The last two missing bridges are scheduled to be replaced this fall. Two years have passed since the fire, and the Forest Service has nearly finished rebuilding the trail. The trail passes five major waterfalls, and tunnels through solid rock behind the falling waters of Tunnel Falls. Also in 1916, Italian stonemasons built the Eagle Creek Trail, hewing a path from the basalt cliffs upstream from the campground for 7 miles. Eagle Creek was the Forest Service’s first campground in the nation, built in 1916 to accommodate travelers on the newly opened Columbia River Highway – a scenic, twisty route that has now largely been reopened as a hiker/biker trail. This summer my wife, Janell, and I stayed at the Eagle Creek Campground to see what has changed. Several of the state’s most popular trails still remain closed, endangered by rockfall and snags. It seems unlikely that he will be able to comply. Last year a judge ordered the boy to repay $36 million in restitution over a 10-year period. Firefighters narrowly managed to save the historic Multnomah Falls Lodge. The Eagle Creek Fire burned 50,000 acres, darkening the skies of Portland.

It’s on the Eagle Creek Trail, where a wildfire in September 2017 was ignited when a 15-year-old from Vancouver, Wash., was trying to impress his friends by lighting illegal fireworks in a dry forest. And it’s just as pretty, in a new county park in a stunning canyon where the east and west forks of Hood River join.įirst, a word about the old Punchbowl Falls.

Although the trail to Oregon’s famous Punchbowl Falls in the Columbia Gorge was heavily damaged in a fire two years ago, a new trail opened this summer to a lesser known Punch Bowl Falls nearby.

Punchbowl falls oregon