Eugene is a university city that takes its outdoor life seriously — a compact, walkable grid at the confluence of the Willamette and McKenzie rivers, with the Oregon Cascades visible to the east and the coast two hours to the west. The University of Oregon anchors the city’s character and its economy; the running culture (Nike was founded here by a University of Oregon track coach) is still visible in the trail runners on the riverfront paths and the running-shoe shops on every other block. It is a pleasant, unpretentious place that makes a very good base for the southern Willamette Valley and the cascades.
The Transamerica cycling route passes through Eugene. We had cycled from Monmouth and Eugene seemed the right sort of place to stay the night before we continued into the Cascade mountains Although there’s a variety of accommodation in Eugene for visitors, we arrived at a weekend and vacancies were scarce. The main reason for this was the local University football team (the Oregon Ducks) having a match and parents, friends and alumni coming into town to watch the event. The university of Oregon has a big presence in Eugene. We moved on the next day, further East to Mackenzie Bridge.
A Little Background
The area was home to the Kalapuya people before European-American settlement; the Kalapuya were largely displaced onto the Grand Ronde Reservation after the Dayton Treaty of 1855. Eugene Skinner claimed a land donation and built a cabin here in 1846, at what is now Skinner Butte above the Willamette River — the city is named for him. It grew slowly as an agricultural and timber centre; the University of Oregon, established in 1876, gave it a cultural and intellectual dimension that neighbouring cities lacked.
The athletic history is worth knowing: Bill Bowerman, track coach at the University of Oregon, and his former runner Phil Knight founded Blue Ribbon Sports in Eugene in 1964, which became Nike in 1971. Bowerman’s waffle-iron experiments with rubber — attempting to improve running shoe soles — produced the waffle trainer and helped define the modern running shoe. Hayward Field, the university’s track stadium, is considered the historic home of American distance running.
What to See and Do
The Saturday Market in the Park Blocks downtown is one of the oldest continuously operating outdoor craft markets in the United States, running every Saturday from April through mid-November. Crafts, food, live music. Unpretentious and genuinely local in character — not a tourist market. Free to enter.
The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art on the University of Oregon campus has an excellent collection of Asian art and a strong print collection. Free admission on Sundays, otherwise adult approximately US$8. The campus itself — a pleasant grid of Gothic Revival and modern buildings — is worth walking for the architecture of the Erb Memorial Union and the view from the Autzen footbridge over the Willamette.
The Willamette River path runs along both banks of the river through the city — flat, paved, and connected by several footbridges. It is the way Eugene exercises, and spending an hour or two on it, with the river on one side and the back gardens of Craftsman houses on the other, gives a better sense of the city than anything else. Free.
Hendricks Park, east of the university, has a rhododendron garden covering several acres of forested hillside — spectacular in late April and May, but worth visiting for the old-growth Douglas fir sections of the trail system at any time of year. Free.
Day trip: McKenzie River — an hour east of Eugene, the McKenzie River runs through old-growth forest and lava fields from the High Cascades. The McKenzie River Trail (67 kilometres of maintained hiking and mountain bike trail) begins near the town of McKenzie Bridge. Clear Lake, the river’s source, is fed by springs from an underground lava tube and is cold enough to have preserved a submerged forest from the last major eruption, visible through the water. Highway 126 along the river is one of the better scenic drives in Oregon.
Getting There
Eugene Airport (EUG) has connections to major West Coast hubs. Amtrak’s Coast Starlight stops at Eugene on its Los Angeles–Seattle route; the journey to Portland is approximately 2.5 hours. Eugene is on I-5, the main West Coast highway; Portland is 180 kilometres north, about 2 hours by road in normal traffic.
Cost and Hours
Eugene is an affordable city. Mid-range hotels run US$110–180 per night; eating and drinking is priced for a university town, which is to say reasonably. Allow one to two days as a stop; more if using it as a base for the McKenzie Valley or the southern Cascades.