Most of Oregon is not covered in green trees. About two thirds of the state, in fact, is high desert — Great Basin country, in more exact terms — and has its own distinct culture, one far removed from the liberal-leaning towns of the Willamette Valley.
Eastern Oregon is a land of cowboys and sagebrush. It’s where the deer and antelope play, and where, each year, people go to hunt them.
It’s a remote and unpopulated place, where people travel long distances to get anywhere — even to a neighbor’s house. The Crane school district, which is the size of some Eastern states, has one high school, so most of its students board there five days a week. Some students arrive by airplane from remote ranches.
Steens Mountain is nearly 10,000 feet tall and has the most beautiful gorges you’ll ever see, even though the Bureau of Land Management built a road right to the top.
Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, in Harney County south of Burns, is spectacular for the birds that stop there during spring migration. Head south to Fields for a great cheeseburger and shake with the cowboys who wander in for lunch. Go to the far southeast corner of the state, at a place called Three Forks, and you might as well have driven back to the 19th century.
To the north, a little-traveled desert mountain range can be found in the Strawberry Wilderness in Grant County.
Read on to discover more about the Oregon high desert:
“The Smithsonian knows who he is, as does the Gemological Institute of America. His work has been featured in galleries in Manhattan, Aspen and Beverly Hills. American Express commissioned him to create the centerpiece for a monument to Sept. 11 for its New York City headquarters….”
Rasmus Petersen, a Dane who came to Oregon in 1900 and died here in 1952, loved rocks. To see what he managed to do with them as an artistic medium, you need to travel pretty much to the middle of nowhere — OK, a few miles outside of Redmond, Oregon — and drop in on Petersen Rock Garden, the delightful folly that Rasmus built.
Petersen’s four-acre home is run as something between an informal public park and a very low-key tourist attraction. There’s no one selling admission tickets; drop $3 a head in the box by the gift shop to cover the family’s costs.
Then wander, amid a handful of peacocks, around the incredibly weird estate, decorated with Rasmus’ strange houses, castles, and even a replica (apparently not by Rasmus himself) of the Statue of Liberty.
Almost anywhere else in the world this would be considered valuable folk art and protected; here it’s just part of the community. A must-see for anyone within 100 miles. Or more.
