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Published: April 6th 2012
Wallowa Mountains
The Wallowa Mountains on the east side of Baker ValleyInterstate highways do not have a reputation for being especially pretty roads.
They are meant to be efficient ways of getting from point A to point B.
If they are nice to look at, it’s a good bonus.
Today, I drove what is likely the prettiest Interstate in the country.
Interstate 84 in Oregon follows the route of the original
Oregon Trail through a landscape of hills and mountains.
Farewell Bend
The road starts by following the Snake River.
It is surrounded by rolling hills covered in scrub.
The drive reaches a wide bend in the river where it turns north through higher cliffs.
This is
Farewell Bend, where the pioneers left the river and prepared for more mountains.
The Snake heads into
Hells Canyon, the deepest in the country.
The road then passes through a series of narrow gorges.
It winds through a series of tight curves along the Burnt River, with low mountains towering on either side.
The drive felt like a less intense version of Pigeon Gorge in North Carolina (see
Winding Roads and Falling Water).
After the gorge, both trail and road enter the Baker Valley.
This farming
Baker Valley and Blue Mountains
Baker Valley at the foot of the southern section of the Blue Mountains. Baker City is off to the left. valley and travel crossroads is sandwiched between the Blue Mountains on one side and the Wallowa Mountains on the other.
At the base of the Blue Mountains sits what passes for a large city in these parts,
Baker City.
The mountains glowed in the sun.
Blue Mountains
At the far end of the valley, the road enters yet another gorge, the Grande Ronde River.
Unlike the last one, this one is forested in pines.
The curves were not as bad.
The road starts to climb.
The goal is Deadman Pass directly over the
Blue Mountain chain.
The pass itself holds a state park directly next to the highway.
The park is called
Emigrant Spring, and it marks the spot pioneer families rested their stock for the long descent coming up.
For what it’s worth, a storm came through while I myself rested at the pass, producing yet another double rainbow.
The first signals of what comes next are the warning signs.
There are many of them.
They talk about a long descent at 8%!g(MISSING)rade.
They also list recommended speeds by vehicle weight,
Emigrant Spring
Yet another double rainbow, from the parking lot for Emigrant Spring with the heaviest listed at 15 MPH (that is not a misprint!)
This does not seem like much compared with the Bighorn Mountains (see
The Highway in the Sky), but for the big rigs that use Interstates it is positively frightening.
A pull off for a “Scenic View” then appears.
The name is an understatement.
The viewing area is located on top of a high cliff, Cabbage Hill.
It reveals an enormous view of eastern Oregon, stretching to the Washington state border.
The air was clear enough that a pyramid shaped mountain was visible on the horizon, Mount Hood.
After the view, the interstate plunges over the cliff and
down it goes.
A long, curving, and steep drive follows until it reaches the base.
I can only imagine doing that drop in a wagon with a team of oxen.
From here, the road crosses the desert of eastern Oregon.
Very little appears near the highway in this stretch.
The only sign of life (and the only gas for eighty miles plus) is a Native American run casino.
The road has a sign that seems rather silly in summer, “blowing
Cabbage Hill sunset
The view from Cabbage Hill near sunset, looking northwest. The faint peak on the far left horizon is Mount Hood. dust ahead”.
When the wind is high, the dust clouds can cut visibility to almost nothing.
Night fell during this stretch.
The road eventually reaches the town of Richland.
Most of what I saw of it was large oil tanks.
Richmond is notable mainly as the spot where the road reaches the Columbia River.
It is also the closest my trip comes to another site of World War II atomic history,
Hanford.
The US Government set up Haniford to create plutonium for an atomic bomb.
Like Oak Ridge (see
Mountain Ingenuity) the area was isolated and had a huge supply of electricity.
The reactors were set along the river so the water could be used to cool them.
Creating plutonium also creates lots of waste, so the site is now the
most polluted area in the country.
Thanks to security concerns,
tours of this area are even harder to attend than Oak Ridge, so I reluctantly passed it by.
Columbia River Gorge
Past Richmond, the road follows the river.
The river is wide and majestic.
The walls on either side slowly rise, to create
Cabbage Hill grade
A picture of the highway descent down Cabbage Hill, showing the brutal grade. The lights in the center of the picture mark the only gas for 80 miles! a
massive gorge.
The road by necessity is crammed directly next to the water.
This is one of the most majestic sights in the west, and the road has rest areas specifically so people can stop and look.
I had a problem in my convertible at this point, since I did not need to stop to look at the river; even under moonlight it was a sight to see.
Doing so on a high speed highway would be a bad thing.
It sat there as a painful temptation throughout this part of the drive.
The road has signs along this stretch that seem strange in clear summer weather: “watch for wind gusts”.
Eastern Oregon is hot and dry.
Western Oregon is cooler and wet.
This sets up a huge air pressure differential, and the Columbia Gorge is the easiest place to equalize it.
Most of the year, the gorge has some of the most
reliable winds in the country.
On the heights above the gorge sat
windmills.
I had seen big wind farms in the Midwest (see
Finding Excitement in a Sleepy Place), but not on this enormous scale.
The gorge had thousands of them, stretching throughout the drive.
The other notable things were the dams.
The Columbia has a huge flow of water.
At this point, every usable drop has been
dammed for power.
With the limited space, the dams ran right up to the highway.
The parking lots for employees exited directly on the roadway.
(LATE UPDATE)
See this amazing drive:
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Joe
non-member comment
Nice, but noticed some mistakes.
I found this while looking for other things about my home town of Pendleton, OR. I noticed some mistakes you might like to know about (or ignore as you wish). The first is that, in spite of spending my childhood playing in the Blue Mountains, I have never heard of "Blue Pass" There is a "Deadman Pass' in the area you describe, which is in the Blue Mountains. Perhaps you are referring to that. Also, your statement that "not much grows out here" could not be further from the truth in spite of appearances. The area is one of the most productive farming areas in the country. Within just a few miles of Pendleton, Wheat; barley; alfalfa and grass hay; peas; strawberries; blackberries; grapes/wineries; apples; pears; peaches; Lavender; asparagus; potatoes and many other agricultural products are produced, processed; packaged and shipped nationally and internationally. Not no mention, timber and ranching of cattle, sheep and pigs are also big in this area. The other mistake I will mention is the name of the town where the nuclear facility is. The name is Richland, not Richmond. Best Wishes.