In this sector, you will see evidence of the 2024 Larch Creek Fire. Look for the low-intensity burn areas, which you can identify by: most large trees remaining standing with green, intact crowns, and only a few showing light browning at the top. This pattern—trees alive, upright, and with largely unscorched canopies—is the clearest sign of a cool, healthy fire.

Low-intensity fires play an essential role in forest health. They reduce built-up fuels, preventing future high-severity wildfires, and they open the canopy, allowing more sunlight to reach the forest floor. This renewed light and space stimulates the growth of native grasses, flowers, and shrubs, restoring the natural, open structure of ponderosa forests.

These fires also create a burst of opportunity for wildlife. New growth provides nutrient-rich forage for deer and elk, the thinned understory offers easier movement corridors, and lightly burned trees create snags for cavity-nesting birds such as woodpeckers, bluebirds, and owls. Increased insect activity and improved soil nutrients further support a thriving post-fire ecosystem.

At left, we show a low-intensity burn, and below that, a high-intensity burn. Click on images for expanded views.

Pioneer cemeteries like this one serve as a record/marker of Oregon’s early settlement. Anchored to frontier communities and aligned with wagon roads and trade routes, they trace the spread of homesteads across Wasco County. Weathered markers record 19th-century families who built farms and ranches here, revealing patterns of migration, land ownership, and kinship. Nearby sites like the Tygh Valley IOOF Cemetery mirror this landscape of small, community-based burial grounds that quietly map Oregon’s settlement history.

Here you will see the Oregon white oak. At one time, oak savannas covered these hillsides. Today, less than 10% of its historic range remains because of several overlapping human and ecological changes:

Fire suppression: Historically, periodic wildfires kept the savanna open by clearing conifer seedlings and dense shrubs. When settlers began suppressing fires in the late 1800s, Douglas-fir and other trees moved in, shading out the oaks.

Agricultural conversion: Many oak savannas occupied gentle slopes and fertile soils—the same areas ideal for wheat, orchards, and pasture. Clearing for farms drastically reduced oak habitat across Wasco County and the Columbia Plateau.

Competition from invasive species: Grasses like cheatgrass and medusahead replaced native understory plants, altering soil chemistry and fire behavior, further hindering oak regeneration.

Established in 1953, this 30,760-acre wildlife area was created to protect winter range for black-tailed deer and Rocky Mountain elk. It’s a mix of oak, pine, and fir forests, along with meadows and small creeks. The Wildlife Area helps minimize damage deer and elk might otherwise cause to nearby private agricultural lands — a practical benefit that balances wildlife conservation with human land use. The varied habitat supports one of northern Oregon’s largest wild turkey populations.

Just past the creek crossing, a lone apple tree stands beside the road, a sign that this area may have once held a small homestead. Old orchards often survive long after buildings disappear. The open field nearby also suggests past clearing. Easy access to water and the presence of an old road (this one) further support the idea that a family once lived and worked here.

Up the road by another mile or so, you will see the remaining remnants of a chimney structure. Possibly another early homestead. (Mile 8.7 as ridden)

The Friend School is a small, historic one-room schoolhouse and one of the last remaining buildings from the old railroad and farming community of Friend. The town once served as the end of the Great Southern Railroad line, which connected The Dalles and Dufur to this remote farming district. When the railroad shut down in the 1930s, Friend declined to near-ghost-town status, and the schoolhouse remains one of the few tangible reminders of that era.

Folklore has it that long before these peaks were stone and snow, they were people.

Two brothers, proud and strong.
Wy’east, the fiery one—quick to laugh, but quicker to rise in anger.
Pahto, quieter, heavier in thought, but no less fierce.
And between them lived a maiden, Loowit, graceful as moonlight on still water.

Click through to read the rest of the tale (~ 1 to 2 minutes).

Badger Creek Wilderness spans 29,057 acres. Unlike wilderness areas that are strictly alpine or strictly dry-forest, Badger Creek covers a full east–west environmental gradient, ranging from subalpine ridges to dry pine-oak grasslands. This breadth of ecosystems within one protected area is uncommon, supporting plant and animal species adapted to very different conditions and preserving a corridor of varied habitats.

Additionally, Badger Creek safeguards old-growth and mature forests within a transitional landscape that was historically more susceptible to logging because of its accessibility and lower elevation. This context makes the wilderness especially significant from a conservation standpoint.

Around 1850, Tygh Valley became part of an alternate route to the main Oregon Trail corridor along the Columbia River. Instead of risking the dangerous river passage from The Dalles, some emigrant wagon trains turned south toward Tygh Valley, crossing Tygh Ridge and descending into the broad valley floor—near where the Wasco County Fairgrounds stand today. This overland route, known as the Tygh Valley Cutoff, offered a safer but rugged path that connected with the Barlow Road, the final stretch across the Cascades into the Willamette Valley. For many settlers, Tygh Valley marked the turning point between the perilous Columbia route and the promise of Oregon’s western farmlands.

Look for stair-stepped cliffs edging the hillsides—these are ancient basalt layers, frozen remains of one of Earth’s greatest lava floods. Between 17 and 14 million years ago, immense fissures in eastern Oregon erupted again and again, releasing molten rock that flowed hundreds of miles and stacked into sheets thousands of feet thick. As each layer cooled, it cracked into hexagonal columns, creating the striking formations you see today.

Erosion by the White River (and its tributaries like Tygh and Badger Creek) carved deep canyons through the hardened flows, revealing cross-sections of this immense geologic history.

These cliffs belong to the Columbia River Basalt Group—one of the largest continental lava events on the planet, rivaling those found in India’s Deccan Traps and Siberia’s flood-basalt fields.