Peter Skene Ogden

The board can follow this trip day by day because its journal survived; the next one's did not. Ogden's record of 1828-29 reached the company's archives and was published in 1971. Coming home from a sixth brigade the board does not count, in July 1830, he walked the portage at The Dalles and watched from the rocks as his boat, running the rapids, was caught in a whirlpool. Nine drowned, among them the steersman Joseph Portneuf, his wife and their two children. Three hundred beaver pelts and every paper from the trip, the journal included, went down with them.

What the plaque says

Oregon History Peter Skene Ogden 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 east to Great Salt Lake, first reached by him on his initial expedition of 1824-25. Retracing the route on its return journey, the party followed the Humboldt, turned north to the Silvies, crossed over into the John Day Valley and reached Fort Nez Perce in July, 1829. Over 2,000 beaver were taken by the party.

Where it stands