If you find yourself overheating on a summer day, dog in tow, you arguably couldn’t pick a better place to cool off than the newly renovated Miller’s Landing Park, tucked along the Deschutes River in the Old Bend neighborhood.
After a six-month renovation that began late last year and involved removing the boardwalk that had previously ribboned the river’s edge, Bend Park & Recreation District officials reopened the park on June 27. Strolling locals, struck by the absence of chain-link barriers, explored the new features with a sense of wonder.
“Wow, hun. This is so cool,” a dad wearing a tank top said to his toddler as they padded around in flip-flops. Holding his hand, she cooed in reply.
Folks know there are a handful of places to access the river within city limits, yet many of them, such as First Street Rapids, require a certain chutzpah to wade — or leap — into the rushing current. At Miller’s Landing Park, located at 55 NW Riverside Blvd., BPRD landscape architect Ian Isaacson implementing public input and wanted to create several access points geared to ability and river experience.
To make the project happen, BPRD received $1,325,000 in private donations and grants from the Bend Sustainability Fund, Oregon State Parks and the Oregon State Marine Board Waterway Access Grant.
The Miller’s Landing Park renovation was part of the 2021 Deschutes River Access and Habitat Restoration Plan, which identified 28 projects to be finished over about a decade to improve and consolidate existing river access points and habitat restoration. The next river park slotted for renovation is McKay Park, which will be completed by Spring 2027.
The redesign allows several access points for river recreationists of varying abilities and interests. There’s a roller launch for loading and unloading watercraft, particularly kayaks. A wet ramp allows a gentle entrance into the water, ideal for canoes or guiding a kiddo or pup toward a low-stake dip. A dry ramp lets folks with disabilities, some with mobility devices such as wheelchairs, reach the river surface while remaining on dry concrete. And a hand railing and submerged steps offer assisted access into the cool water with an ease on par with a public pool. Larger, descending stadium steps ring the shoreline, allowing a variety of depths at which to wade and gab with friends and other park users.
For those intrepid enough to jump into the water, basalt boulders fixed to the river bottom — sourced from the Knife River Shevlin pit on Bend’s westside — slows the current, creating an eddy ideal for swimming in place — against the current — or flowing with it to the park’s third access point, about 100 feet downstream.
And Miller’s Landing Park is great for dog lovers. In the early afternoon on July 2, Jane Ryder visited the park with Fiddlesticks, her 12-week-old puppy.
“He loves it — he’s a big water dog,” Ryder said. “This is his second time at the park, so he’s still getting used to it.”
That Miller’s Landing Park was ever anything more than a great place to spend a summer day might be lost on the casual park user. But its 20th Century legacy is hinted by its name.
For millennia, Indigenous peoples, whose progeny make up the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and other tribes, frequented this bend in what’s now called the Deschutes River. The tribes ceded the land in the Treaty of 1855, while retaining hunting, fishing and gathering rights.
The river stretch became industrialized by the late 19th Century. In 1877, a claim for the area was filed by homesteader Stephen Staats, who built a family home, a barn and other outbuildings, said Venessa Ivey, museum manager at the Deschutes County Historical Society.
“Statts advertised laundry and fresh vegetables to persons passing through, and it was a shallow part of the river that could be crossed by travelers,” Ivey wrote in an email. In the coming decades, the lot would be the site of one of Bend’s first post offices, a hotel and a ranch, according to BPRD.
In 1924, Harry Miller purchased the landing. He built a lumber holding area where workers loaded up horse-drawn delivery wagons that serviced his Miller Lumber Company, which, from its downstream location, received timber from the Shevlin-Hixon and Brooks-Scanlon Mills.
Ivey said she’s uncertain whether Miller’s Landing Park ever featured a literal mill on the property because photographic evidence isn’t complete.
Today, Miller’s Landing Park, which sits on 4.7 acres, accommodates Bend residents and visitors alike in its post-industrial, recreation-focused setting. And the tangential benefit of the renovated Miller’s Landing Park isn’t lost on owners of nearby homes or those selling them.
Nicolas Berrey, a real estate agent with a home listed for sale several blocks from Miller’s Landing Park in the Old Bend neighborhood, told the Source the park revamp — and others like it — will benefit Bend home values overall. How Miller’s Landing will affect the value of immediate properties isn’t easy to say. The home prices in Old Bend are already some of the highest in the city; it may take the next market cycle to discern its impact — if there’s any, Berrey added. And heightened car traffic of park users visiting the area may have a vexing effect on neighboring residents.
—This story is powered by the Lay It Out Foundation, the nonprofit with a mission of promoting deep reporting and investigative journalism in Central Oregon. Learn more and be part of this important work by visiting layitoutfoundation.org.
This article appears in Source Weekly July 17, 2025.
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Great. No one will argue this was a great/much needed project. However, the City of Bend being the City of Bend paid ZERO attention to what will become a huge issue. Parking and access. The neighborhood has extremely limited street parking/crumbled sidewalks. The park itself has maybe 20 parking spaces?
The Riverbend park just lost all of it’s off site parking due to more out of control development. That gravel lot is FULL of cars in the Summer. Well, that’s gone. Sold to developers. That’s already turned into a cluster with people parking on the street and tow trucks one after the other.
The City of Bend just doesn’t get it. Apparently, they never will.