Six thousand years ago, Lava Butte erupted and rerouted the Deschutes River — and everything downstream followed from that fact. The river cut through high desert shaped by forty million years of Cascade volcanism, sustaining Native American tribes who hunted and fished its banks for nearly twelve thousand years before European fur traders arrived in the early nineteenth century. Settlers came after, then sawmills in 1901 and 1903, then a railroad race that ran parallel tracks up the river canyon to reach the young town named for a bend in this same water. The mills closed by 1950 when the forests gave out. What remained was the river itself: still running through Drake Park, still dropping hard through Benham Falls, still bending visibly at the curve that gave Bend its name. The city has been rebuilt around that fact more than once. It keeps working.
