The Wall of Women: The Story Behind Bend’s New Olive & May

There is a new restaurant on Wall Street in downtown Bend, but one of the most interesting things about it has little to do with what is on the menu.

Olive & May, a neighborhood restaurant and bar at 801 NW Wall Street, opened in 2026 with a scratch kitchen, Northern Mediterranean-inspired cooking, craft cocktails, and a curated wine list. But before you sit down to dinner, there is another story worth taking a few minutes to look at.

It is on the wall.

Olive & May features a collection of illustrated portraits called the Wall of Women, honoring women connected to Bend whose work, leadership, creativity, and community involvement helped shape the city. The portraits were illustrated from historical photographs provided by the Deschutes Historical Museum.

And the wall is more than a collection of historical figures.

It is part of the reason the restaurant has its name.

Why Olive & May?

Olive & May takes its name from Olive McKay and May Arnold, two women connected to an important piece of Bend’s history.

Olive McKay arrived in Central Oregon with her husband, Clyde, and their children in 1911. She became involved in community organizations including the Allied Arts Club and the Bend Chapter of the Eastern Star and served as a volunteer member of the county election board. The restaurant’s history notes that the McKays were also connected to the construction of the building that now houses Olive & May and to the sale of the 10.5 acres that became Drake Park.

May Arnold’s connection to Drake Park was different.

In 1919, the Women’s Civic League of Bend was formed to promote civic pride and work with city officials on community issues. One of its major projects became the effort to preserve the riverfront land that would eventually become Drake Park. Historical research from the Deschutes Historical Museum identifies Arnold as the woman who spearheaded that campaign. (Deschutes Historical Museum and Society

In 1920, Arnold and other members of the organization gathered roughly 1,500 signatures supporting a $21,000 bond measure to allow the city to purchase the riverfront property.

The campaign succeeded.

Bend purchased the property in 1921, preserving it as public parkland. The City of Bend’s historical documentation identifies the Women’s Civic League as leading the successful campaign to save the site from potential industrial or residential development.

Today, that land is Drake Park, one of Bend’s most recognizable public spaces.

There is an important historical detail worth getting right here: Oregon women had already won the right to vote in 1912, so the park campaign took place during a period when women in Oregon could participate directly in elections. Some descriptions of May Arnold’s story, including the restaurant’s own Wall of Women page, incorrectly state that women did not receive voting rights in Oregon until 1929. That date should not be repeated. The correction does not diminish Arnold’s accomplishment. If anything, it gives the story better context.

The Women’s Civic League was demonstrating what organized civic participation by women could accomplish in a rapidly developing town.

A Wall Full of Bend’s History

The portraits at Olive & May span generations and professions.

They include teachers, business owners, politicians, health-care leaders, athletes, outdoor enthusiasts, civic organizers and women whose influence was primarily felt through their families and communities.

One of the earliest women represented is Ruth Reid, who arrived in Bend in 1904 as a teacher. Olive & May identifies her as Bend’s first school principal, and Reid School, constructed in 1914, was later named in her honor. The historic Reid School building now houses the Deschutes Historical Museum.

Then there is Ann Markel Forbes, who came to Bend from Illinois with her sister in 1909. She became a teacher, played on Bend’s women’s baseball team, and later turned to real estate after being widowed and left to raise a young son.

That particular story feels especially relevant today.

More than a century ago, Forbes was teaching, playing sports, raising a family, running a business and eventually working in real estate.

Her portrait is a reminder that the idea of a woman having several professional and personal identities is hardly a new phenomenon.

A More Complicated History

The Wall of Women also includes Ophelia Phelps, whose story adds an important dimension to Bend’s history.

Phelps and her husband, Clarence, were the first Black family to homestead in Deschutes County, arriving in 1917. In 1922, she was elected to the Cloverdale School Board, becoming the first person of color elected to public office in Deschutes County, according to Olive & May and the Deschutes Historical Museum. (Olive & May

Her story is significant because Central Oregon history can sometimes be presented as a straightforward story of pioneers, timber, railroads and growth.

It was considerably more complicated.

The people who built communities in this region came from different backgrounds and experienced Central Oregon in very different ways. The Deschutes Historical Museum itself describes its mission as preserving and celebrating the area’s shared history while acknowledging the Native peoples whose ancestral homelands encompass the region. (Deschutes Historical Museum and Society

Phelps’ portrait adds another chapter to that history.

Women in Government

Several women on the wall broke barriers in local government.

Dorothy Cale became the first woman commissioner in Deschutes County in 1967. She also worked to preserve Reid School by helping transfer the historic building from the school district to the county.

Ruth Burleigh served on the Bend City Commission from 1974 to 1986 and was twice selected by the commission to serve as mayor, becoming Bend’s first woman mayor.

And Susie Penhollow, a Bend native, served as Deschutes County Clerk from 1982 to 2002. During her tenure, the clerk’s office moved toward computerization and implemented Oregon’s vote-by-mail system in 1998. She later worked internationally as an election observer.Their stories show how the role of women in Bend’s civic life evolved over the course of the 20th century.

From organizing neighborhood improvements to serving as mayor and overseeing county elections, women increasingly became part of the machinery of local government itself.

Health Care, Business and the Outdoors

The wall moves beyond politics and civic organizations.

Sister Catherine Hellman arrived in Bend in 1948 while training as a nurse. She eventually became president of St. Charles Hospital, serving from 1969 until her retirement in 1995. Olive & May credits her leadership with helping move St. Charles toward its later campus on Neff Road. (Olive & May

Hattie Mayne, a trained practical nurse, pursued a different health-care goal. In 1920 she opened Mountain View Hospital, also known as Mayne Maternity Hospital, on Kansas Avenue. (Olive & MayThen there is Virginia Meissner, whose story connects directly to the outdoor culture that has become so closely associated with Central Oregon.

Meissner was a cross-country skiing instructor during the 1950s and 1960s, helped found the Central Oregon Nordic Club and participated in planning and marking early Nordic ski trails. The ski area now known as Virginia Meissner Sno-Park carries her name.

Bend’s outdoor identity did not suddenly appear with the mountain-bike boom, craft breweries or influx of outdoor companies.

People such as Meissner were building that culture decades ago.

A Restaurant With a Connection to Bend’s Food History

The Wall of Women also includes Maren Gribskov, who, along with Eleanor Beachen, founded the Pine Tavern in 1936.

The Pine Tavern eventually became one of Bend’s best-known restaurants, making Gribskov an especially fitting person to include inside another Bend restaurant. Olive & May notes that Gribskov owned the business until 1967.

There is something fitting about that connection.

Restaurants are often more than places to eat.

The ones that last become part of the social fabric of a city. They become places where people celebrate birthdays, meet friends, take visitors and establish traditions.

Gribskov helped create one of those places in Bend.

Now, decades later, Olive & May is establishing its own place on the same city’s culinary map.

Some Stories Are Closer to Home

Not every woman on the wall is a historical figure.

Three portraits represent the mothers of Olive & May’s owners.

Faye Neely, the mother of owner Caprice Neely, was born in Honolulu, attended Ohio State University and later earned a master’s degree in education from Stanford. She became a teacher and is described by Olive & May as a major influence on her daughter’s creativity and approach to life.Deirdre Donoher, mother of co-owner Fergal Donoher, was born in Sligo, Ireland, in 1939. She is still living in Ireland and is described by the restaurant as a mother, grandmother and community-minded person.

Elizabeth Jean Colello-Kost, mother of co-owner Peter Kost, was born in Seattle in 1938 to Italian immigrant parents. She was involved with her church, charitable organizations and the Seattle Fedele Sons & Daughters of Italy. She died in 2014.

That decision changes the character of the wall.

It isn’t simply a list of famous women from Bend’s past.

The owners have placed their own family histories alongside the women who shaped the city.

That makes the project personal.

Why It Works

Bend is a city that changes quickly.

New buildings go up. Restaurants open. Neighborhoods expand. People arrive from somewhere else and bring their own stories with them.

That can make it easy to think of Bend’s history as something that happened a long time ago, somewhere else.

The Wall of Women makes that history tangible.

The women represented on the wall were not all famous. They did not all work in the same field. They did not even live in the same era.

But their stories intersect with many of the things that define Bend today.

Public parks.

Schools.

Government.

Health care.

Restaurants.

Outdoor recreation.

Community organizations.

And, perhaps most importantly, the people who choose to invest their time and energy into making a place better.

That is what makes Olive & May’s approach interesting.

The restaurant could have simply opened its doors, put a menu on the table and started serving dinner.

Instead, it put part of Bend’s history directly into the room.

The Wall of Women gives diners something to look at, but more importantly, it gives them something to learn.

You can walk into Olive & May knowing nothing about May Arnold and leave knowing that a century ago she helped organize the campaign that preserved the riverfront land that became Drake Park.

You can see Ruth Reid and learn about Bend’s early schools.

You can see Ophelia Phelps and discover a story about Black history and civic participation in Central Oregon.

You can see Virginia Meissner and connect today’s Nordic culture to someone who was helping establish it generations ago.

And you can see the mothers of the restaurant’s owners and be reminded that history isn’t only made by people whose names appear in textbooks.

Sometimes it is made by teachers.

Sometimes by business owners.

Sometimes by elected officials.

Sometimes by people who organize their neighbors.

And sometimes by mothers whose influence never makes the newspaper but shapes the people who eventually build something of their own.

That may be the most interesting thing about the Wall of Women.

It doesn’t ask you to look backward at Bend as though the city’s story is finished.

It asks you to recognize the people who helped make the place we have today — and perhaps consider who is helping shape what comes next.

Olive & May is a new restaurant.

Its wall is a much older story.

And in a city changing as quickly as Bend, that connection to the past is worth noticing.