61415 Steens Mountain Loop

Old Farm District sits in Bend's southeast quadrant, roughly bounded by Highway 97 on the west, SE 27th Street on the east, Reed Market Road on the north, and Murphy Road on the south, per the Old Farm District Neighborhood Association's own boundary description. The name comes straight from the land's former use. Before Bend's growth reached this far southeast, these parcels grew food for the town. A Central Oregon Irrigation District canal still runs through the district today, a working piece of that agricultural past. The canal traces to 1902, when Alexander M. Drake, the same Drake behind downtown's Drake Park, formed the Pilot Butte Development Company and began diverting water from the Deschutes River. His company had the Central Oregon and Pilot Butte Canals built by 1907, then sold out before the irrigation district itself existed. On December 17, 1917, the company was handed over to the farmers who used it, and they organized what is now the Central Oregon Irrigation District.

That agricultural start explains a lot about the neighborhood today. Much of Old Farm District developed under Deschutes County jurisdiction, before the city annexed the area, and county code from that era asked for fewer sidewalks and did not require builders to plan streets around future traffic. The BNSF railroad and the COID canal now cut across the neighborhood with few places to cross from one side to the other. A Bend Bulletin report on the district found a concrete example of what that means. A trip that covers 1.5 miles as the crow flies can turn into a 5-mile drive once you account for where the tracks and the canal force you around. That is the honest trade-off of living here. You get more land, and historically a lower price than northwest or west Bend homes. You give up the tight street grid and short drive times those neighborhoods take for granted.