This area has been a historical crossroads for people for thousands of years. First the meadow supplied plentiful food and water for generations of Native American tribes.

Then, it became a hub when explorers, soldiers, entrepreneurs, and settlers. In the early 1800s, the Hudson’s Bay Company and the fur trade brought trappers in search of beaver. In the early 1840s, John Fremont’s expedition crossed the high desert and camped in the vicinity of Camp Polk. By 1855, railroad survey parties were seeking westward routes. Lieutenants Williamson and Abbot traveled through the area scouting routes. From September 1865–May 1866, Captain Charles LaFollett commanded 42 soldiers who were sent to establish Camp Polk with orders to protect commerce and settlers on the Santiam Wagon Road. [Deschutes Land Trust. Camp Polk Meadow: A Historical Crossroads]

A bit further down the dirt road past the historic Camp Polk buildings is the Cemetery. The earliest grave site here is from July 8, 1880. The first first settlers of the Camp Polk Meadow, the Hindmans (pronounced Hineman) are also buried here. They built their homestead circa 1870. The Hindman’s maintained the Santiam Wagon Road and managed the Hindman Station – a store, a post office, and a place to house travelers. Today, the cemetery is an eclectic mix of early settlers to those recently deceased. [On-site kiosks]

Historically, Whychus Creek was a mixture of narrow canyon stretches and well-vegetated meadows where the creek could spill over its banks. This diversity provided habitats for fish to spawn, rear, and hide. Streamside vegetation provided cover for wildlife and helped maintain cool stream waters. However, with development through the 1990s this diversity and quality habitat was lost. In 2016, the Deschutes Land Trust and its partners began a multi-year effort to restore the Whychus Creek. The Wills Springs Preserve is part of this project and the restoration work continues today. Learn more here.

Did you know that these volcanoes did not form at the same time and are not of the same structures? Wow!

South Sister (left), also known as “Charity”, is the tallest volcano of the trio, standing at 10,363 feet. It is a predominantly rhyolitic stratovolcano overlying an older shield structure. Its modern structure is no more than 50,000 years old, and it last erupted about 2,000 years ago.

Middle Sister, also known as “Hope”, is a basaltic stratovolcano . It began eruptive activity 48,000 years ago, and it was primarily built by eruptions occurring between 25,000 and 18,000 years ago.

North Sister (right), also known as “Faith”, is the oldest and most highly eroded of the three volcanoes, with zigzagging rock pinnacles between glaciers.It is a shield volcano that overlays a more ancient shield volcano named Little Brother.The oldest reliably dated lava flows on North Sister have been dated to approximately 119,000 years ago.Estimates place the volcano’s last eruption at 46,000 years ago.[Wikipedia]

This is a short detour to the north by about 1.5 miles.The Preserve is 930 acres on Whychus Creek. It was first established in 2010 and an additional 480 acres was added in 2014. The Preserve contains four miles of Whychus Creek, high quality grasslands, old growth juniper, cottonwood and aspen stands. The Deschutes Land Trust’s restoration efforts at the Preserve have been focused on restoring the forested areas to a healthy, open ponderosa pine/juniper savanna that provides high quality wildlife habitat. They are currently working with their restoration partners to restore six miles of Whychus Creek from the Whychus Canyon downstream through Rimrock Ranch. Learn more about the creek restoration here.

The Boer or Boerbok goat is a South African breed of meat goat. It was selectively bred in the Eastern Cape from about 1920 for meat qualities and for the ability to survive by grazing on the thorny grasslands and bushes.

In Central Oregon Boer goats are being used for weed abatement and fire prevention. The advantages of using goats are versatility, cost effectiveness, environmentally green, less noisy than mechanized methods, and are highly effective.

About 95% of the junipers you see here today are less than 100 years old. The Juniper spread with the rise of homesteading in the mid-1800s. Settlers suppressed wildfires and let livestock overgraze native grasses.

In the high desert,which sees less than 16 inches of precipitation per year, a single juniper can use 20 to 40 gallons of water per day! Junipers deplete the soil of water and nutrients from making it difficult for native plants like bitterbrush to thrive – one of the main staples for mule deer in the winter. [On-site kiosk]

Homesteading on the Winter Range surged in the early 1900s. The U.S. government doubled the Homestead Act’s land grant twice, giving up to a square mile to any adult citizen who agreed to
improve it. “Experts” promoted dryland farming to grow wheat and other crops in arid landscapes.

Settlers swarmed, drawn by open land and promises of crop yields. Over time, the rainfall proved barely enough to survive, let alone raise cash-crops. Harsh winters and poor roads left people trapped.
By the late 1920s, many homesteaders left.

A 1931 windstorm devastated most of the crops and buildings that remained. Some homesteaders sold their land to neighbors or the government. Others just walked away, creating a patchwork of public and private ownership. By the mid-1930s few families remained. [On-site kiosk]

As you drop into the canyon down to Whychus Creek you pass through a unique area of geology. The oldest rocks exposed in the study area are basalt flows (lava), sedimentary
deposits, and pyroclastic flows (or see this video) of the Deschutes Formation (Volcanic debris
from Cascade Range volcanism that filled the Deschutes Basin between Bend and Trout Creek 12 and 4 million years ago). The Deschutes Formation sedimentary deposits (Ts) underlie Deschutes Formation basalt flows (Tb), and are only exposed where modern drainages have incised through the basalt. [“Geology and Geomorphology of the Lower Deschutes River Canyon, Oregon”. Beebee, O’Connor, Grant]

Whychus Creek is a tributary of the Deschutes River. In the early and mid 2010s parts of this river not only had no fish, it had no water. Irrigation withdrawals, land use changes, and dams had combined to eliminate the thousands of steelhead and Chinook salmon that once started and finished their lives in that creek. In the last fifteen years, however, a gradual shift has occurred in the Whychus Creek area and also in much of the Deschutes Basin: a coalition of landowners, citizens, nonprofits, private companies, and government agencies have come together to restore the creek as a home for migratory fish. [Oregon Explorer]

The Grandview Fire, which began on July 11, 2021, burned more than 6,000 acres. It burned mostly on the Crooked River National Grassland. some privately owned lands under the protection of the Oregon Department of Forestry and some Deschutes Land Trust managed lands.

The result? All of those burned acres, especially those by the road, heighten the possibility of burned trees falling and causing harm.

“…it is important for us and the safety of our community to make sure that we balance leaving those natural snags and those fire impacted trees but also to make sure we’re not putting our communities and our folks at risk,” Rika Ayotte, Executive Director of the Deschutes Land Trust.

According to the Forest Service, humans are at fault for more than 150 fires every year in central Oregon. [Central Oregon Daily]