B
Saturday, February 13, 2021
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Hiking The John Day Fossil Beds
National Monument
Lisa Britton/For EO
Media Group
Looking
down on
Blue Basin in
the John Day
Fossil Beds
National
Monument
in Grant
County.
B LUE B ASIN B EAUTY
■ A short hike in the John Day Fossil Beds
National Monument in Grant County tells a
colorful tale about Oregon’s ancient origins
I
like to read about geology, but the story of the ground beneath
our feet is much more visceral when it’s smeared all over your
clothes.
It’s one thing to learn about the Oligocene epoch.
It’s quite another to vacuum its remnants from your car’s fl oor-
mats.
Few places in our region are better suited to both types of educa-
tion — the clean lesson of the geology book and the messy experi-
ence of the muddy trail — than the John Day Fossil Beds.
This national monument, which is divided into three units spread
across two counties, Grant
and Wheeler, tells the tale
ON THE TRAIL
of the animals that roamed
and the plants that grew in
JAYSON JACOBY
this part of Oregon dating
back about 50 million years.
The chapters of this story, as it were, are the fossils, both fl oral
and faunal. They are preserved in rocks and ash fl ows that erupted
from a series of volcanoes far to the west, eruptions that predated
the current Cascade Mountains.
Paleontologists who have examined these fossils over the decades
describe a land very different from what we see today.
Millions of years ago, before the Cascades rose and began to
intercept most of the moisture from storms that swept in off the
Pacifi c Ocean, this part of Eastern Oregon had a much wetter,
more temperate climate than today’s arid sagebrush steppe with
its scorching summers and chilly winters.
The wildlife was vastly different in the ancient past, as well.
Where today mule deer and bighorn sheep browse, three-toed
horses and sheep-like oreodonts walked.
These mammals were preyed on not by cougars and coyotes and
bobcats, the primary predators these days, but by bear-dogs, pig-
like entelodonts and cat-like nimravids.
It requires a rather expansive imagination to conjure such
scenes while hiking through the fossil beds, even on a late January
day when the ground is much more moist than usual.
No matter how soft and damp the soil during a midwinter thaw,
the sharp scent of sage and juniper is redolent of desert rather than
of savannah.
And instead of the varied forests of oak, sycamore and maple
that prevailed here so many millennia distant, the vegetation today
is sparse, and the dominant color the dull tan of dormant winter
grass.
On the penultimate day of January we left Baker City and
headed for the Sheep Rock unit of the John Day Fossil Beds. This
unit is not only nearest our home — about 122 highway miles —
but it includes the monument’s longest trail.
That’s the Blue Basin loop, which covers about 3 1/2 miles. Add
the out-and-back trail into the heart of the basin itself — the most
interesting part, geologically speaking, and the most photogenic —
and you’ll end up covering close to 5 miles.
I told my wife, Lisa, and our kids, Olivia and Max, that although I
couldn’t guarantee an absence of mud, I thought it possible that the
trail would be in decent shape.
All three, having followed my crud-coated boots on other days,
looked skeptical. Rightfully so.
Lisa Britton/For EO Media Group
A trail through the heart of Blue Basin, in the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, passes the bright
hues of the volcanic ash beds that give the basin its name.
The most direct route to Blue Basin beside the John Day River, for about 4
is Highway 7 to Austin Junction, High- miles.
way 26 through Prairie City, John Day,
The paved parking area is just east
Mount Vernon and Dayville to Picture of Highway 19.
Gorge, then north on Highway 19,
Although the monument’s Thomas
Condon Paleontology and Visitor Cen-
ter is closed due to the pandemic, trails
and other outdoor areas are open.
See Blue Basin/Page 2B