Tom McCall Nature Preserve

This stretch of the Columbia has been home and gathering ground to Native peoples for thousands of years. The eastern Gorge was the country of Chinookan-speaking Wasco bands, who fished and traded along the river, alongside Sahaptin-speaking peoples of the plateau. The great fisheries of the Columbia drew people from across the region to trade, and that heritage lives on today in the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, which include Wasco, Warm Springs, and Northern Paiute people, as well as other Columbia River tribes. In 1855, treaties ceded vast homelands here to the United States, and those nations remain a living presence on the river.

The preserve's name honors Tom McCall, governor of Oregon from 1967 to 1975. A Republican with a strong conservation streak, McCall championed the idea that economic growth and a protected landscape could go together, and he led on landmark measures including the Oregon Beach Bill, which affirmed public access to the state's shoreline. He is remembered as one of the defining figures in Oregon's environmental history, and this Gorge plateau, protected by The Nature Conservancy, carries his name as a fitting tribute.

The name Rowena comes from the small community and railroad point below the crest along the Columbia. The plateau above became a preserve because it holds something increasingly rare: native Gorge grassland that was never plowed under, a remnant of what much of this eastern country once looked like.

The whole Columbia River Gorge is a great trench cut through the Cascade Range, and its walls are built largely of dark basalt from enormous ancient lava flows that once poured across this region in sheet after sheet. Rowena Crest is a shelf of that volcanic rock, standing high above the river on the drier eastern side of the mountains.

The Gorge was then dramatically reshaped near the end of the last ice age by the Missoula Floods, a series of catastrophic outbursts when an ice dam holding back an enormous glacial lake failed again and again. Walls of water roared down the Columbia, scouring the canyon, stripping soil, and leaving behind the broad benches, ponds, and dramatic cliffs that give the Gorge its character. The little ponds you may notice on the Rowena plateau sit in that flood-worked landscape.

The preserve also sits at a natural boundary. The Gorge funnels wet Pacific air eastward, and rainfall drops off sharply as you move through it. Rowena lands in the transition zone, wet enough to grow a brilliant spring meadow, dry enough that oak and grassland, rather than deep rainforest, define the plateau. That in-between climate is exactly what makes the wildflower display so rich.

The wildflowers are the main event. In peak spring weeks the slopes fill with golden arrowleaf balsamroot and purple lupine, joined by paintbrush, larkspur, and delicate desert parsley, a patchwork that draws photographers and hikers from all over. Some of the plants here are Gorge specialties that grow in few other places, which is a big part of why the land is so carefully protected.

Because so many of those plants are rare and easily trampled, staying on the established trails matters more here than almost anywhere. The grassland is managed to keep native blooms healthy, and a single footprint off-path can crush plants that took years to establish.

Beyond the flowers, this is open, sunny bird country: raptors ride the winds along the rim, and songbirds work the oaks and grassland. It is also home to poison oak and ticks and offers little shade, so the same open ground that grows such a spectacular meadow asks visitors to come prepared and tread carefully.

Spring is the reason to come. The wildflowers are most abundant in the mid-spring weeks, roughly April into May in a typical year, when the plateau turns into a rolling field of color. Exact timing shifts year to year with the weather, so it is worth checking recent reports before making the trip.

Early spring can be muddy, and the uphill McCall Point trail may stay closed until the ground firms up, though the plateau loop often opens sooner and the first flowers are already appearing.

Summer dries the grassland to gold and quiets the bloom, leaving the big river views and warm, open walking, but also full sun and heat with almost no shade.

Fall and the shoulder seasons are calm and uncrowded, better for the light and the views than for flowers, and winter here on the exposed eastern Gorge can be windy and cold, with the preserve generally at its best from spring through early fall.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.