The town of John Day, the John Day River valley, and the Strawberry Range, looking south and southeast. The tailings piles left by gold dredges have been levelled for building sites since the photograph was taken in 1946.

One of the Pacific Northwest’s most notable outdoor recreationareas, the “John Day Country” in northeastern Oregon, is namedafter a native Virginian who was a member of the Astor expeditionto the mouth of the Columbia River in 1812.

There is little factual information about John Day except that hewas born in Culpeper County, Va. about 1770. It is known also thatin 1810 this tall pioneer “with an elastic step as if he trod onsprings” joined John Jacob Astor’s overland expedition under WilsonPrice Hunt to establish a vast fur-gathering network in thewestern states based on a major trading post at the mouth of theColumbia River.

The expedition arrived in the vicinity of the Grand Tetons, inwhat is now Wyoming, in September 1811, and with the onsetof winter met disaster along the Snake River. When they ranout of food near the present site of Twin Falls, Idaho, Hunt dividedthe expedition into four parties to seek food and a feasible routethrough the canyons. As described in Washington Irving’s Astoria,the party that included John Day became widely separated from theothers; experienced terrible hardships while wintering with Indiansnear Huntington; and was eventually reduced to just John Day andRamsey Crooks. By mid-April of the following year, Day andCrooks reached the junction of the Columbia and Mah-hah Rivers,where a band of Indians took everything they had, including theirclothes. Because of this incident, the Mah-hah River was renamedthe John Day. Returning up the Columbia to seek help from friendlyIndians, they were rescued by a party of trappers in canoes, andfinally reached Astoria on the 11th of May 1812.

Although the first discovery of gold in Oregon reportedly wasmade in 1845 on one of the upper branches of the John Day Riverby a member of an immigrant train, the settlement of the John DayCountry really began in 1862, when gold was discovered in CanyonCreek just above Canyon City. Since then, possibly $30,000,000worth of gold has been mined, mostly from gravels in and alongCanyon Creek and along a 10-mile stretch of the John Day River.Lumbering and ranching are now the principal industries of theregion.

The growth of tourism in Oregon and Grant County and the accompanyingincrease of interest in geology have stimulated thepreparation of this leaflet. The Grant County Planning Commissionand State Department of Geology and Mineral Industries have cooperatedmost cordially in the program to better inform interestedvisitors about the geology of the country they are seeing.

GEOLOGIC HISTORY