Eastern Oregon

Museum

This interpretive center is the nation's foremost memorial to the pioneers who crossed the West along the Oregon Trail. Lying atop a hill 7 miles east of Baker City, it contains interactive displays, artifacts and films that stress the day-to-day realities faced by the pioneers. Outside you can stroll along the 4.2-mile interpretive path system and spot the actual Oregon Trail.

National Park

Glacier-ripped valleys, high mountain lakes and marble peaks are some of the rewards that long-distance hikers find on overnight treks into the beautiful Eagle Cap Wilderness, nicknamed 'America's Little Switzerland.'

Canyon

Hells Canyon's most spectacular scenery is perhaps along Snake River, following 25 miles of paved road (Idaho's Rte 454) toward Hells Canyon Dam; here dramatic canyon walls loom almost vertically. The road goes along the Idaho border but is accessed via the southern end of the Wallowa Mountain Loop, near Oxbow. Just past the dam the road ends at the Hells Canyon Visitors Center and boat launch.

Natural Feature

Because no cap rock protects them, the Painted Hills have eroded into low-slung, colorfully banded hills that were originally formed about 30 million years ago. A series of eruptions drifted into beds hundreds of feet deep, layering the brick-red, yellow, black, beige and ocher-hued ash that you now see. It's a fabulous, uncommon sight, best viewed just before sunset. The Painted Hills Unit is 9 miles north of Mitchell, off Hwy 26.

Natural Feature

Featuring the most walks and hikes of the three John Day fossil-bed units, Sheep Rock is also closest to the paleontology center. Above loom majestic, layered mountains tilted and eroding into spectacular blue-green formations that date back 28 million years. Fossils are continually being exposed here. The Sheep Rock Unit is between Dayville and Kimberly on Hwy 19.

Museum

This excellent paleontology center is 2 miles north of Hwy 26 at Sheep Rock Unit. The well-presented displays include a three-toed horse and petrified dung-beetle balls, along with many other fossils, geologic-history exhibits, and vivid murals illustrating plant and animal life during various periods. There's a lab with a large window where you can watch researchers cleaning up discoveries, and an 18-minute film summarizing the area's paleo-history.

Historic Site

Don't miss this site, located in an 1865 building that served primarily as an apothecary for the noted Chinese herbalist and doctor Ing Hay. It was also a community center, temple, general store and opium den for the Chinese population that reworked the area's mine tailings. Visits are by 45-minute guided tour only; tours start on the hour in the nearby interpretive center.

Wildlife Reserve

From the tiny town of Plush, Hart Mountain Rd crosses the Warner Lakes Basin, climbs into the spectacular, near-vertical Hart Mountain fault block (peak elevation over 8000ft) and emerges onto the prairie-like expanses of the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge. Roughly 3700 pronghorn antelope are protected within the refuge's 435 sq miles.

National Park

Named for the wild strawberries that thrive on its mountain slopes, the Strawberry Range is covered with ponderosa and lodgepole pines growing on glacier-chiseled volcanic peaks that are 15 million years old. A popular and rewarding 2.8-mile round-trip hike winds up a steep valley to Strawberry Lake. About 1 mile past the lake is Strawberry Falls. To reach the trailhead, follow the signs 11 miles south from Prairie City.