Central Oregon - History

History

Before European settlers arrived in the 19th century, Central Oregon was inhabited by the southernmost Sahaptin tribes and the northernmost tribes of the Northern Paiute. However, with the arrival of settlers along the Oregon Trail in the mid-19th century, both tribes soon found themselves at odds with the settlers and the U.S. Army.

Peter Skene Ogden led a party of Hudson's Bay Company trapping through Central Oregon in 1826, becoming the first Euro-Americans explorers to visit the area. In 1843, Captain John C. Fremont and his Army survey team explored and mapped the western part of Central Oregon. Fremont was charged with mapping the Oregon Territory east of the Cascade Mountains from The Dalles on Columbia River to Sutter's Fort in Sacramento, California. The Fremont party, including Kit Carson and Thomas Fitzpatrick, camped near Bend on 4 December 1843.

In 1855, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis dispatched an Army Corps of Topographical Engineers' survey party to look for a railroad route from the Sacramento Valley in California to the Columbia River in the Oregon Territory. This required the party to survey the Deschutes River area in central Oregon. The survey party was led by two Lieutenants, Robert Stockton Williamson and Henry Larcom Abbot. Newberry Crater is named after John Strong Newberry, the party's chief scientist.

In 1865, a Company of the 1st Oregon Volunteer Infantry Regiment led by Captain Charles Lafollett established Camp Polk. The fort was set up to protect early settlers from Indian raids. It was built 2.68 miles (4.31 km) northeast of modern day Sisters. However, the post was soon abandoned.

Not long after, homesteaders began to settle the region, making use of the wide open lands for ranches. In 1877, Prineville became the first city in the region, followed in 1888 by the founding of Sisters.

In the early 20th century, several major highways were constructed in the region, connecting it to the rest of the state. U.S. Route 97 would connect the region to the Columbia River and Portland, and Routes 20, 22, and 126 to the Willamette Valley.

In the first half of the 20th century, the lumber industry dominated Central Oregon's economy. By 1915, two competing companies had built large sawmills south of Bend. The combined output of the Shevlin-Hixon and Brooks-Scanlon mills made Bend one of the largest lumber producing towns in the world. In 1924, the Shevlin-Hixon mill alone processed 200,000,000 board feet (500,000 m3) of lumber. There were at least eight lumber mills in the Prineville areas as well. In the early 1930s, Sam Johnson opened a lumber mill in Sisters, the first of six Central Oregon mills the Johnson family owned over the years. During World War II, the demand for timber increased dramatically and Central Oregon mill towns went through a period significant growth. After World War II, Johnson opened a large mill in Redmond.

The Shevlin-Hixon mill closed in the early 1950s. Johnson’s Redmond mill was destroyed by fire in 1963, and the last mill in Sisters closed that same year. In 1967, Johnson sold his last mill at Warm Springs to the Warm Springs tribal council and provided additional plywood and veneer-making equipment to help the tribe establish Warm Springs Forest Products Industries. The Brooks-Scanlon Lumber Company sold their remaining timber land in the 1980s.