Cultural Resources Summary When the era of the fur trade and early exploration ended in the 1840s, the John Day watershed remained Indian country. Explorers Lewis and Clark, naturalists Douglas, Nuttall, and Townsend, the reconnaissance detachment sent out by Lt. Charles Wilkes, and John C. Fremont all crossed the mouth of the John Day River but did not ascend its course. Hudson's Bay Company brigades led by Peter Skene Ogden in the late 1820s and John Work in the early 1830s are the only parties of Euro-Americans known to have penetrated the John Day basin and passed through the immediate vicinity of John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. Their travels, trapping, and trading left no historical traces except for their diaries. Those remained hidden in the company archives at Beaver House in London until published in the mid-twentieth century. Military expeditions of the 1840s and 1850s provided new, candid information about central and southeastern Oregon. The maps of Henry D. Wallen and Lt. Thomas Dixon filled in heretofore-unknown territory. Published by the Government Printing Office in the Congressional Serial Set, the reports and Dixon map were thus available to anyone who wanted copies. While the upper John Day watershed remained obscure indicated merely by a dotted line for much of its course the topographical detail of the surrounding country was now more exactly known. No cultural resource sites associated with early Euro-American explorations and expeditions have been identified within the boundaries or the vicinity of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. While the general locations of campsites along the John Day River were noted by Ogden and Work in their journals, none can be precisely located or verified on the land. Ironically, the fleeting presence of the hapless fur trader John Day at the mouth of the stream is commemorated by multiple place names throughout the region. The Corps of Discovery workman for whom Lewis and Clark first named the river, Jean Baptiste Lepage, is remembered at LePage Park, a small local park along Interstate 84 near the mouth of the John Day.
joda/hrs/hrs2c.htm Last Updated: 25-Apr-2002 |