Oregon Skyline Trail
long-distance trail in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon
The Oregon Skyline Trail is a long-distance trail in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. The trail extends 428 miles (689 km) from Cascade Locks on the Columbia River south to Siskiyou Summit near the Oregon-California border. The century-old trail is a foot and equestrian path that passes through nine wilderness areas, Crater Lake National Park, and Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. Historically known as the Oregon Skyline Trail or Skyline Trail, the entire length of the trail was incorporated into the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail in 1968.
History
The Oregon Skyline Trail was established in 1920 when a United States Forest Service team led by ranger Fredrick William Cleator explored and marked a 260-mile (420 km) route between Mount Hood and Crater Lake. The route was described as “a combination or connection of rough mountain trail and road, located or constructed in disjointed manner, at different times by forest rangers, stockmen, miners, trappers and Indians.”
In 1926 the idea of a continuous trail extending from Canada to Mexico was proposed, and creation of a Pacific Crest Trail System was underway. This system was to link several existing long-distance trails including the Cascade Crest Trail in Washington; the Oregon Skyline Trail; and the Tahoe–Yosemite Trail and John Muir Trail in California.
By 1936 the Oregon Skyline Trail had been extended to reach across the state, from the Columbia Gorge Ranger Station near the town of Cascade Locks south to beyond Soda Mountain, just a few miles from the California border. The trail was then about 400 miles (640 km) long and had been extensively relocated to more closely follow the backbone of the mountains, thereby affording hikers and equestrians more scenic views.
In 1968 the Pacific Crest Trail System was designated as the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail or Pacific Crest Trail (PCT).
“Oregon Skyline Trail” enters the record as long-distance trail in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Oregon, Skyline and Trail can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19867286. Authority coordinates are 45.824, -121.856. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1968, 1920, 1926 and 1936.
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This entry incorporates text from “Oregon Skyline Trail” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.