Born & Raised on the Oregon Trail

An introduction to some of the cast of characters who settled the Vale area.

What drew such a variety of characters to the Vale territory? The area's first inhabitants, the Indians, camped along its waterways and harvested and dried stores of food for winter use and trading. After Lewis and Clark blazed the way to the Pacific Ocean, John Jacob Astor formed the Pacific Fur Company. He sent the first overland party, led by Wilson Price Hunt from Astoria, to trap the local rivers and streams. This party included the first known white men to enter Malheur County. Missionaries accompanied some of the fur traders and remained after the collapse of the fur trade. Narcissa Spaulding and Eliza Whitman are presumed to be the first white women to enter Malheur County.

In the early 1800's, gold had been discovered on a small tributary of Willow Creek, north of Vale, bringing in large numbers of miners. Chinese were brought into the area to labor in the mines and to construct the El Dorado Ditch that supplied water needed for mining activities. By 1843, and thereafter waves of immigrants began their trek west on the Oregon Trail. Some of those immigrants chose to remain and became the area's first cattle ranchers and farmers.

Address: 10th and Harrison Street (Logan's Food Market)

Artist: Don Gary (painted in 1998)