Cascadia County Park
Cascadia County Park is a park in the U.S. state of Oregon near Sweet Home along the South Santiam River at Cascadia. The park includes a day use area, campsites, hiking trails and 150 foot Lower Soda Creek Falls.
History
Prior to settlers arriving, groups from the Molalla and Kalapuya tribes visited the park site to harvest huckleberries, fish and hunt. Cascadia Cave is nearby. The cave is an 8,000-year-old American Indian petroglyph site considered to have the largest concentration of rock engravings in western Oregon.Willamette Valley settlers developed a bypass at the park site for horse-drawn wagons. Old wagon ruts are still visible near where Soda Creek meets the South Santiam River.
In 1896, George Geisendorfer opened a resort to capitalize on what he called the "curative powers" of Soda Creek's mineral spring water. The resort included a hotel, tennis courts, croquet course, garden and bowling alley. The hotel later burned and the property was acquired by the state of Oregon in 1940.
Cascadia was a State Park until September 2022, when ownership was transferred to Linn County, Oregon which had been managing the park for the previous 3 years.