The Snake River at Farewell Bend, now the slack water of Brownlee Reservoir, early on a summer morning: the low sun flares over brown grassy hills at the right and lays a bright path across the calm water, a wooden dock floats in the near water at the left, and trees stand along the far shore beneath the hills.
Martyne Reesman, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife / CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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.

Route
Boise, Idaho → Baker City, Oregon
Distance
136 miles
Drive Time
2.5 hours
Best Seasons
Spring · Summer · Fall
Difficulty
Easy

The Route at a Glance

The roadStops

I-84 leaves Boise, where the Basque Block and the sandstone walls of the Old Idaho Penitentiary are worth an hour before setting out, and runs west through Nampa and Caldwell across the irrigated farmland of the Treasure Valley. This was Shoshone, Bannock and Northern Paiute country, and the Oregon Trail came down the Boise River through the same valley on its way to the Snake.

The interstate crosses the Snake into Oregon at Ontario, where the Malheur, Owyhee and Payette come in, and the town keeps Idaho's Mountain time. Railroad and dam work had already brought a Japanese American community here, and the war grew it. On May 22, 1942, the government authorized four hundred people to leave the Portland Assembly Center to work sugar beets in a tent camp outside Nyssa, twelve miles south, the first farm labor camp of the incarceration. Many stayed when it ended; Malheur County counted 137 people of Japanese descent in 1940 and 1,170 in 1950. The Four Rivers Cultural Center in Ontario tells the story, and its Japanese garden is a memorial to those who were incarcerated.

Northwest of Ontario the road follows the Snake to Farewell Bend, at exit 353, where emigrants who had followed the river for some 330 miles camped a last time beside it before turning up the Burnt River. The river here is Brownlee Reservoir now. The climb up the Burnt River canyon was a hard one for the wagons, and the Weatherby rest area at exit 336 has exhibits on it. The drive ends on Flagstaff Hill outside Baker City, at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, where wagon ruts still cross the sagebrush below the building.

The run is about 135 miles and two and a half hours, all of it interstate but the last five miles. Summer afternoons in the Snake River country are hot; winter storms can close the interstate in eastern Oregon.

The Drive, Stop by Stop

3 stops along the route, in driving order from Boise, Idaho to Baker City, Oregon. One of them sits off the road itself — the distance is noted on each.

  1. 1

    Basque Block

    Boise

    The start, downtown Boise.

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  2. 2

    Old Idaho Penitentiary

    Boise
    2.1 miles off the route

    On the east edge of Boise, before heading west.

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  3. 3

    National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center

    Baker City

    The end, on Flagstaff Hill five miles east of Baker City.

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That's the drive. Take your time, pull over often, and let I-84: The Farewell Bend Crossing do what it does best.

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