Historic Columbia River Highway
Gorge Discovery Center and Wasco County Museum, OR

The Discovery Center and Museum are located in the eastern end of the Columbia River Gorge. Plan to spend a whole day with the family, on your own, as a tour group, or with your students! Visitors can explore two museums, located in separate wings, talk with pioneers in the summer living history encampment, view films in the theater, stroll along the interpretive trail near the thriving pond, watch art demonstrations, and attend daily talks. Visitors can also break up the day by shopping in the museum store and eating lunch in the Basalt Rock Cafe.

The Discovery Center is the official interpretive center for the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. Exhibits in the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center bring the tremendous volcanic upheavals and raging floods that created the Gorge to life, describe the mighty river which sculpted patterns for the region's unique and spectatular diversity of vegetation, wildlife, and ancient ways of life, and follow the currents that shape the region's collective future.

Wasco County Historical Museum preserves and shares the interesting and colorful history of a county that was once the largest in the nation. More than 10,000 years of continuous occupation have yielded a vibrant cultural tapestry woven from the overlapping experiences of Native Americans, explorers, traders, missionaries, military, emigrants and settlers. The museum's collections house thousands of objects of historic interest.

In a stunning setting high on a bluff overlooking the Columbia River, a network of footpaths winds through the Oregon Trail Living History Park. Here visitors can step back in time to experience the excitment and hazards typical of emigration on the Oregon Trail, a Lewis and Clark expedition campsite or the joy and hardship of early settlers. Living History performances are every Saturday and Sunday, beginning Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day.