Applegate Trail

The ford Scott found in 1847 spent nearly seventy years under a reservoir. The John C. Boyle Dam, built in the mid-1950s, backed the Klamath up into Topsy Reservoir and left the crossing far wider and deeper than any wagon met it. On January 16, 2024, crews blasted open a tunnel at the base of the dam, and within a day the reservoir had drained back into the river's old channel. The dam came out later that year with three others below it, and the river at the crossing runs in its own bed again.

What the plaque says

Oregon History Applegate Trail The first emigrant train over the "Southern Route," including more than fifty wagons under the leadership of Captain Levi Scott and David Goff, left the Oregon Trail at Fall Creek or Raft River, on the Snake River, August 10, 1846. The Klamath River was crossed eight miles upstream from this sign on October 4, 1846. This trail, roughly 680 miles, took fifty- six days of travel. Captain Scott, leading the second emigrant train, found a new Klamath River crossing one-half mile north of this sign Oct. 11, 1847. This remained the chief ford of the area until Brown's Ferry was established here in 1866.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Upper Klamath Lake — 20 mi
  Oregon's largest lake, wide and shallow, where farms, endangered suckers and, since 2024, returning salmon all need the same water.

More markers nearby

• Upper Klamath Lake — 13 mi