Butter Creek Ranch

Our story/The Oregon Trail

The Oregon Trail crossed the Blue Mountains at Meacham, and its wagon ruts still cross the ranch.

The Oregon Trail across the Blue MountainsA drawn map of the trail's route west from the Grande Ronde Valley, over the Blue Mountains through Meacham, Emigrant Springs and Deadman Pass, down to the Umatilla River and west past Echo and the Butter Creek crossing. The hill above Meacham is marked as ranch ground.BLUE MOUNTAINSto the Columbia← to The Dallesfrom the east →Grande Ronde ValleyBlue Mountain summitMeachamLee's EncampmentEmigrant SpringsDeadman PassUmatilla RiverEchocrossing of the UmatillaButter Creekthe crossingRuts on the ranchon the hill above MeachamN
Drawn for the story, not for finding your way. The ruts are on private ranch ground and are visited only with a guide.

Over the Blue Mountains

The first wagons crossed the Blue Mountains in 1843. The road left the Grande Ronde Valley up a steep hill and came out of the mountains at the head of the Umatilla River.1,2,3

From the top of the climb the road ran over rolling ground of prairie and yellow pine, crossed the main ridge in the timber, and dropped to a meadow where emigrants stopped for the night. Henry A. G. Lee came west with the 1843 train and was sent out as Indian sub-agent to meet the 1844 emigrants among the Cayuse. The meadow took his name as Lee's Encampment. It is Meacham today.4,5

From Lee's Encampment the road went on through timber and over Emigrant Hill, then four miles of open ground down to the Umatilla, sixteen miles in all. At the river was a Cayuse town, home of the principal chiefs, with fields of wheat, corn, potatoes and peas.4,5

The road then followed the Umatilla west. Near Echo stood the first post office in eastern Oregon, opened at the Umatilla Agency in 1851, and Fort Henrietta, a stockade built in 1855. Just west of Echo the road crossed Butter Creek, where the crossing became a campground and Lucinda Propst, who fell ill in the mountains in August 1852, is buried.5,6

The ruts on the ranch

The trail crosses ranch ground on the hill above Meacham. When government surveyors laid out the township in May 1864 they drew the "Old Emigrant Rd." on their plat, with a toll road beside it. Surveyors noted the Emigrant Road again in 1882.7,8

Jack Evans, who wrote the standard history of the trail over the Blue Mountains, mapped ruts on the hill in 1991. In July 2023 volunteers walked the ground, found the trail association's marker posts, and found clear wagon ruts both where Evans had mapped them and in stretches nobody had marked.8,9

The ruts are on private ground. To keep them as they are, the ranch does not publish where they lie, and visitors see them on a guided walk.

History and the Oregon Trail

Nearby

Meacham Guard Station, the ranch's place for weddings, retreats and reunions, stands in the meadow below the hill.

Meacham Guard Station

The roads that followed

Every road over the Blue Mountains since has run through Meacham.

  1. 1863

    Harvey and Alfred Meacham open a small stage station at Lee's Encampment, and build the larger Meacham Station in 1865.5

  2. 1864

    A toll road runs beside the old emigrant road over the hill, as the surveyors' plat shows.7

  3. 1878

    In the Bannock War, by McArthur's account, a traveller and four teamsters are killed near a gap on Emigrant Hill, which has been called Deadman Pass since.5

  4. 1880s

    The railroad reaches the summit at Meacham and builds an eating house there. The Encampment post office opens in 1882 and is renamed Meacham in 1890.5,10

  5. 1923

    On 3 July President Warren Harding comes to Meacham for the 80th anniversary of the first wagon train. Nearly 10,000 people watch a pageant of tribal delegations, cowboys, old settlers and missionaries, and the President lunches on bear meat in a big tent.3,11

  6. 1948

    The weather station at Meacham has kept a daily record since at least this year, and still does.12

  7. 1950s

    Building Interstate 84 turns up trail artifacts in the gulch south of Emigrant Springs. The freeway now runs past the ruts on the hill.8,10

See the trail in public

Blue Mountain Crossing
A Forest Service park at exit 248 on I-84, with pines scarred by wagons and a path beside the wagon tracks. Open Thursday to Sunday from Memorial Day to Labor Day.13
Emigrant Springs
A state park at the spring the emigrants used, with campsites and log cabins. Ruts can be seen at the Deadman Pass rest area on I-84, seven miles to the northwest.10

Further reading: John W. Evans, Powerful Rockey (1990), and Betty Booth Stewart, Meacham: A Wide Spot on the Oregon Trail (1996).9,14

Sources

  1. 1.John C. Frémont, Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains … and to Oregon and North California (Washington: Blair and Rives, 1845), p. 179
  2. 2.Peter H. Burnett, Recollections and Opinions of an Old Pioneer (New York: D. Appleton, 1880), pp. 125–126
  3. 3.Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 3 July 1923, pp. 1–2
  4. 4.Joel Palmer, Journal of Travels over the Rocky Mountains, 1845–1846, ed. R. G. Thwaites, Early Western Travels vol. 30 (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1906), pp. 109–111
  5. 5.Lewis A. McArthur, Oregon Geographic Names, 3rd ed. (Portland: Binfords & Mort, 1952)
  6. 6.Oregon-California Trails Association, Butter Creek Crossing
  7. 7.General Land Office, survey plat of T1S R35E W.M., surveyed May 1864 by Thompson & Chaplin, approved 24 August 1864
  8. 8.Robin Baker, letter and maps to the ranch on marking the Oregon Trail across its ground near Meacham, 13 July 2023
  9. 9.John W. Evans, Powerful Rockey: The Blue Mountains and the Oregon Trail, 1811–1883 (La Grande: Eastern Oregon State College, 1990)
  10. 10.Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, Emigrant Springs State Heritage Area
  11. 11.Seattle Star, 4 July 1923, p. 7
  12. 12.NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, daily summaries, station USW00024152, Meacham, Oregon
  13. 13.U.S. Forest Service, Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, Oregon Trail Interpretive Park at Blue Mountain Crossing
  14. 14.Betty Booth Stewart, Meacham: A Wide Spot on the Oregon Trail Where the Meadowlark Still Sings (Tigard: Crossroad Books, 1996)

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