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