Farewell, Bend

Farewell, Bend: A Bendite's Eulogy for Bend, Oregon is part travelogue, part hometown reckoning-a three-day journal through the streets and buried histories of a city caught between memory and metamorphosis. Returning to Bend in May 2025, the author-born at St. Charles and raised in the shadow of the Cascades-sets out to rediscover the town he once called home. What he finds is a place both familiar and unrecognizable, shaped by decades of development, displacement, and reinvention. With a pint in one hand and a pen in the other, he guides us through overlooked landmarks and local lore, weaving personal anecdotes with archival gems from Bend's other well-known chroniclers, including Raymond R. Hatton and Jonathan Bach. By turns funny, furious, and deeply felt, Farewell, Bend is a love letter, a lament, and a last call for a city on the edge of forgetting itself.