End of June and it is HOT HOT HOT. Hard to believe that here in Western Oregon we are staying indoors because of heat and not rain. Grateful we have air-conditioning. Because of our usual moderate climate, many people do not. Happy too that we traveled to the other part of our State earlier this month when the weather was still more moderate. I would still be blogging about that trip anyway because we saw and learned so much, but it is especially good not to have to dig into the photo archives, because we're sure not outside getting new pictures this week.
Today is about the Fort Rock basin, the first area we explored along Oregon's National Outback Scenic Highway. We stayed (and parked our travel trailer) in an RV Park in LaPine for the first three days of our trip.
Fort Rock was created during the last ice age when magma exploded beneath a prehistoric Lake. Back then, immense lakes covered much of this region.
Today, the hills and valleys of Oregon's Outback are austere and dry. But during the Pleistocene Epoch (1.8 million to 10,000 years ago), the interior northwest received more precipitation than it does now. As the climate dried, the lakes evaporated. Lake beds have evolved into broad, flat deserts and sand dunes. (A million years ago, this picture would have been a Lake -- or maybe underwater. )
The Fort Rock Basin is one of most significant Pleistocene fossil sites in North America.
Paleontologists have found bones from small animals and fish from that era. Among their finds have been giant beavers (over 7 feet in length), North American camels, giant sloths, and wooly mammoths. Those species are long gone, but some species. such as chipmunks and jays. survived the transition from wet to dry climate.
(click to enlarge this portion of informational sign)
Archeologists have found evidence of thousands of years of Native American settlement. For at least 13,000 years Paiute, Klamath, and Modoc people and their ancestors lived and camped along the area's lakeshores and rivers. Many of their traditional gathering places are visible along the Byway. On a later day, we found petroglyphs while exploring a backroad (future post).
Much, much later -- in the 19th Century -- an expedition led by explorer John C. Fremont brought changes to the Great Basin.
In the Fort Rock area, as in the rest of the Basin, the expedition marked the beginning of transformation from desert, grassland and forest to ranch land, farms, sawmills and towns.
We visited the Fort Rock Homestead Village, where a schoolhouse, church, several homes, and various artifacts such as the water well drilling rig (above) have been gathered in one place to preserve the history and legacy of these more recent pioneers in this area.
The little homes look quite lonely out there in the desert as they are now, but when people actually lived here, their homes would have been miles and miles apart rather than within walking distance of each other. I'm glad the town of Fort Rock has preserved these remaining structures -- had they been left in situ, they would have disintegrated with very few people ever getting this glimpse of what their lives were like back then.
This was kind of a long post -- but after all it was covering over a million years of history. I hope that writing about our visit will help me to remember some of it. Information about the Fort Rock monument was taken from National and State Park signs in the area -- any errors are my mis-interpretation. I'm linking this week to the following sharing opportunities: Thank you to the hosts.
MOSAIC MONDAY; NATURE NOTES; THROUGH MY LENS; TRAVEL PHOTO SOUVENIRS; OUR WORLD ON TUESDAY; TUESDAY TREASURES; MY CORNER OF THE WORLD; SIGNS SIGNS; THANKFUL THURSDAY; SKYWATCH FRIDAY; and FRIDAY BLISS.