evergreen canopy rich in Douglas fir and hemlock. The weather is typically wet in the winter, with perfect dirt in the spring and fall, and dry conditions during the summer. Here you’ll find 3,000-foot descents past carpets of deep-green moss and vibrant ferns, all in the shadow of towering trees—many of them, old-growth giants.

In terms of historic significance and economic impact, logging has long led the charge in infrastructure development of Oregon’s forests. The industry’s roots are shadowed only by the powerful overstory of modern timber wars and consequential land-use designations. The first water-powered sawmill was built at Fort Vancouver in 1827 to augment the single-bit axes that were cutting down massive trees. The state’s first timber exports were to China in the 1830s, creating an export economy around this renewable cash crop. Access to the forest was by waterways, primitive roads and backcountry trails. Pack teams and waterways transported timber during this era, restricting activities to the valleys and foothills.

With gains made during the Industrial Revolution, 20th-century logging took on a new look. Power saws and heavy machinery pushed the timber industry deeper into the mountains, seeking to keep tight-grain, old-growth logs feeding the ever-expanding lumber mill network. The Forest Reserve Act of 1891 authorized the Department of the Interior to begin transferring land from public domain to forest reserves, triggering the acquisition of lands managed by the agency that would come to be known as the United States Forest Service (USFS). With 60 percent of Oregon’s forested land under federal management today, a tremendous amount of public land access is supported by a mountain road system that only logging money could have built.

Increasing demands on land use called for heightened pressure on its management. In 1905, the USFS’s Chief Forester, Gifford Pinchot, instituted a “total exclusion” policy of forest fire management. By 1916, there were 81 fire lookouts on mountaintops around the western logging forests. With President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1933 creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) as part of the New Deal, 300,000 people suddenly became available each year to work on the federal lands of the west for $30 a month. During the CCC’s nine-year term, the number of fire lookouts increased 100-fold.

These changes have since had a dramatic impact upon the many small towns of timber country, with the loss of logging jobs forcing people to migrate to bigger population centers. Though several of these towns grew rapidly, the sheer expanse of wild public land in the state meant many Oregonians still had ready access to trails out their back doors. With the sport of mountain biking undergoing its first major boom in the 1990s, growing numbers of Oregon riders began to uncover the vast historic trail resources logging had left in the Cascades and its foothills.

Looking for adventure, good times and a connection with nature, mountain bikers in population centers such as Portland, Bend, Ashland and Hood River had discovered a paradise of singletrack. But they quickly realized that precious few of these trails were maintained for mountain bike use, as the decline in timber income for the Forest Service meant a corresponding decline in its recreation budgets. As a result, groups began forming in these communities to address these issues. Nonprofit organizations such as the Greater Oakridge Area Trail Stewards, the Central Oregon Trail Alliance and the Portland Urban Mountain Pedalers (PUMP) were established to manage existing resources and support mountain biking’s growth. The work ethic and diplomacy of some of these groups laid a foundation for healthy relationships with federal, state and local land managers, in most cases allowing for well-managed, collaborative growth.

With the popularity of mountain biking exploding all over Oregon—and local riders keen to have trails and connectors closer to home—many rogue trails were built in the 1990s. A majority of these were well-constructed by passionate, discerning volunteers who created them with a view toward sustainability. Due to these trails’ popularity and increasing traffic, there was a pressing need for them to be sanctioned, and early trail advocacy organizations were hugely instrumental in bridging the gap between trailbuilders and federal, state and local land managers in order to gain their adoption as legal networks. Today, these networks are models of sustainable recreation development, and they’re helping to bring about progress in their communities while also contributing to local economies. 

As mountain biking continues to grow in the 21st century, a fresh wave of local trail organizations is forming. In 2010, Portland-based PUMP became the Northwest Trail Alliance (NWTA), and it has been growing rapidly as options for riding in the greater Portland area are beginning to take shape. The NWTA’s membership-driven model of developing trails on private timber-company land has led to the development of an impressive sustainable trail network at Rocky Point, just west of the city. For their part, the Hood River Area Trail Stewards manage a complex relationship with the county forest to maintain and develop their network at Post Canyon. Near the small coastal town of Pacific City, the Tillamook Off-Road Trail Alliance has been formed by a core group of locals with plans to develop an extensive network on neighboring public lands. After three years of planning and permitting, their triumphant shovels will sink into that dreamy coastal soil this spring, with an intermediate trail from Buzzard Butte to the edge of the ocean slated for completion in the fall of 2021.

With a current total of 21 mountain bike trail groups in Oregon, the final piece of the advocacy puzzle is the development of a statewide organization. Just to the north, Washington’s Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance has paid staff all over the state, working with its chapter programs on all manner of mountain bike advocacy initiatives. Drawing from this model, a small group of volunteers in Oregon recently formed a steering committee to develop what is tentatively being called the Oregon Mountain Bike Coalition. Support has been widespread, and the idea of connecting our statewide advocacy network and directing a united voice to the capital has already proven beneficial.

In a state as big and complex as Oregon, there will always be challenges to face, bureaucracies to engage and old-growth logs to clear, but the growing mountain bike community has so much passion and knowledge it is prepared to meet these challenges. And with the fast-exploding generation of young riders and aspiring trail stewards coming of age, the future of mountain biking in Oregon looks bright. It all comes back to kids learning to ride bikes and dreaming of their lives at the end of the Oregon Trail. That, and destiny.