Roads for Adventure - Oregon Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

This sign is located on the back side of the Crooked River Back Country Byway interpretive sign near Prineville.

Marker Name: Roads for Adventure
Marker Text: People and the Land...
Imagine yourself travelling through this area as Native American people and early Euroamerican settlers did in time past. Native American groups from the Columbia Plateau to the north and the Great Basin to the south used this area for hunting game and gathering plant foods and materials for thousands of years.
Peter Skene Ogden, who trapped beaver for the Hudson Bay Company in the mid-1820s, was the first Euroamerican to leave written accounts of his journey to the Crooked River region. It is said that Kit Carson, the famous scout, travelled through this country in 1843 seeking help for his sick friend, Lt. John C. Fremont, who was lying ill in his camp on the Deschutes River. In the fall of 1845, two separate groups from Stephen Meek’s Party passed through this area; one group on their way west and the second group headed for The Dalles to get help for the sick in their party. Between 1859 and 1864, soldiers on military expeditions looking for a quicker or easier route west explored the general vicinity of the Crooked River and its tributaries.
From the 1860s on, settlement increased in the Central Oregon region and along the Crooked River. The eastward migration over the Cascade mountains and into Central Oregon was spurred by a number of events including a shortage of available farmland in the Willamette Valley and the passage of federal land laws which encouraged settlement of unclaimed lands on the western frontier. As a result of the discovery of gold in the John Day country in 1862, stockmen were needed to supply beef and mutton to miners pouring into this area. Transportation routes which connected the vast desert country to the more population communities of western Oregon also increased settlement east of the Cascades. Today, ranching and agricultural production are still major industries in the region.
Tourism is also a leading industry in the area. Thousands of recreationists visit the Lower Crooked River corridor and Prineville Reservoir every year to fish, camp, hunt, swim, hike and sightsee. During the winter, bald eagles, waterfowl and mule deer can be seen feeding in and migrating through the area.

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