OTE - Oregon Travel Experience

Peter Skene Ogden, leading a party of Hudson’s Bay Company trappers, camped near here on October 10, 1828. On this Ogden’s fifth and final expedition into the “Snake Country,” he started on September 22, from Fort Nez Perce (Walla Walla). From here, passing Alvord Lake, he went south to the Humboldt River and thence last to Great Salt Lake, first reached by him on his initial expedition of 1824. Retracing …

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This park is named for Peter Skene Ogden, 1793-1854. In the fall of 1825, Ogden led a Hudson’s Bay Company trapping party on the first recorded journey into Central Oregon, crossing the country to the north and east into the Crooked River Valley not far above here. He was in the vicinity again in 1826 bound for the Harney Basin and the Klamath Region where he discovered Mount Shasta. Ogden …

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Wallowa Valley, located within the ancestral homelands of the Joseph Band Nez Perce, was included in the expansive Nez Perce reservation established by the Treaty of 1855. Upon discovery of gold in the region, the U.S. reduced the size of the reservation in 1863. Ordered to Leave Home: The Joseph Band held on until 1877 when, under pressure from increasing White settlement, they were ordered to abandon their homeland. Violent …

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James W. Nesmith, born in New Brunswick, Canada on July 23, 1820, was among the first emigrants to trek the Oregon Trail in 1843. He filed a land claim near present day Monmouth in 1844, and the following year took part in the formation of Oregon’s Provisional Government. Nesmith was elected to the Territorial Legislature in 1847, and was instrumental in the formation of Polk County.In 1853, Nesmith was appointed …

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In 1846, Oregon Trail pioneers Richard Howard (originally from Ohio), his wife Cynthia (of Kentucky), and their six children, staked a 640-acre Donation Land Claim around the oxbow of Milk Creek. That claim led to the founding of Mulino, and provided a livelihood for three generations of the Howard family.

Howard’s Grist Mill Within a few years of the Howards’ arrival, water-powered industrial development and a successful milling business had transformed …

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Beginning in 1843, thousands of Oregon Trail emigrants trekked through this region toward new lives in the West. This epic journey indelibly etched the landscape with wagon ruts, such as those near by. When Henry Griffin, a prospector from California, discovered gold eight miles southwest of present-day Baker City in 1861, the emigration pattern changed radically. Eastern Oregon quickly became a destination for gold-seekers and settlers-many arrived from the Willamette …

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This marks the land claim of Joseph L. Meek, famed and unlettered “mountain man,” who arrived in 1840 after driving from Fort Hall to Walla in the first wagon on that part of the Oregon Trail. He was a founder of the Provisional Government; served as the first sheriff, the first marshal, the first census taker. He carried word of the Whitman Massacre to Washington D.C., where President Polk, whose …

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First known as Lee’s Encampment, from establishment of a Troop Camp by Major H.A.G. Lee in 1844. A.B. and Harvey Meacham operated famous “Mountain House” here which gave the town its present name. In later years a famous railroad eating house. “The Log Cabin,” became nationally known under the supervision of Grandma Munra, a well-known pioneer figure.

On July 3, 1923, reporters noted Meacham was capitol of the U.S. for a …

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