Book excerpt: A fascinating mix of local legends who could be characterized as “the right people, in the right place, at the right time” arrived in Central Oregon during the past century and a half to make Bend the fascinating city it has become. Some of these people—explorer John Charles Fremont, publisher George Palmer Putnam, economist William A. Niskanen, and “World’s Greatest Athlete” Ashton Eaton among them—gained national prominence and even global stature. Others were and are more ordinary people who have done and continue to do extraordinary things in an extraordinary place, a small but singular city of some 80,000 souls astride the Deschutes River at the eastern foot of the Cascade Range.