Contact Information
P.O. Box 909, 431 Patterson Bridge Road
John Day, OR 97845
541-575-3000
Malheur means misfortune in French and serves as a reminder of the many dangers faced by the early explorers of eastern Oregon's Blue Mountains. Rugged ridgelines and forbidding rock faces urged them to turn back, but beguiled by the beauty of the land, they pushed forward instead, discovering the wild Malheur River that rips through steep canyon walls. Ancient volcanic activity - - molded and augered by millions of years of erosive rain and wind - - has created a modern-day recreational playground in the 1.5-million-acre Malheur. Hikers can visit ashflow tuffs like Arch Rock, a scenic arch with several small rockshelters eroded into the outcrop. Rock climbers descend on the region to ascend the intricate walls of lava rocks. The Strawberry Mountain range is laced with secluded alpine lakes that lure ice fishermen on Nordic skis in the winter. Hikers can explore vast wilderness areas of and vast forests of ponderosa pine, lodgepole, Douglas fir, aspen, spruce, and larch. As the forest approaches the desert of southeastern Oregon, the landscape's metamorphosis encompasses prairies of bunchgrass, sagebrush steppe, and scattered juniper. The high desert grasslands of sage and juniper surrender to pines and firs as the elevation escalates from around 4,000 feet to 9,038 feet at the top of Strawberry Mountain.
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