---

Eastern Oregon

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.

all text and images © 2005-06 by Bob Keefer
no reproduction allowed in any form without written permission