Our hotel proved rather better than we expected from its outward appearance, though our room was somewhat dingy and a private bath was not to be had. The meal service, however, was excellent. We remarked that Bend would afford a fine opening for a new and really modern hotel and only a few days later I read in a Portland paper that such an enterprise had actually been begun by a local company. The Deschutes River, a clear, swift stream, runs through the town and the new inn will have an ideal location on its banks. Bend’s prosperity is, of course, due to lumbering—one great saw mill employing a thousand men. So vast are the yellow pine tracts about the town that it will be long before this resource fails. Farming and stock raising are also being carried on to a considerable extent in the vicinity and these industries are bound to grow in importance in such a fertile and well-watered section.
Another factor contributing to the activity of Bend may be found in the numerous auto-stage lines that radiate from the town. It is the terminus of the railroad from the north and passengers’ mail and freight for the interior towns to the south and west are largely transferred by automobile. Here they talk of jumps of fifty to two hundred miles in a day much as a San Francisco commuter might speak of a trip to Oakland or Berkeley. The auto-stage agency in our hotel was in charge of a dapper, effervescent little fellow whose nationality we might have guessed even if he had not advertised himself as “Frenchy” on the card which he obsequiously offered us. We had no need of “automobile transportation” so we did the next best thing and patronized a boot-blacking stand which this same expatriated Frenchman was running—we were going to say “on the side,” though it may have been his main business, for that matter. While with the touch of an artist he put a mirror finish on our pedal extremities, he told us with a good deal of pride that his son was in the trenches somewhere in France, fighting to expel the invaders.
Bend, though much the largest town in the county, is not the county seat. This is at Prineville, forty miles to the northeast and nearly the same distance from the railroad. The logical thing would appear to be to move the county capital to Bend within the next few years. Taken altogether, Bend seems to be a town with an assured future and one where moderate fortunes are likely to be made.
THE DESCHUTES NEAR NORTH JUNCTION
Copyright by Fred H. Kiser, Portland, Oregon
Leaving Bend for the north early the next morning, we followed the Deschutes River for several miles, crossing it three or four times. It is an extraordinarily beautiful stream, broad, clear, swift, and so shallow that the mossy boulders over which it dashes are clearly visible and a keen eye can often detect brightly tinted trout darting among them. Our road kept near the river for a great part of the day and in places we were fairly overawed by the wild and stupendous scenery of the vast canyon through which it courses. Some one has called it the Grand Canyon of the Northwest, and we who have seen the Arizona Wonderland can not feel that such a characterization is altogether far-fetched. Perhaps the element of complete surprise may have tended to give us a somewhat exaggerated impression, for we never had the slightest hint of what we were to see. We went to the Grand Canyon of Arizona expecting much and were not disappointed; we ran unawares upon the Grand Canyon of the Deschutes and our amazement may have warped our judgment to some extent. Still, I find reference to this very region in a recent book by a well-posted Oregonian who declares it “the most stupendously appealing river scenery in all the Northwest—this same Canyon of the Deschutes,” and remember that this same Northwest is the country where “rolls the Oregon,” commonly known as the Columbia, in all its majesty. At one point, not so very far from Bend, was the scenery especially overwhelming in its grandeur. I wish I might adequately describe it, but I doubt if any printed page could ever convey a true idea of such a spectacle. I can only hope to direct attention of the tourist to this almost unknown wonder of America and to assure him that he will never regret a trip between Bend and The Dalles, which may be made by either motor or rail. In fact, the railroad follows the bottom of the canyon and in many ways affords better opportunities to view the scenery than does the wagon road.
The canyon at the point of which I speak is a vast, rugged chasm many hundreds of feet in width and perhaps a thousand in depth, with precipitous, rocky walls almost as gorgeously colored as those of the Grand Canyon itself. At the bottom dashes the vexed river—a writhing thread of emerald—as though it were in mad haste to escape from such deadly turmoil. Our road ascended to a vantage point where we could look for miles down the valley over a panorama of weird peaks whose crests were surmounted with a multitude of fanciful shapes, pinnacles, domes, and strange, outlandish figures in stone which the imagination might fitly liken to a thousand things. Near at hand the hills seemed harsh and forbidding, but in the distance their drab colors and rugged outlines were softened by a violet haze that transmuted their sternness into ethereal beauty. The center of the plain skirted by these weird hills was rent by the vast chasm of the river canyon, its sides splashed with gorgeous colorings. Against the silvery horizon to the westward ran the serrated summits of the Cascades, dominated by the cold white peaks of the Three Sisters and, farther still, in lone and awful grandeur, the vast white cone of Mount Hood. And this same glorious mountain dominated our vision at intervals during the entire day until we saw it stand in crowning beauty against the wide, crimson band of the sunset.
Our road soon left the river canyon, though we coursed through the Deschutes Valley the greater part of the day. The road varied greatly from fair alluvial dirt surface through great wheatfields to a wretched stony trail that wound around precipices, forded rock-bottomed streams and climbed over rugged hills. For a considerable distance we followed a stream at the bottom of a canyon, fording it several times over a trail so primitive and neglected that at times it was difficult to find it at all, but there was no danger of going astray—no one could climb the precipitous walls that shut us in.
Coming out of the canyon we crossed a hill range into a beautiful little valley dotted with several prosperous-looking ranch houses. In front of one of these, under the shade of the immense Lombardy poplars that surrounded it, we paused for our mid-day lunch. About the house was a beautifully kept lawn which the owner was watering at the time. He told us that there was plenty of water for irrigating in the valley if the rains happened to be too scant and a big yield was always sure from the wonderfully fertile soil. A small field—about thirty acres—near his house had just yielded over two thousand bushels of prime barley and other crops were in like proportion. Fruit trees thrive, as was evidenced by several heavily laden pear trees near the house. The greatest drawback was distance from the railroad and poor wagon roads, making transportation very difficult. This was best overcome by feeding the products of the farm to cattle, which could carry their own carcases to a shipping point.