Running Y Ranch, OR

Running Y Ranch is a Klamath County census-designated place built around a planned resort community southwest of Klamath Falls. The 2020 census counted 858 residents. Its land sits between Upper Klamath Lake, Wocus Marsh, and Caledonia Marsh, with Payne Canyon running through the hills at the center. That setting is less a conventional town grid than a large ranch landscape organized around roads, wetlands, homes, and the resort. The ranch began in 1866 when homesteader Wendolin Nus built a cabin and rock wall beside Upper Klamath Lake.

Later owners turned marshland into irrigated cattle country; in the 1990s the property shifted toward a resort, and Arnold Palmer broke ground on the signature golf course in 1998. Today the 3,600-acre property combines forest, wetlands, wildlife habitat, golf, lodging, dining, and outdoor recreation. The scale is part of the story. Running Y Ranch's local scoop is an Oregon CDP where a working ranch became a planned community without losing the lake-and-marsh landscape that made the place distinctive.