Image provided by: Crook County Historical Society/Bowman Museum; Prineville, OR
About Crook County journal. (Prineville, Or.) 189?-1921 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 2, 1901)
CROOK COl'XTV JOURNAL'S AXXLWL Xl'MllER. ii. 5 or twelve miles further it emerges from the canyon, jumps a perpendicular fall, opens out in a rich bottom, picks up Beaver Creek and winds its tortuous course along in a general northwesterly direction, about twelve miles from the confluence of Beaver Creek it forms a junction with the north fork. The latter, after emerging from Summit Prairie, plunges, roars and foams through a very rough, rocky gorge, commonly called canyon, for most of its course, to the junction with the south fork, with places for but two farms in the entire distance. From the junction of the two forks, northwesterly, tortuously it winds its way for about eighty miles and empties into the Deschutes. For a little over half the distance there are bottom lands of various widths, no place exceeding one mile, all in cultivation. The other part is canyon, rough, nigged properly be termed an island mountain. It is surrounded by streams, Crooked river on the north, Camp Creek on the east and the south, and Bear Creek on the west. On this mountain there is a body of good timber, pine, about fifteen miles long, averaging three or four miles wide. There is a sawmill there, supplying the local de mand with lumber. Camp Creek bottoms are level and good, several large ranches, with hay in large quantities, and horses, cattle and sheep grazing on the rough and rugged hills for many miles around. Here in the Camp Creek valley are the notorious soap holes that, some years ago, were thought to be rich in silver, held in liquid form. In one of these soap holes there is a pipe out of which flows the only ar tesian water of the county. Westward Hear Creek rises and flows, thence north ward into Crooked river. This, like all PRINEVILLE PUBLIC SCHOOL- and rocky, for many miles rim rocks from two hundred to three hundred feet high, stand guard over the river on one side or the other, and for long stretches on both sides, appearing as if the rock had cracked in cooling and drawn apart, the indenta tions on one side matched by protuberances on the other. To the north of Crooked river from the north fork to Pilot butte, fifteen miles southeast of Prineville, is a rough, rugged, hilly country, splendid grass, the name "Ho'-se Heaven," given to a large portion of it, expresses it well. A rew ranches are located on the creek bottoms and branches. To the south of the river. Cam) Creek, running nearly east for about fifteen miles, turns north around the eastern base of Maury mountain, and empties into Crooked river. Maury, or Mowry. mountain could other mountain streams, has its small farms and vast expanse of hills in all directions. Hampton buttes, some twenty-five miles south of and nearly parallel to Maury mountain, some twenty miles long, termi nating with Glass bu.e on the east, and bounded on the west by the desert, or great sage plains, stands sentinel over the great desert near the south boundary line of Crook and north boundary line of Lake Counties. To the west of Bear Creek, Bear Creek butte, and to the north of them sixteen miles Powell's butte, each of them a large hunch of hills, old beyond computation, they appear at one time to have been very high .mountains, but a series of lava flows that formed the desert have buried them until only their heads protrude. The des ert, a vast area extending from the junc tion of the Deschutes and Crooked rivers southeasterly to the south boundary line of the county, being a part of the greatest laa flow of the world, so claimed by scien tists, averages about twenty miles wide and about seventy miles long, is mostly, in our county, a juniper forest. Running through near the center of this desert, from south east to northwest, there is an old channel, varying in width from a hundred yards to a mile, called "The Riverbed." For most of the way the banks are low and not steep, but near its mouth, ten miles below Prineville, it breaks into a deep gorge and is lost in Crooked river bottom. Parallel to the river bed, a series of basaltic rock reefs, rising from one foot to twenty feet above the common level, with sand, of va rious degrees of fineness, or coarseness, in tervening between the stony reefs. The river bed is not straight, and the reefs are very tortuous, but in their general course parallel to the river bed. The agricultural possibilities of the desert are claimed to be great. The river bed and belt around the base of the butte is the better part of it, but other large tracts will be good, if thoroughly irrigated; but little of it is good without water. The waters of the Deschutes river are available to most of it, and companies are now at work constructing waterducts to reclaim the desert. Now the most wonderful river of the world, in some respects, attracts our at tention. Its sources are near the snow capped peaks, The Sisters, Diamond peak and Mt. Thielson, of the Cascade range. All the branches have but little fall, with level, grassy, meadow-like bottoms, bound ed by dense black pine forests, with at times yellow and sugar pine, for about fifty miles, where at the big meadows, all the streams join their waters and form a "Big River," deep and slowly it flows along, dammed by a comparatively recent lava flow, over which it pours, bubbles, boils and roars for three-quarters of a mile, then it reforms into a very .mannerly, well-behaved river, from two hundred to three hundred feet wide and from two feet to three feet deep, it flows rapidly to the northward for about forty miles to its junction with Crooked river. This part of the river, no matter how much precipitation, never rises eighteen inches above low water mark. On account of this, houses and barns are built near the water's edge, and bridges resting on trestles only a few feet above the water never wash away. It is also a wonderful stream for fish, for qual ity and quantity. To the west of the Des chutes. Tumello Creek, or river, comes tearing down from the Cascade mountains. Its waters are available, and work is pro gressing to utilize them in reclaiming a large area of sage brush, semi-desert, lying west of the Deschutes river. Northward about twenty miles, through scattering yellow pine and juniper timber, we arrive at Squaw Creek, a large creek with low banks and a level country, sparsely timbered for miles around, most of it lo cated. This is the home of red clover, and the best adapted to irrigation of any part of the county. Rye and the hardier vegeta bles grow to perfection here. To the northwest of this country stands Black Butte, large, sharp-topped and sable. From its northern base flows the Matoles river, full-grown from its birth, emptying its