Falling for Cascadia: Find waterfalls and trails near Sweet Home, Oregon

Upper Soda Creek Falls

Short trails to a waterfall, a mineral spring, and a South Santiam River wading beach highlight this historic Linn County park near Sweet Home.

The area’s history as a travelers’ camp has been traced back 7900 years, when Native Americans built campfires in nearby Cascadia Cave. Excavations in this broad hollow beneath the overhang of a cliff reveal that early visitors hunted deer, elk, and rabbits, and used hand-held stones to grind nuts and seeds. The cave remains a spiritual site for Oregon tribes.

Pioneer entrepreneurs developed the South Santiam as a travel route, building a for-profit wagon road from Albany to Sisters. That story begins in 1859, when Andrew Wiley led a group of Lebanon pioneers up the South Santiam River. They struggled up the forested canyon, expecting to find a pass across the Cascade Range. But the South Santiam River springs from foothills fifteen miles west of the Cascade summit. And so when the trailblazers reached the river’s head at Tombstone Pass, they stopped to argue. The pass they had found obviously did not overlook Central Oregon. Most of the men thought they were lost and should turn back. Wiley climbed a tall tree to reconnoiter. From there he could see east to the peaks of the High Cascades—and the saddle they had really wanted to find, Santiam Pass. With that encouragement, the group trekked onward.

The Lebanon-based entrepreneurs did not actually start building the road until 1864, when they founded the Willamette Valley and Cascade Mountain Road Company five years later. Their road-building crews got unexpected help from the Army. A confrontation between Native Americans and soldiers resulted in two deaths in Eastern Oregon that spring, and reinforcements had been ordered east from the Willamette Valley. Forty soldiers marched up the half-completed road, looking for a shortcut. They helped build the road across the pass, and then built Camp Polk near present-day Sisters.

Because tolls didn’t pay the road’s expenses at first, the company was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy by 1866. Just in time, the entrepreneurs hit on a new funding source. The federal government had begun offering land grants to improve roads in Oregon, particularly for military use. The company quickly reorganized as the Willamette Valley and Cascade Mountain Military Road. They applied for a checkerboard of alternating square miles along a route from the Willamette Valley all the way to Idaho. Altogether, the land grant covered a staggering 861,512 acres—an area larger than Rhode Island.

A later investigation exposed how little work the company actually did in exchange for the huge land grant. Across Eastern Oregon, the company merely sent one wagon and a few men on horseback over the route. The “road builders” covered ten to fifteen miles a day, occasionally blazing trees or breaking down tall sagebrush bushes. The faint route they left across Eastern Oregon, with virtually no grade work and several impassable fords, was promptly ignored by travelers. But the company turned a profit by selling land, sometimes for as little as ten cents an acre.

Only the road segment between Albany and Sisters was maintained for regular use. Riders with good horses could usually make the trip across the Cascades in four days, stopping each night at roadhouses where hay, a bed, and a meal cost twenty-five cents each.

George and Jennie Geisendorfer bought the natural soda springs at Cascadia in 1895. They built a bridge across the river and developed a resort for weary wagon road travelers. The Geisendorfers ran their hotel, store, bath house, rental cabins, and campground for 45 years before selling to the state.

Today Cascadia Resort’s buildings are gone, but the park’s trails, picnic areas, and campground are as popular as ever. To find the park, drive to Sweet Home, either via Lebanon or Brownsville. Continue east on Highway 20 for another 14 miles. At a park sign between mileposts 41 and 42, turn left across a river bridge. Then keep right for 100 feet and park at a picnic area beneath big Douglas firs.

At a park sign between mileposts 41 and 42, turn left across a river bridge.

Two short hikes begin here. To find the trail to Lower Soda Falls, walk up the road 100 yards, veering right toward the East Picnic Area. At a “No Parking” sign where the road crosses Soda Creek, turn left on a broad footpath. This trail follows the splashing creek 0.7 mile through increasingly grand Douglas fir woods to the base of a 80-foot, twisting waterfall in a mossy slot.

For the second short hike, return to your car. At a “Soda Spring Trail” pointer across the road from the parking lot, take a paved path 100 yards down to a stone-paved creekside patio. A drinking fountain here squirts ordinary tap water, but if you look down an open pipe nearby you’ll see Soda Spring’s actual output, a churning orange brew loaded with calcium, potassium, and iron.

If you continue on the paved trail, keeping right at junctions for a tenth of a mile, you’ll reach a gravel beach beside the South Santiam River. The low water of late summer reveals bedrock benches and warm pools ideal for sunning or wading. To explore the rest of the park, walk back from the beach, head straight across the East Picnic Area lawns toward a restroom building, and turn right on an abandoned gravel road. This old road crosses the group camping lawns and becomes a wide bark dust trail in the riverside woods. The path has many forks, but keep right for 0.3 mile until the trail finally loops back away from the river, climbing 300 feet to an easy-to-miss junction. A small trail toward Cascadia Cave goes right. Keep left on the main path to complete the loop and return to your car.

Do not hike to Cascadia Cave. Although this 20-foot-deep overhanging cliff and its ancient, deeply-chiseled petroglpyhs are on the federal register of historic sites, the cave and the surrounding timberland are privately owned. Public tours to the cave by the Sweet Home Ranger District were discontinued in 2020. Cooperating with indigenous tribes, a local archeological group hopes to acquire the cave in the future – both to expand Cascadia Park and to preserve one of the few remaining petroglyph sites in Western Oregon.

This map is your guide to hiking at Cascadia State Park. To the west is Sweet Home. To the east is Santiam Pass. Credit: William Sullivan

William L. Sullivan is a staple in the Eugene Community and author of several outdoor guides to just about anywhere you could think of in Oregon. I want to thank him for believing in Ridgeline and offering to write this article for our little up-and-coming magazine.

You can learn more about Sullivan and view a comprehensive list of books and article’s he’s written by visting https://www.oregonhiking.com. He also tables often at the Eugene Saturday Market—be sure to stop by sometime and say hello.

Thanks for the support William!