John Day Fossil Beds Administrative History

Chapter One:
HISTORICAL BACKDROP

Settlement and Land Use

Indian treaties aided white settlement in the upper John Day Basin, but distance to markets, semi-arid climate, and a limited resource base stifled population growth. Despite these limitations, a relatively stable rural economy based on livestock grazing prevails around Sheep Rock, Painted Hills, and Clarno, as it does elsewhere in the upper basin at present. Consequently, a number of property owners around John Day Fossil Beds National Monument have been in the area for several generations and a few of them are descendants of the first settlers.

The upper John Day Basin drew miners following the gold strike of 1862 on Canyon Creek. As a result, Canyon City and John Day became main centers in the region. Most of the subsequent mining activity centered on a "gold belt" east of these towns in the Blue Mountains. [9] Miners rarely became long-term residents, but their need for supplies provided some impetus for settlement along the route of The Dalles Military Wagon Road--a lifeline that linked Canyon City and John Day with the Columbia River. [10] Limited access to outside markets made the grazing of livestock in the upper basin a local enterprise until 1880, partly because conflicts with the Northern Paiute hampered homesteading efforts throughout the 1870s. Despite these impediments, however, white settlers reached the vicinity of Sheep Rock, Painted Hills, and Clarno by 1868. [11]

Most of these early settlers had their origins in the Ohio Valley and upland South. The 1880 census indicates that a majority of residents in this part of Oregon had been born in Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois and Ohio. [(2] Overwhelmingly and persistently agricultural by occupation, these people had little trouble adapting to isolated farmsteads made viable by some grazing animals and a kitchen garden. [13] Like their southern relatives and largely Scots-lrish forebears, most affiliated themselves with Baptist, Methodist, or Presbyterian churches. [14]

An explosion in sheep grazing throughout eastern Oregon after 1880 followed the imposition of a tariff on foreign wool. [15] The height of this boom occurred between 1890 and 1910, when a number of Scots migrated to the region to work as sheepherders. They became the most distinct group in a second wave of newcomers to the upper basin, being particularly evident around Dayville. There they found few obstacles to integration with members of an isolated and agrarian society who, by 1900, had largely been born in Oregon. [16]

Sheepherders grazed their flocks on the public domain, often ranging some distance from a home ranch located next to a water supply. Like other places in the arid West, control of springs or other water had the effect of controlling the surrounding land base. [17] At first an abundance of bunchgrass on the open range made the bringing of sheep to the ranches unnecessary. By 1900, however, so much of the native grass had disappeared from the range in the upper John Day Basin that some visitors described unfenced areas as having been denuded by sheep. [18] Bad winters and the depletion of bunchgrasses necessitated the development of hay crops in riverine areas. [19] The extensive Allen Ranch (part of which is now the monument's Painted Hills Unit) had gone, for example, to cultivating alfalfa in the bottomland of Bridge Creek in 1899. [20]

During this period some ranch owners expanded their holdings by buying homesteads from their hired help. [21] Ranch holdings also grew from the failure of homesteaders to farm marginal lands, particularly during the decade following passage of the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909. [22] The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 authorized closure of public domain land from further nonmineral entry, though the number and size of private holdings near the present national monument had stabilized by 1925.

A gradual shift from sheep toward cattle in the upper basin continued until the end of World War II due to market conditions and implementation of leases to graze public land. [23] By 1946 even James Cant and other Scots who came to the Dayville area during the era of wool tariff had switched. [24] Even so, this had little effect on persistently low land values in the vicinity of what is now the monument. This has made it easier for property owners to sell or donate lands for park purposes, especially if the transactions did not constitute large scale interference with grazing. [25]

Homestead in Butler Basin area near Sheep Rock, ca. 1890.
(NPS files)

Next> Fossil finds lead to the first park proposal