Crescent Lake, OR

Crescent Lake is a Klamath County census-designated place just south of Odell Lake on Oregon Route 58, near Crescent Lake State Airport, with 119 residents in the 2020 census. The lake bearing its name lies about 2.5 miles southwest, while Crescent Lake Junction marks the northern end of the CDP at Route 58 and Crescent Lake Highway. Forest, high Cascade passes, and the two lakes give the place a larger landscape than its population suggests. Klamath County schools serve the area, and Central Oregon Community College includes it in its territory.

Today’s settlement is not the first Crescent Lake. The original community grew beside the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Natron Cutoff, a Cascade route opened in 1926, to service steam trains and maintain track and signals. After Oregon Route 58 opened in 1940, the settlement shifted toward the highway; the roundhouse closed in 1958, and a restaurant fire in 1970 erased much of what remained at the old roadside cluster. Crescent Lake is a small Oregon place with a railroad townsite, a highway junction, an airport, and two named lakes folded into one name.