Ask a Shevlin Ridge resident what changed this year and most people mention the same two things, though they rarely connect them. One is a coffee counter that opened at the neighborhood's main roundabout last November. The other is a set of concerns Bend Park & Recreation District has been weighing about how much foot and bike traffic Shevlin Park Road can absorb before something gives. Both are really about the same thing: how close people already live to Shevlin Park, and what that closeness is starting to cost and provide in roughly equal measure.
For a neighborhood built around direct access to nearly a thousand acres of old-growth ponderosa and Tumalo Creek canyon, the park itself isn't news to anyone here. What's new is what sits at its two access points. The front door, right where Shevlin Park Road meets NW Crossing Drive, got a lot more useful last fall. The back door, further along Shevlin Park Road where informal trails and roadside parking have multiplied, got busy enough that the park board is now spending meeting time on it.
The Roundabout Got a Coffee Counter
In early November 2025, WildRoots Coffeehouse opened its second Bend location at 2230 NW Labiche Lane, on the ground floor of the Shevlin Crossing development, directly at that roundabout. Owners Kris and Laura Steinke had run their first shop on Lancaster Street in northeast Bend for years before deciding the site was worth a second bet. Steinke's own description of the decision was simple: "We could not be more excited to open our second location in northwest Bend."
Shevlin Crossing itself came together in phases. The developer, Taylor Brooks, completed a 19,054-square-foot first building in the summer of 2023, then finished two more buildings in the summer of 2025 using cross-laminated timber construction, a choice the developer has said uses less concrete and steel than conventional framing since Oregon's forests replenish the wood quickly. The complex sits across the street from the Shevlin Health & Wellness campus, about two miles from downtown.
WildRoots wasn't the only tenant worth noting. General manager Jeremy McPherson framed the coffeehouse's arrival as part of a bigger draw for the site, one that also includes "quick bites from Sparrow Bakery, and of course that important cup of morning coffee." For residents who used to drive toward town for both, the calculation has changed. The errand that once required a choice between two directions now resolves at a single roundabout.
The Walk Everyone Already Knew
None of this replaces the park, which remains the actual reason most people picked this neighborhood in the first place. Bend Park & Recreation District's own trail page lists three primary routes through the nearly 1,000 acres:
- The Loop Trail, six miles along the canyon rim through old-growth ponderosa, crossing Tumalo Creek twice.
- The Tumalo Creek Trail, 2.5 miles following the water upstream from the park entrance to its southern boundary, where it joins the Deschutes National Forest trail system.
- The Mountain Bike Trail, the preferred route for riders but open to hikers too, which links up with the Forest Service's Mrazek Trail.
The main trailhead sits at 18920 NW Shevlin Park Road, a short drive further along the same road as Shevlin Crossing, past the wellness campus. What's different now isn't the trail. It's that the coffee and the trail live on the same short stretch of pavement instead of requiring separate trips in opposite directions.
This Month at the Park
Two events on the district's current calendar are worth putting on the fridge. Bend Source's community listings show a Nature Kids: Teddy Bear Picnic on Wednesday, August 12, from 9:30 to 11 a.m., free to attend, and a Forest Bathing session called "Rest, Restore, Reconnect" on Saturday, August 22, from 10 a.m. to noon, run by Rooted Presence for $40. Both sit inside the district's summer programming window, which BPRD lists as running through August.
A Park Getting Busier at the Back Gate
The other change this year is less charming and more consequential. This past April, KTVZ reported that Bend Park & Recreation District's board opened a work session on what staff are calling the North Shevlin Park Plan, prompted by a straightforward problem: rising use has produced user-created trails and roadside parking along Shevlin Park Road, both of which are now contributing to erosion and habitat concerns. The district's task is to figure out which of those informal trails should be formalized, where new official access points should go, and how to repair the ground already affected. As of that April meeting, it was a work session only, meaning board members offered feedback rather than a vote, and no construction timeline has been announced.
For someone living inside Shevlin Ridge, this matters less as policy trivia and more as a preview. When the district does formalize new access points, it will likely change where people park along roads residents already drive daily, and some of the informal trails locals currently treat as their own may either become official routes or get closed off for restoration. The park isn't shrinking. It's being renegotiated in real time by the people responsible for keeping it intact.
One Practical Note for August
Central Oregon's wildfire season has already touched the park once this summer. BPRD's trail page noted an air quality advisory for July 20 and 21, monitoring conditions for possible cancellations, closures, or delays. It's worth checking the district's delays and cancellations page before an evening trail run through the rest of August, since smoke can shift plans with little warning this time of year.
What a Bit of History Explains
Longtime residents tend to treat the park less like scenery and more like something the neighborhood has a stake in, and the history backs that instinct up. In 1974, the film Rooster Cogburn, starring John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn, shot part of its footage in Shevlin Park. In lieu of a rental fee, then-parks director Vince Genna arranged for the production's construction crew to finish restoring the old fish hatchery building, a project that had stalled the year before for lack of funding. A crew of fifteen spent two weeks on the repair. That building later burned down in 1987 and was rebuilt as Aspen Hall in 1988, the same events space still hosting weddings and gatherings today.
Nearly two decades after that, Disney's production of Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey built a covered bridge over the concrete abutments of an old logging trestle inside the park, then donated the structure when filming wrapped. Wikipedia's entry on the park notes the district removed that bridge in 2019 to improve riparian habitat, since another bridge stood only 500 feet downstream. Further south, Fremont Meadow carries the name of John C. Frémont, who camped there during his 1843 expedition through the region, a detail marked today by a small sign at the site.
None of this changes anyone's evening walk, but it explains the pattern now repeating with the North Shevlin Park Plan. Restoration in exchange for use, negotiated access, structures built and later removed for the sake of the creek. The park has always come with paperwork attached. It's just that most of the time, residents don't have to think about it.
Two Doors, Same Direction
Both changes this year point the same way. Proximity to Shevlin Park used to be a settled fact, the kind of thing a neighborhood description mentions once and moves past. This year it became something people are actively managing, one espresso counter at the front and one board meeting at the back. If the pattern holds, the next twelve months will likely bring at least one formalized trailhead and, if Taylor Brooks fills the rest of Shevlin Crossing, another storefront at that same roundabout. Neither will make news outside Bend. Both will quietly reshape what a Tuesday evening in Shevlin Ridge looks like.
Silvia Giffin-Knight keeps a close eye on these small shifts the same way she tracks everything else close to home in Bend. If you want the next update on what opens, closes, or lands on a board agenda near Shevlin Park, or you're simply curious what any of it means for your own address, Silvia Giffin-Knight is glad to talk it through. Schedule a confidential consultation whenever the timing is right.
