Saturday

For National Trails Day took us on a hike of the Oregon Trail from the MacDonald Crossing of the John Day River to The Dalles. This is the segment of trail we marked last summer. It is beautiful and rugged, and the landscape is little changed from the original. We gathered at Biggs and car-pooled to Cedar Springs on the east side of the hills above John Day's River. Vic showed us excellent swales running through the existing Cedar Springs Ranch, where the owners were very helpful about the trail. Then he took us to the ranch on top of the hill, which sits right on top of the trail. From here we took an easy hike down to the John Day River. It was easy for us, but we could easily imagine the trouble that wagons had negotiating this grade. Here we are walking down in a wonderful trail swale.

In our earlier trailmarking we also discovered some BLM concrete Oregon Trail Markers. No, we did not attempt to ford the river, but the farmer across the river does use the ford, because he works both sides of the river. Here also is a Meeker Marker. Actually we don't know who put this up, but it has 1882 instead of 1857 as an ending date, which leads me to believe it is not by Ezra Meeker.

We drove out along Rock Creek, which was a longer but more level approach to the ford. According to the research of Dick Ackerman the Rock Creek route was used extensively after 1852. After lunch we drove around to the other side of the river to see the BLM interpretive kiosk and the traces of the trail going up to the plateau on the west side. Here we met a local couple out looking for the trail themselves. Perhaps they will become members, for we gave them info and brochures. We continued following the trail across the plateau, through Wasco, across rte. 97 and Mud Hollow Road where it climbs another hill before it descends to Biggs.

The next day we climbed the west side of the hill just above Biggs, passed one of our markers and stopped to look across the field to where the trail came off the top of the hill. here's Jenny Miller, Dick Pingree, Rich Herman, Chuck Fisk, and Dave Welch. from there we hiked up a portion of the trail just west of Biggs, which had been marked in 1991. We found pieces of a broken old iron stove there which, who knows, might have been left by some pioneer. Dick Pingree described what the complete stove would have looked like saying: "my grandmother had one just like it." Dave Welch took pictures and will try to get it traced from catalogues at his historical society.

From here we went to the Deschutes River Crossing and discussed three possible routes we discovered there. Your reporter left at this point to meet an elderhostel bus across the river at Maryhill. Maybe some of you guys will send me some more pics to complete this report.