Rapid population growth is nothing new to Bend. Fifteen years after its incorporation as a city of about 500 persons in 1905, the population had exploded to more than 5,400 persons after the building of two large sawmills at the south edge of town. In later decades the Bend area and Deschutes County, like the rest of the state, experienced cycles of population growth tied to economic conditions. Bend is the eighth largest city in Oregon and the largest Oregon city east of the Cascade Mountains.

As the population has grown, it also has become younger and more affluent, conditions that can be traced in part to the expansion of the local outdoor recreation businesses and the in-migration of “baby-boomers” from California and the Northwest.