Biggs Junction

Just west of Biggs the emigrants got their first glimpse of the columbia River There is a marker about that moment on old Rte. 30.
       OCTA has signed about a mile of the original trail on a hillside next to the road.
     It is a real time trip to walk this section of the Oregon Trail, while looking over its first and second replacements, as well as the railroad and the river. From the bottom of this trail, the old highway is the Oregon Trail to the Deschutes River. There several older markers along this road.

Deschutes River

William Barlow,  who helped his father build the Barlow  Road in 1845 and 1846 , wrote in his Reminiscences of  Seventy Years: "Nothing transpired from there on to the Dalles that requires special notice, except for the particular way we had to cross the Deschutes River. We had to drive out into the Columbia River and strike the sandbar made by the Deschutes River and circle around on that to reach the bank of the Columbia below the mouth of the Deschutes."

  OAG = DeLorme's  Oregon Atlas & Gazetteer
MOT = Franzwa's Maps of the Oregon Trail
OTR = Franzwa's Oregon Trail Revisited 1997

The Deschutes name came from the fur trading period. The French Riviere des Chutes or Riviere aux Chutes meant River of the Falls. The reference was not to any falls on that river, but to the Celilo Falls on the Columbia near the mouth of the Deschutes.