The refurbishing of Chief Paulina Horse Camp is nearly complete! Put this pleasant horse camp, located in Central Oregon a little south of Bend, at the top of your list for next summer's horseback adventures. The riding is terrific, and the Forest Service has made dramatic improvements to enlarge the campsites that used to be too small for today's longer trailers.
The Remodel
This is what Site 7 looked like before the work: barely big enough to back a 2-horse trailer into.
Today, the parking area has been enlarged, the approach has been widened to make it easier to back in, and there's room beside the road to park another small trailer and truck.
Before the remodel, Site 4 was a tiny back-in site. The parking pad was so short, most people would have to unhitch their trucks and park beside their trailers.
Today, Site 4 has long pull-through parking beside the road.
Most of the campsites have been enlarged and improved, with new gravel in the parking areas, wider approaches, and in some cases, wider parking pads. A number of the corrals have been bedded with wood chips from the many trees that have been taken out to enlarge the campsites.
Chief Paulina Horse Camp, located in the Newberry National Volcanic Monument, has wonderful riding. (Where else can you ride beside a lava flow sparkling with obsidian boulders, see panoramic views that include the entire Cascade Crest, and ride the rim of a real volcanic crater?) And now, the horse camp offers accommodations that are as nice as the riding. THANK YOU, FOREST SERVICE!
The camp has 14 sites that are available by reservation at Recreation.gov. Make plans to go next summer -- you'll be glad you did!
Learn More
You’ll find more information about Chief Paulina Horse Camp and the nearby trails in Riding Central Oregon Horse Trails, by Kim McCarrel, (Ponderosa Press, 2018), available at www.nwhorsetrails.com.