Day 2: 449 Miles Traversed

Today was one where we traveled through a variety of landscapes. We meandered through villages, towns, and cities... A lumber town which smelled delightfully like newly sharpened pencils; small villages that once had a heyday but were now barely hanging on; and bigger towns which offered all the goods a consumer craves.

That natural scenery was gorgeous, too.

We called it a night in the Oregon town of Vale (pop. 1,894). It has been said, about this little spot, “When you are on Main Street in Vale, Oregon, you are walking on the actual Oregon Trail."

In the early nineteenth century, the area of Vale was known as a stopping place for fur trappers, missionaries, and Oregon Trail emigrants. The Astor Expedition passed through the region in 1811–1812, and Peter Skene Ogden and Hudson’s Bay Company employees trapped beaver there in the late 1820s. Vale became the first regular stop along the Oregon Trail in present-day Oregon, and a trading post was established near the future town in 1853. Several pioneers recorded in their travel journals that the adjacent Malheur River contained hot springs where they enjoyed much-needed baths and rest.

When gold miners arrived in the region beginning in the 1860s, stockmen and businessmen such as Louis B. Rinehart made a living in Vale by supplying beef to miners. Rinehart’s house, constructed in 1872 from locally quarried sandstone, was later used as a hotel, store, post office (1883), and a stagecoach stop (1878).