Sisters, Ore. – This tiny timber town of 1,500 people jumped out at us with little warning from the great heights of Oregon’s Cascades. Sisters, named after the Three Sisters peaks that dominate the western horizon, sits near the mountain passes that lead to the Santiam and McKenzie rivers.

You wouldn’t know it today, but in the 1960s, when its last saw mill closed, Sisters was fast becoming a ghost town. In the 1970s, however, a group of residents resurrected the hamlet, turning it into an Old West tourist haven whose 300 days of annual sunshine bring in visitors year-round.

There are so many things to do here, especially with the Deschutes National Forest on our doorstep. Skiing, hiking, rock-climbing, and mountain biking are all major draws to the area, and the local pub Bronco Billy’s was filled with locals by the time we plopped down at the bar at 7pm.

Sisters marks the halfway point of Oregon and our trip through it. We are nestled in the backbone of the state’s topography, where the eastern and western halves collide into a mountain range filled with wildlife, waterfalls, and so much green – hemlocks, Douglas Firs, Ponderosa Pines.

Now if only it would rain, everyone here says. It’s been a dry year, piggybacking on 2005, which marked one of the driest in recent history and resulted in one of the largest forest fires this country has ever seen.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Thursday, September 21st, 2006 | Email This Post

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