Photo Credit: Gabe Border
Oregon State Parks was handed a gift: an 8,000-acre private property, tucked in the deepest part of Cottonwood Canyon. The site offered golden, rolling hills, river access, and a historic farm—but little else. A mere dot on a map, 25 miles from any gas station and 50 miles from the nearest town over 400 people, this was a very rural landscape.
State parks set out to create a recreation experience in the remote valley that would turn the landscape into a destination. Portland-based landscape-architecture firm Walker Macy designed a bird’s eye overview, including four cabins and a shower and bath facility, leaving open the anchoring element: the Cottonwood Canyon Experience Center. Seattle-based Signal Architecture and Research then took the lead on filling in the specifics of the site design. A sustainable concept, the Experience Center is more than a space for learning, celebrating, and gathering: It’s become a bridge across Central Oregon’s urban/rural divide.
The Place And Its History
The statewide nonprofit, Oregon State Parks Foundation, helped raise the funds to build the Experience Center, which was completed in October 2018. Building in the middle of nowhere requires resources—and for both Oregon State Parks and Signal Architecture, sustainably framing those resources was about more than remaining on budget with a $700,000 scope. Designing and building a facility that is simultaneously utilitarian, sustainable, modern, respectful of history, and beautiful in an inspiring landscape takes collective vision from ownership, management, design, and construction to see to implementation. The rugged and fragile landscape, rich in both legacy and texture, required a structure that complemented its surroundings; after all, the park was established as a monument to the outdoor experience and as a gateway to the natural habitats and wildlife that can only be found in the underexplored area of Oregon.