Basin Ramblings

I came home from Sunriver last week via the Great Basin and the Sierra. I picked that route because of the wide open spaces and peace of the Basin, and the spectacular mountain scenery of the Sierra. I rambled thru Southeastern Oregon and visited Pete French's long barn near Frenchglen for the second time. French was a rancher who built a vast land empire in SE Oregon from 1872 to 1897. This barn was built in the 1880s. He used some dubious methods, like buying up land surrounding a farmer's plot and then denying that farmer access to his own land. One such homesteader, Ed Oliver, shot French to death in 1897 after a scuffle. The jury, made up of homesteaders, acquitted Oliver in short order.

Here's the inside of the long barn. Local juniper logs were used in the construction, and they were only minimally shaped, giving the interior a natural appearance. Both times I've been here I disturbed deer who were hanging out in the barn. French also built a round barn some miles northeast of here, designed for breaking horses during the cold winter months. Didn't visit that as it's well off the highway, but I've been there before and it's quite interesting.

An easterner would probably not recognize this scene as Oregon! In reality, at least a third of the state is arid or semiarid, full of sagebrush. They call this area Oregon's outback, and having been to the original outback in Australia, I can say there are close resemblances. You can really stretch your legs in this country. This shot is taken in Harney county, which has about 7600 people in a 10 thousand square mile area, larger than Maryland. Anytime you're in an area with less than one person per square mile, it's fair to say you're Out Bush!

The mighty Humboldt River in Nevada near Lovelock. The Humboldt is not this wide in most places...this part of the river is actually a reservoir. The river is about 300 miles long, but being in the Great Basin, it doesn't empty into the ocean; it just peters out in the Humboldt Sink, southwest of here.

This is Walker Lake, in western Nevada. The lake is the outlet for the Walker River, but in most years water from the river never reaches the lake; unless the adjacent Sierra snowpack is at least 120 percent of normal, the river's water is entirely siphoned off for irrigation. As a result, the level of Walker Lake has dropped 130 feet in the past century! With a maximum remaining depth of only 80 feet, the lake appears doomed to disappear well before the end of this century unless some conservation program for it is developed, as has been done at nearby Mono Lake. Unfortunately, as far as I know no such program exists for Walker.