Snow on the Blue Mountains above the farms of the Baker Valley near Baker City
Doug Kerr / CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Oregon · Region

Northeast Oregon

Cayuse, Umatilla, Walla Walla and Nez Perce country — Pendleton and the Round-Up, Tamástslikt, the Oregon Trail over the Blue Mountains, Baker City, and Old Joseph's grave at Wallowa Lake.

5 places to explore

The Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla lived along the rivers that run off the Blue Mountains to the Columbia, and the Oregon Trail came through the middle of their country, over the Blues and down the Umatilla. A treaty in 1855 kept them a reservation east of Pendleton, much cut down since. On it the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation opened Tamástslikt in 1998, its name a Walla Walla word for interpreting, the only tribally owned interpretive center on the Oregon Trail, telling the trail from the tribes' side. Pendleton has the woolen mill and the Round-Up, first held in September 1910; families from the reservation and across the Northwest still pitch some three hundred tipis beside the arena every year.

South, wagon ruts still cut the sagebrush below the interpretive center on Flagstaff Hill outside Baker City, and Baker City kept the brick downtown that the Blue Mountain gold strikes paid for.

East of the Blues, the Wallowa valley was the homeland of the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce. Old Joseph refused to sign it away in 1863 and died there in 1871, telling his son never to sell his father's bones. In the spring of 1877, under army orders, Chief Joseph led the band out, and despite years of pleading he was never allowed to come back. His father's grave at the forks of the Wallowa and Lostine was robbed twice; his skull was taken and shown in a dentist's office in Baker City. In 1926 what remained was reburied at the foot of Wallowa Lake, where the grave looks up the water into the Eagle Cap. From the town of Joseph a road runs out to the Imnaha and the overlooks on Oregon's rim of Hells Canyon.

What to See in Northeast Oregon

5 places across the region, grouped by what they are.

Historic Sites

Covered wagons set out on Flagstaff Hill at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, dry sagebrush hills beyond

National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center

Baker City

A hilltop museum that Baker City built to revive its economy, above a mile of wagon ruts and the first view the emigrants had of the valley ahead.

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Towns & Gateways

Joseph and the Bronze Foundries

Joseph

A ranch town under the Wallowas that became a bronze-casting center after local sculptors talked a resident into opening a foundry in 1982, with seven monumental bronzes now on Main Street.

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The entrance of the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute, metal roofs over timber and stone, its carved sign in the foreground

Tamástslikt Cultural Institute

Pendleton

The only tribally owned museum on the Oregon Trail, where the Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla tell the wagon migration from the side of the people it rolled through.

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The Wallowa River running fast between forested slopes in the Wallowa country

Wallowa and the Tamkaliks Celebration

Wallowa

The town in the valley the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce was driven from in 1877, where since 1991 their descendants have come home each summer for a celebration named for where you can see the mountains.

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Industry & Mining

The brick Pendleton Woolen Mills building in Pendleton, blue awnings over the street front

Pendleton Woolen Mills

Pendleton

A mill that has woven blankets for the tribes of the Plateau since 1909, whose oldest customers folded its blankets into their own ceremonies.

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Scenic Drives through Northeast Oregon

Scenic Byway

I-84: The Farewell Bend Crossing

From Boise west across the Treasure Valley and the Snake at Ontario, past Farewell Bend and up the Burnt River to the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center outside Baker City.

136 mi · 2.5 hrs

Stories from Northeast Oregon

History

The Papers in the Safe

In 1887 a gang from Wallowa County murdered as many as thirty-four Chinese miners in Hells Canyon. No one was convicted, and for more than a century the county all but forgot. In 1995 a county clerk opened an old safe.

5 min read

Northeast Oregon rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.

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