8 Delightfully Odd Towns In Oregon

Usually, odd is not always delightful. But in Oregon, odd is delightful. Part of the placid Pacific Northwest, Oregon's oddities tend to charm and soothe rather than repel and frighten. This is especially true in small, far-out communities, where tourists venture for specific sights like a film-inspired pie-eating contest, a Pig-N-Ford race, or a park dedicated to a dynamited whale. Learn in which delightfully odd towns you can find those, and many other, delightfully odd attractions.

Brownsville

As the stand-in for Castle Rock, the fictional Oregon town in Rob Reiner's 1986 movie Stand by Me, Brownsville stands out among cinephiles. They journey to this Linn County city (population ~1,700) to see such filming locations as Carlson's Hardware, which backdrops 12-year-old Gordie's opening scene, and the Calapooia River Bridge, which the boys cross before parting ways near the film's end. While skirting the hardware store and crossing the bridge can transport you into Stand by Me, the true plunge occurs during Stand By Me Day, an annual late-July celebration punctuated by a pie-eating contest. It gets messy, but not as messy as the contest in the film, which was shot in Brownsville using blueberry pies and vats of vomit-mimicking filling from a local bakery.

North Plains

North Plains stinks—but in a fun way. On the second weekend of August, this Portland bedroom community awakens to the smell of elephant garlic for the North Plains Elephant Garlic Festival. Technically a leek of pachydermic proportions, elephant garlic has been grown in the area for decades. Around 1997, a local farmer, inspired by California's Gilroy Garlic Festival, decided that North Plains needed its own fetid fest featuring the elephantine variety. Its 28th edition is set to run from August 7 to 9, 2026.

After sampling pickled garlic and garlic ice cream (hopefully followed by a swig of mouthwash), head to Portland for more delightful oddities like the Freakybuttrue Peculiarium and the Voodoo Doughnut Wedding Chapel.

Tillamook

Though home to just over 5,000 people, Tillamook hosts the Tillamook County Fair, which draws ~70,000 attendees in early August. Alongside standard fair fare like corn dogs and carnival rides are the squealingly strange Pig-N-Ford Races. Clutching a piglet in one hand and the steering wheel of a Model T Ford in another, contestants vie to be the fastest pig-holder-and-Ford-driver in the west—a tradition that began over 100 years ago when locals used a Model T to catch an escaped pig. It now runs each night of the fair as the headline event.

But what may be delightfully odd to spectators is dangerously odd to pigs, so if you would rather not be complicit in swine-suffering, pig out in a different way at the Tillamook Creamery. An unexpected cheese empire in rural Oregon, the creamery offers self-guided and premium tours with an array of samples.

Astoria

Stand by Me is not the only iconic '80s movie shot in remote Oregon. In 1984, Richard Donner and crew rolled into Astoria on Oregon's northwestern coast to film The Goonies, which depicts a treasure hunt to save an Astoria neighborhood from foreclosure. The adolescent adventurers succeed in saving their homes—and real-life Astoria succeeded in saving the main Goonies home, aptly called the Goonies House, as a tourist attraction (though one that is privately owned). It also saved the Goonies jailhouse as the Oregon Film Museum, which is dedicated to all Astoria-made movies, ranging from The Goonies to Free Willy to Kindergarten Cop. You can reach such sites after walking the Goonie Trails, an eclectic network of forested footpaths steeped in local lore.

Veneta

Veneta's Oregon Country Fair is the anti-Tillamook County Fair. Rather than "the most redneck thing you’ve ever seen in your life,” as announcer Mike Bentley called Tillamook's Pig-N-Ford Races, the Oregon Country Fair is a "wonderland of free expression and imagination for all to enjoy." Held in a 500ish-acre forest outside the small city of Veneta, it spans three July days of avant-garde performances (think aerial acrobatics, belly dances, and drag shows); quirky commerce (more than 300 artisans peddle their wares from a "magical fairy marketplace"); and eccentric eating (85-plus gourmet chefs whip up everything from organic fruit popsicles to Ethiopian sambusas). Despite the fair's free-wheeling nature, alcohol is prohibited. If needing a fix, sneak out from the fairgrounds to Apona Vineyards or the Sarver Winery, two staples of the viticultural Willamette Valley.

Florence

On November 12, 1970, near Florence, Oregon, officials blew up a beached whale. But instead of disintegrating into a million tiny pieces as was hoped, the cetacean's colossal chunks clobbered beachgoers and even crushed a car. Its rotting, stinking flesh remained for days, while its legend persists after 56 years thanks to Florence's Exploding Whale Memorial Park and Exploding Whale Memorial Celebration. While those are a whale of a time, they are not the only amusing oddities around Florence. Others include the Hobbit Trail, which runs for one mile through a middle-Earth-like ecosystem, and the Sea Lion Caves, which is considered America's largest sea cave and year-round home of the Steller sea lion. It smells much like the exploding whale of 1970.

The Dalles

See the bright lights of The Dalles confined to a 20,000-square-foot building on East 3rd Street. That is where the National Neon Sign Museum displays dozens of neon marvels from several decades, including a 1930s-era Polly Gas advertisement and a 1950s-era Squirt billboard. After admiring artificial light in Oregon, cross the Columbia River to gaze at starlight from Washington. Just past the border sits the Goldendale Observatory, which supports day and night sky viewing, and Maryhill Stonehenge, a replica of England's Stonehenge that doubles as a solar eclipse hotspot. In 1979, the monument underwent more than two minutes of total darkness. Chanting neo-Druids were in attendance.

Gold Hill

Gold Hill seems to defy the laws of physics. This super-small city boasts The Oregon Vortex, an invisible "force" that makes balls roll uphill, brooms stand on their own, and the heights of visitors change. Appropriately, the vortex's main attraction, dubbed the House of Mystery, is a former gold assay office that rests at a ridiculous angle. To skeptics, said angle explains the aforementioned phenomena as simple optical illusions. Grouped with other forced-perspective oddities called "gravity hills," The Oregon Vortex inspired the animated mystery series Gravity Falls. Do not fall for the gravity hill but do not be too chicken to see it. Speaking of chicken, follow up a journey through the vortex with a voyage to the Rogue River National Rooster Crow. Held each June in neighboring Rogue River, the competition features both avian and human crowers.

Delightful and odd are synonyms in Oregon, as evidenced by the charming oddities spread across its small towns. See Stand by Me shrines in Brownsville, smell a garlic festival in North Plains, sample unique cheeses in Tillamook, walk Goonies Trails in Astoria, admire avant-garde art in Veneta, honor an exploded whale in Florence, ogle neon signs in The Dalles, and climb a gravity hill in Gold Hill for a delightfully odd tour of far-flung Oregon.