Meek Cutoff Through South Fork Malheur | Part III

Where the Sage Keeps the Story - Part III: An Old Road Through the South Fork Country

Part II left us following an old road into the South Fork Malheur country, toward McEwen, Visher Creek, and the higher ground beyond.

The road is still there in places, although time has softened it into the landscape. Some stretches are easy to follow. Others fade into sagebrush or disappear beneath later use. It bends with the terrain, taking the easier ground where it can, much as an old wagon road should.

There is no evidence that dates it to 1845, and I have found nothing that identifies it as part of the Meek Cutoff. Its value is more modest than that. It shows that wagons could travel through this country, and that is enough reason to follow it a little farther.

Into the Visher Creek Country

The road carries us into the broader McEwen and Visher Creek country, where later history confirms that wagons were once part of the landscape.

Winter sun crosses snowy sagebrush and water in eastern Oregon, part of the South Fork Malheur country examined for a possible 1845 Meek Cutoff route. — Winter light across the broader South Fork Malheur country, where water, terrain, and the shape of the land help frame the route explored in Part III.

In a 1975 oral history, Walt McEwen remembered old freight wagon ruts about four miles up Visher Creek. He also recalled that the road had been changed slightly over time, leaving the older alignment nearby. Freight teams hauling wool traveled through the Granite Creek ranch country toward the old Crowley Road and on toward Harper and Ontario (Harney County Historical Society, 1975).

Those freight wagons came later than the Meek emigrants, so their tracks cannot be used to place the 1845 wagon train here. They do, however, leave behind a useful piece of the landscape's history. Wagons were able to move through Visher Creek and the surrounding country.

From there, the ground begins to rise.

The South Fork and its smaller branches reach into increasingly broken country, and the easy openness of the lower drainage begins to give way to hills and higher terrain. For a possible Meek route, this is where the landscape begins to resemble the change recorded in the diaries.

Harritt left the South Fork on September 4 and traveled eleven miles before camping in a deep hollow where he found numerous springs. The following day brought a gradual ascent through pine and cedar before a broad valley opened to the west (Harritt, 1845).

Field described the country somewhat differently. On September 4, after traveling near the head of a small branch of the South Fork Malheur, he recorded rough and rocky road, with cedar and tall pines near the last hill before a hollow (Field, 1845).

The two men were not necessarily standing in the same place, and their descriptions should not be forced onto the same modern feature. What they do describe is a change in country as the wagons moved away from the South Fork: rougher ground, increasing elevation, timber, hollows and eventually a way through the higher country.

That is the landscape this possible route now has to cross.

Beyond the Old Road

The old road does not give us an uninterrupted trail west.

As it reaches farther into the upper country, certainty begins to fade with it. I have not found a documented wagon road from 1845 that can simply be followed from Visher Creek over the higher ground and into Harney Valley.

Any reconstruction through here has to account for that missing piece rather than quietly drawing a line across it.

The geography does offer a possible way through.

Farther west, Crane Creek Gap forms a natural passage between the South Fork Malheur drainage and Harney Valley (McArthur and McArthur). From the upper South Fork country, it offers the kind of transition a wagon route would eventually need if it were going to emerge into the basin beyond.

There is no evidence yet tying the Meek wagons directly to Crane Creek Gap. It is simply one possible passage through country that otherwise has to be crossed somehow.

The diaries give us a reason to keep looking in that direction.

Cooley wrote of reaching the “main divide” after about seven miles through rough and broken country with cedar and pine. Three miles farther, his company entered a valley. After another four miles they camped beside a small drain where there was willow and grass. Ahead of them, he wrote, the valley appeared level as far as the eye could see, and their course ran roughly southwest (Cooley, 1845).

Harritt also emerged from the higher, timbered country with a broad valley stretching before him (Harritt, 1845).

Read together, the accounts describe a larger movement that is easier to recognize than any individual creek or spring: away from the South Fork, through rougher and higher country, across a divide, and down toward an open valley.

The McEwen and Visher Creek country offers one possible way into that progression. Crane Creek Gap may offer a way out of it.

For now, that is as far as the evidence allows us to go.

Sunset spreads across open sagebrush country in eastern Oregon, part of the landscape explored while tracing another possible route of the 1845 Meek Cutoff. — Evening settles over the eastern Oregon country explored in Where the Sage Keeps the Story, where the old road leads toward higher ground.

An old wagon road exists in the South Fork country. Later records confirm wagon traffic along Visher Creek. The terrain beyond rises toward a natural passage into Harney Valley, while the surviving diaries describe the emigrants climbing through rough, timbered country before reaching a broad valley of their own.

The pieces are interesting, but they are not yet a route.

Before they can become one, they have to survive the next part of the journey.

Beyond the divide, Harritt began counting miles across the valley toward a large lake. Those miles give us a way to test this route that an old road or a familiar-looking landscape cannot.

Part IV follows them into the valley.

← Previous: Part II: Where the Trail Begins to Wander

Sources:

Cooley, Eli Casey. Diary, 1845.

Field, James. Journal, 1845.

Harritt, Jesse. Overland Diary, 1845.

Harney County Historical Society. Oral History No. 149, 1975.

Hoffman, Charles S., and Bert Webber. The Search for Oregon’s Lost Blue Bucket Mine: The Stephen Meek Wagon Train of 1845: An Oregon Documentary. Webb Research Group, 1992.

McArthur, Lewis A., and Lewis L. McArthur. Oregon Geographic Names.

McNary, Lawrence A. “Route of Meek Cut-Off, 1845.” Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. 35, 1934.

Ragen, Brooks Geer. The Meek Cutoff: Tracing the Oregon Trail’s Lost Wagon Train of 1845.