B Street; La Grande

This is the Oregon Trail. Paved over, now, of course. After the tricky climb down Ladd Hill, the emigrants camped in the Grande Ronde valley before tackling the next hill. In 1845 Joel Palmer wrote:
"...From Grand Round the road ascends the blue mountains, and for two miles is quite steep and precipitous; and to such an extent as to require six yoke of oxen, or more, to be attached to a wagon....the road is very stony...rolling country for some four miles...The road is very stony; at the end of four miles it takes down the mountain to Grand round river....Here is another bottom covered with grass and bushes, where we pitched our encampment. It is a remarkable circumstance that...voices can be heard distictly at a quarter mile distance; the discharge of a gun resembles that of a cannon; the reverberations continuing for some length of time.

OCTA AT WORK

 High atop Table Mountain just above La Grande, Jim Renner, executive director of the Oregon Trail Coordinating Council (OTCC), drives a stake for a trail marking sign. this work was done in June of 1997. More pictures of this trek on our trailmarking page.

"Oct 7 ascended a mountain a mile and a half long covered with pine and grass when we came to the top we found a pretty open place level and a good soil covered with grass  rolled 5 miles over level land  decended the mountain which was steep and difficult  the men having to stiddy the waggons down while we women carried and led our children  camped on a branch of  grand round river  here the men made tar out of the pine   here we are surrounded with mountains covered with tall pines (Elizabeth Dixon Smith, 1847)

La Grande, OR
OAG = DeLorme's Oregon Atlas & Gazetteer
MOT = Franzwa's Maps of the Oregon Trail
OTR = Franzwa's Oregon Trail Revisited

The modern traveler should stop at Birnie Park in La Grande, right next to B Street. He should also follow B Street to Walnut, at the base of the hill. Here he will find a stone marker paced in 1906 by Ezra Meeker, early champion of trail preservaion.

Also plan to stop at Hilgard State Park, which was the campground mentioned above. There are more interpretive panels there.