John Day Fossil Beds Historic Resources Study

Chapter Two:
EARLY EXPLORATIONS AND EXPEDITIONS (continued)

Further Government Exploration

In 1841 a contingent of the U. S. Exploring Expedition ascended the Columbia River as far as Fort Walla Walla (formerly Fort Nez Perces) and the Whitman Mission to make a reconnaissance and map the western portion of the Plateau along the margins of the river. The detachment, led by Joseph Drayton, traveled with a Hudson's Bay Company brigade led by Peter Skene Ogden. Nine boats and sixty men in the employ of the company set out in June to ascend the river. The party reached the mouth of the John Day in early July. Charles Wilkes, commander and author of the five volume overview of expedition labors, noted:

At John Day's river great quantities of salmon are taken, and there are, in consequence, many temporary lodges here. Notwithstanding this is a rocky region, there are vast quantities of fine sand deposited every where, which is brought down the river. On this the encampments are necessarily made; and the sand is exceedingly dry and hot, which renders the camping disagreeable. There are few places more uncomfortable; for a basaltic wall rises nine hundred feet or a thousand feet within two hundred yards of camp, which reflects the sun's rays down upon the beach of white sand, rendering the atmosphere almost insupportable (Wilkes 1845[4]: 381-389).

The explorers went on a rattlesnake hunt, killing several, and then moved on into the more arid stretches of the Columbia between the John Day and Walla Walla rivers (Wilkes 1845[4]: 381-389).

In the fall of 1843, John C. Fremont and his exploring party, following the large contingent of overland emigrants, traveled the Oregon Trail and mapped its route to Fort Walla Walla. Fremont's travels took him across the Columbia Plateau to The Dalles. He left most of his men encamped there while he made a hurried trip through the Gorge to Fort Vancouver. Upon his return, his party turned south along the eastern flank of the Cascade Range and entered the Great Basin. Like other explorers, his only contact with the John Day watershed was to cross the river near its mouth. The significance of Fremont's exploration lay in the superb maps of the Oregon Trail prepared by Charles Preuss, the flowing and romantic revision of his diaries edited by his wife, Jessie (Benton) Fremont and published by the Government Printing Office in 1845, and his recognition that a vast section of the inter-montane American West had no connection to the sea. He perceived the existence of the Great Basin and articulated the concept in his writings (Fremont 1970).

On the eve of Euro-American penetration of the John Day country, the U.S. Army mounted two military explorations into southeastern Oregon. The first was a reconnaissance of the region under the command of Capt. D. H. Wallen. General William S. Harney, then commander of the Department of Oregon, recognized the need for military routes for moving troops, supplies, and weapons in case of conflict with the Indians and the Mormons in Utah. In April, 1859, Harney ordered Capt. Wallen to examine the drainage of the John Day River to ascertain the feasibility of the construction of a military wagon road between Fort Dalles and the Great Salt Lake. In June, Wallen led 185 enlisted men, nine officers, a physician, and civilian guides and packers eastward. The expedition included 154 horses, 344 mules, 121 oxen, thirty wagons, an ambulance, and bridge pontoons for fording streams. Advance work by Louis Scholl, the guide, confirmed the virtual impossibility of taking wagons via the upper John Day country. Thus in June Wallen's expedition ascended the west bank of the Deschutes before following the Crooked River eastward (Menefee and Tiller 1978: 32-33). Except for the loss of horses to Indians, Wallen's expedition was without incident (Nedry 1952: 237-238).

In the spring of 1860, Harney ordered Major Enoch Steen to continue Wallen's explorations for transportation routes. Harney on January 17 wrote:

It will be perceived . . . that there exists a succession of large and fertile valleys from the Columbia river to the Great Salt Lake, susceptible of maintaining large populations, and which will soon become occupied whenever the facilities offered by good roads are presented . . . To enable the emigrants moving into Oregon to do so more expeditiously, I shall cause a route to be opened from the lake, named as Harney lake upon the map, to the juncture of the road from Eugene city, up the middle fork [of the Willamette] to where it crosses Fremont's road of 1843, south of Diamond Peak (House of Representatives 1859: 208-209).

Capt. A. J. Smith commanded escort troops. This party also avoided the John Day watershed and traveled, instead, up the east side of the Deschutes to the Crooked River and then by way of it to the Harney Basin. The contingent encountered hostilities with the Northern Paiute on June 23, but pressed on as far as Steen's Mountain before turning back to its post (Shaver et al. 1905: 635-636, Menefee and Tiller 1978: 40-41).