Multnomah County

The county in brief

A traveler's read on Multnomah County

Six hundred and twenty feet of vertical drop in two tiers makes Multnomah Falls the tallest waterfall in Oregon — and the volume of visitors driving the 1914 Multnomah Falls Lodge access through the I-84 exit 31 ramp (more than 2.4 million per year per USFS Columbia River Gorge NSA visitor counts) has forced a timed-entry permit system every summer since 2022, administered through recreation.gov for the May-September peak window. The 1914 Lodge at the base of the falls operates the only USFS-leased restaurant inside the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. Multnomah County is geographically Oregon's smallest county at 431 sq mi, but its 815,428 residents (per 2020 Decennial Census) make it Oregon's most populous — Portland (population 652,503, the state's largest city and the I-5 / I-84 / I-205 freeway nexus) sits inside its boundaries along with Gresham, Troutdale, Fairview, and the Columbia River Gorge's western 30 miles.

The Historic Columbia River Highway (US-30, the first scenic roadway in the United States to be designated a National Historic Landmark, completed 1922 per Oregon Department of Transportation history) parallels I-84 east from Troutdale through Crown Point's Vista House (1918, 733 ft above the river) and past Latourell, Bridal Veil, Wahkeena, and Multnomah Falls — but the historic highway's tight switchbacks and 14-ft vertical clearance under several historic-tunnel arches limit rigs to under 30 ft and 13 ft tall. Use I-84 for anything bigger. Ainsworth State Park inside the Gorge (45 sites, full hookups) accepts rigs to 60 ft, the only state-park RV-friendly base inside the federally-designated NSA boundary. City of Portland Title 16.20.220 prohibits overnight RV street parking citywide, with enforcement tied to the Portland Police Bureau's parking-citation rotation and the city's homelessness-RV-tow ordinance adopted 2018. Powell Butte Nature Park (608 acres inside city limits, the highest natural point in Portland at 614 ft) is the only urban-prairie-and-oak-savanna remnant in the Portland metro and is open dawn-to-dusk for day use only.