The Most Beautiful Places in Oregon
8 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Oregon are Crater Lake, Haystack Rock and Multnomah Falls. The list covers 8 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Oregon is a state built by fire and water. The Cascade volcanoes run down its spine, and vast floods of basalt lava once spread across its north and east, leaving dark cliffs that rivers now cut through. West of the mountains, Pacific rain feeds dense forest and countless waterfalls; east of them lies high desert, where ash from ancient eruptions weathered into coloured hills and welded rock.
Crater Lake fills the caldera left when the volcano Mount Mazama collapsed after a great eruption some seven thousand years ago. Fed almost entirely by rain and snow, it is the deepest lake in the United States, and its clarity gives it an intense blue. In the Columbia River Gorge, Multnomah Falls drops in two tiers beneath an arched stone footbridge, the tallest waterfall in the state.
Further south, on the North Umpqua River, Toketee Falls plunges through a frame of columnar basalt into a round pool. East of the Cascades the mood changes completely. The Painted Hills, part of the John Day Fossil Beds, are rounded mounds banded in red, gold and black from soils formed in very different ancient climates. Smith Rock rises in orange cliffs of volcanic tuff above a bend of the Crooked River and is often called the birthplace of American sport climbing.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Crater Lake | Volcanic crater lake | |
| 2 | Haystack Rock | Stack | |
| 3 | Multnomah Falls | Waterfall | |
| 4 | Heceta Head Light | Lighthouse | |
| 5 | Painted Hills | Rock formation | |
| 6 | Smith Rock State Park | Rock formation | |
| 7 | Toketee Falls | Waterfall | |
| 8 | Thor's Well | Rock formation |
01 Crater Lake
United States42.944° N 122.107° W
m01229 from USA · CC BY-SA 2.0 Roughly 7,700 years ago, the volcano Mount Mazama did not just erupt — it collapsed. A catastrophic eruption blew out enough magma to empty the mountain's internal plumbing, and the whole summit caved in on itself, leaving the basin that filled to become Crater Lake.
Did you know? The Old Man of the Lake, a whole tree trunk, has floated upright in the water for more than a century, preserved by the cold.
02 Haystack Rock
United States · 35.4 km from Astoria45.884° N 123.968° W
Image by danielamorescalchi from Pixabay Haystack Rock rises 235 feet (about 72 metres) straight from the sand of Cannon Beach, a dark monolith of basalt on the Oregon coast, with three smaller spires, the Needles, standing just to the south.
Did you know? Ownership is split at the tide line: the state parks department manages everything below mean high water, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service everything above it.
03 Multnomah Falls
United States45.576° N 122.115° W
Thank You (25 Millions ) views · CC BY 4.0 Multnomah drops in two stages off a basalt cliff in the Columbia River Gorge, a total fall of about 189 metres — 165 of them in the upper tier — split by the Benson Bridge — a footbridge built in 1914 that crosses the gorge between the upper and lower tiers, close enough to the lower plunge that its spray reaches the…
Did you know? Timber baron Simon Benson, who owned the falls, paid for Italian stonemasons to build the footbridge that now bears his name.
04 Heceta Head Light
United States44.137° N 124.128° W
Image by ArtTower from Pixabay Heceta Head Light stands on a forested headland above the Pacific on the central Oregon coast, its white tower set on a ledge some 205 feet above the surf. The headland is named after Bruno de Heceta, the Spanish navigator who explored this coast in the late eighteenth century.
Did you know? The first head keeper reached the remote station on foot, by train and finally a 24-mile walk down the beach.
05 Painted Hills
United States44.661° N 120.273° W
Image by Gruendercoach from Pixabay The Painted Hills look less like geology than like a bolt of striped cloth thrown over the high desert of central Oregon. Rounded, almost bare mounds are banded in brick red, ochre, gold and charcoal, and the bands are not a surface stain but a record of climate laid down layer by layer.
Did you know? The colour cycling recorded in the hills spans roughly 34 to 28 million years ago, a window of about six million years.
06 Smith Rock State Park
United States · 37.6 km from Bend44.369° N 121.138° W
Image by TheCADguy from Pixabay Smith Rock is a wall of orange and ochre volcanic rock rising about 600 ft (180 m) straight out of a tight bend of the Crooked River in the high desert of central Oregon.
Did you know? The Red Wall takes its red-to-purple hue from iron in the rock, setting it apart from the paler welded tuff elsewhere in the park.
07 Toketee Falls
United States43.263° N 122.431° W
Alexlockhart · CC BY-SA 4.0 On the North Umpqua River in the Oregon Cascades, the water squeezes through a narrow slot of dark lava and drops in two stages into a round, emerald pool framed by tall columns of basalt.
Did you know? The protected stretch downstream is restricted to fly fishing and is renowned among anglers for its steelhead and salmon runs.
08 Thor's Well
United States44.278° N 124.114° W
Image by BlenderTimer from Pixabay Thor's Well is a round hole in the basalt shelf at the foot of Cape Perpetua on the central Oregon coast, and at high tide it seems to swallow the Pacific.
Did you know? Captain Cook named the cape while searching for a Pacific entrance to the Northwest Passage on his third voyage.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Oregon?
- On our list, Crater Lake ranks first, followed by Haystack Rock and Multnomah Falls.
- How was Crater Lake formed?
- About 7,700 years ago the volcano Mount Mazama erupted so violently that its summit collapsed, forming a caldera. Over centuries rain and snowmelt filled the basin, creating the deepest lake in the United States.
- Why are the Painted Hills coloured?
- The bands are layers of volcanic ash that weathered into clay-rich soils under changing ancient climates. Iron and other minerals give the reds and yellows, while the black layers are rich in plant material.
- Where is Multnomah Falls?
- Multnomah Falls is in the Columbia River Gorge east of Portland. It falls in two stages, with the Benson Bridge crossing between the upper and lower drops.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Oregon?
- In our collection, the places in Oregon are most often rock formations (3), waterfalls (2), crater lakes (1) and sea stacks (1).
- How many places are on this list in Oregon?
- The list covers 8 places.