Viento State Park Hike

Overview

This relatively flat hike allows you explore three Columbia River Gorge state parks using a segment of the Historic Columbia River Highway State Trail connecting Starvation Creek State Park and Viento State Park. The latter has two campgrounds as well as a day use area on the river itself. A few short trails in Viento allow you to explore different features of the state park, which gets its name from a curious combination of three surnames: Henry Villard of the Northern Pacific Railroad, William Endicott, a financier, and Tolman, a railroad contractor. This was once a stop on the first northern transcontinental line, completed in 1883. An alternative place to park, especially if you want to restrict yourself to Viento State Park, is the Viento Trailhead for the Historic Columbia River Highway State Trail. Note that the trails up Viento Creek and to the top of the Viento West Bluff are essentially user paths these days and involve close encounters with poison oak. Of the trails, the Historic Columbia River Highway State Trail and the short spur up to Starvation Creek Falls are universal access. In the parking area at the Starvation Creek Trailhead, you’ll see a plaque commemorating the beginning of construction on the Columbia River Highway in 1912. As noted on a smaller plaque, this information was once posted about two miles west at Shellrock Mountain, but was moved here because of new highway construction. The Historic Columbia River Highway State Trail heads east above the restrooms. Below the restrooms is a shady picnic area circled by a paved loop trail that uses a footbridge over Starvation Creek. At a junction for the Waterfall Picnic Area, you’ll see an interpretive sign telling about a train that got stranded in a snow bank here in December 1884. Passengers were stranded for three weeks, but Gorge residents helped out by skiing in with supplies. Although nobody died, this incident gave the creek and waterfall their current names. Hike up to the small picnic area and a view of 190-foot, two-tiered St

Trail Stats

Photos

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