Buying Land in Hood River County, Oregon

A federal Scenic Area layered on top of state zoning

What makes Hood River County's zoning genuinely more complex than most Oregon counties is the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Act of 1986, a federal law establishing a bi-state (Oregon/Washington) Columbia River Gorge Commission to manage roughly 292,000 acres along the Columbia River, including the western portion of Hood River County. The Act divides this land into three categories: General Management Areas (about 149,000 acres, largely private land, where the Gorge Commission's rules govern county land-use ordinances), Special Management Areas (about 115,000 acres, mostly federal land and the most stringently protected, where the U.S. Forest Service writes the rules), and thirteen small Urban Areas exempted from most Scenic Area review. Hood River County implements its share of this framework through Article 75 of its own county Zoning Ordinance, but any ordinance amendment touching Special Management Area land also requires the Secretary of Agriculture, acting through the Forest Service, to concur that it's consistent with the Gorge Management Plan.

For a land buyer, the practical upshot is that a parcel in the western part of Hood River County may be subject to review by the county, the bi-state Gorge Commission, and potentially the U.S. Forest Service, depending on exactly where it sits and which management category applies -- a genuinely distinctive, multi-agency process not found in most of the state. Confirm a specific parcel's Scenic Area status and management-area category directly with Hood River County Planning before assuming ordinary EFU review alone governs a proposed use or structure.

EFU orchard country and its own local rules

Outside the Scenic Area's most restrictive zones, and throughout the broader Hood River Valley, Exclusive Farm Use (EFU) zoning under Oregon's statewide Goal 3 framework governs the county's defining agricultural asset: a mature, multi-generational tree-fruit industry. The Mid-Columbia region -- spanning Hood River County and neighboring areas -- supports more than 440 orchards producing upward of 450 million pounds of pears, cherries, and apples each year, much of it on family operations passed down across generations. The county has built out its own local rules on top of the statewide EFU framework for uses tied to this industry, including a tiered agritourism-event permit system (covering farm-to-table dinners, tours, and educational events) and specific farm-stand standards, both of which have been the subject of real, contested local hearings -- a Packer Orchards farm-stand permit process, for instance, reached a public-hearing decision in early 2025 after an extended review. Anyone planning an agritourism or farm-stand use on Hood River County EFU land should confirm the current tiered-permit standards directly with the county rather than assuming a use is allowed outright.

Cities, UGBs, and two separate short-term-rental regimes

Hood River County's population is estimated around 23,900, with the City of Hood River (about 8,350 residents) and Cascade Locks the county's two incorporated cities, each maintaining its own urban growth boundary under the same statewide Goal 14 framework that applies everywhere in Oregon. Land immediately outside either UGB remains rural EFU or forest zoning regardless of proximity to city services. Notably, short-term rentals are regulated completely separately depending on which side of a UGB line a property sits: the county's EFU-zone rules (180-day cap, primary-dwelling-only, conditional use permit, no associated events) apply in the unincorporated county, while the City of Hood River enforces its own Ordinance 2026 -- a residency-based licensing system requiring the host or a designated lessee to live on-site, with specific overnight-occupancy limits -- that a federal court upheld against a legal challenge. See the dedicated short-term-rental page below for the full comparison.