OTE - Oregon Travel Experience

Great Basin

Posted on: October 14th, 2024 in Historical Marker Details |

This site marks the northern limit of the Great Basin, a region some six hundred miles long and up to five hundred miles wide. It began forming 17 million years ago as the result of regional uplift and east west stretching by geologic forces that continue today. This stretching created a pattern of north trending mountain ranges separated by broad flat valleys. Precipitation that falls within the Great Basin leaves …

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Gray, Captain Robert

Posted on: October 14th, 2024 in Historical Marker Details |

Captain Robert Gray, commanding the sloop Lady Washington, left Boston in October 1787 on a trading voyage to the West Coast of North America, seeking otter furs. To his small crew of about a dozen men, Gray soon added Markus Lopeus, who boarded at the Cape Verde Islands off West Africa. Rounding the tip of South America and sailing north, the Lady Washington traded along the coast, and reached Tillamook …

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Grand Ronde Indian Reservation

Posted on: October 11th, 2024 in Historical Marker Details |

Indians inhabited Oregon’s inland valleys for thousands of years before Euro-Americans began to arrive in the late 18th Century. In the early 1780s, and again in the 1830s, diseases spread by seafarers and fur trappers swept through Oregon’s valleys killing most of the native population. The opening of the Oregon Trail in the 1840s incr4eased pressure to remove the remaining Indians from their homelands.In 1856, the U.S. Government created the …

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Glacial Erratics

Posted on: October 11th, 2024 in Historical Marker Audio Tours, Historical Marker Details |

The 90-ton glacial erratic rock at the top of this 1/4 mile-long trail is a stranger from a distant location- it was transported here thousands of years ago on an iceberg in the wake of a cataclysmic flood.

During the last Ice Age, 13,000-15,500 years ago, a giant glacier dammed the Clark Fork River in what is today southwest Montana and created a huge lake- Glacial Lake Missoula. At 3,000 square …

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Fremont Memorial

Posted on: October 11th, 2024 in Historical Marker Details |

The Fremont Memorial Marker was two-sided, which makes the final results doubly impressive!

A MEMORIAL TO THE PERSONNEL OF THE SECOND FREMONT EXPLORING EXPEDITION TO OREGON AND NORTH CALIFORNIA.

The reports of this expedition directed the migration of the Western Settlement toward the Oregon Country which hitherto had been merely a rendezvous for trappers. On December 16th, 1843 the expedition while enroute from The Dalles of the Columbia to Sutters Fort on …

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Fort Stevens State Park

Posted on: October 11th, 2024 in Historical Marker Details |

Clatsop people controlled trade on this side of the lower Columbia River for generations. Visitors described the Clatsop’s bustling communities. The Hudson’s Bay Company attacked a village here in 1829, believing untrue rumors of Clatsop hostility. Settlers soon began claiming nearby lands. Clatsop chiefs signed a treaty with the U.S. in 1851, reserving land, but the U.S. Senate never ratified the treaty. The 1855 Oregon Coast Treaty was also unratified, …

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Fort Rock

Posted on: October 11th, 2024 in Historical Marker Details |

Fort Rock is the remnant of a maar volcano or tuff ring, formed when rising basaltic magma encountered water and exploded violently. The exploded debris- called tuff-fell back to earth around the volcanic vent to form this steep-walled, fort-like ring. Over time, the basin filled with a shallow lake, which breached the south rim of the tuff ring and ut a terrace about 60 feet abobe the floor of the …

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Fort Harney

Posted on: October 11th, 2024 in Historical Marker Details |

Fort Harney-on the former Malheur Indian Reservation, was named for Gen. Wm. S. Harney. who took command of the Military Department of Oregon, Sept. 13, 1858. The fort was established Aug. 10, 1867, and became a permanent Military Post by order of the President. The Fort Harney Military Reserve of 640 acres was created on Jan. 28, 1876. On Sept. 13, 1882 the President restored to the public domain all …

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First Coastal Expeditions

Posted on: October 10th, 2024 in Historical Marker Details |

Alexander R. McLeod led the first overland expeditions to Oregon’s central and southern coast between 1826-27. McLeod, a Chief Trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort Vancouver, sought furs and trading opportunities with tribes such as the Tillamook, Umpqua, Coos, and Coquille. Local tribes also provided information, canoes, and other assistance.

The McLeod expeditions included French Canadians, such as Michel Laframboise who served as an interpreter, as well as Hawaiians, …

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Farewell Bend

Posted on: October 10th, 2024 in Historical Marker Details |

The last camp on the weary journey across the Snake River plains. Here the Oregon Trail left the Snake River and wound overland to the Columbia. Here, camped Wilson Price Hunt, December 23, 1811; Capt. Bonneville, January 10, 1834; Nathaniel J. Wyeth, August 25, 1834; John C. Fremont, October 13, 1843.

Location: 4 miles east of Huntington in Farewell Bend State Park

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