260 miles east of Portland lies La Grande, a small  town of 13.000 or so people nestled in the Grand Ronde valley, in the eastern foothills of the Blue Mountains. Median income is $39.000 a year, and 91% of the population is white, 1 % black, 4 % Latinos 1.5% Asian and the rest Hawaiian. It was settled in 1861 by immigrants coming along the Oregon Trail

who (violently) displaced the  Native people of the southern Columbia Plateau from the Umatilla, Nez Perce, Cayuse tribes who used the valley to harvest camas root and other plants and to hunt, fish, and trade.

The city grew in the 187os during the gold rush in Idaho and eastern OR, with miners buying up the agricultural produce delivered by La Grande’s farmers. During 1884 the railroad came to town and with it a large Chinese population who stayed on as successful business men after having worked the mines or the railroad. Practically all of them were driven out by a mob in 1893, which looted and burned their businesses and homes, forcibly removing the men and marching them to a railway depot to send them “back home.”  If you wonder about the current politics of some in the place, look at who attends the “freedom Rallies.” This spring Dana Loesch and Sheriff Clark were the guest speakers at a Freedom Rally in a state where Trump won 28 of 36 counties and Republican Greg Walden hopes to hold his power in District 2. The one who voted 99% of the time in line with Trump’s positions, that Walden.

https://www.hcn.org/articles/politics-as-oregons-midterms-approach-divided-sides-dig-in

 

A small liberal arts university is one of the major employer in La Grande, the only one east of the Cascades, and has brought a lot of focus on culture to the region. Most of the tourist traffic, though, is devoted to outdoor activities, including hunters, campers, mushroomers, birders, cyclists, skiers, snowmobilers, and snowboarders.

Count me in on the outdoor tourism. On Tuesday I visited the 6,000-acre Ladd Marsh Wildlife Area, a popular destination for birdwatchers and hunters, and the largest hardstem bulrush marsh in northeastern Oregon, five miles south of La Grande. I really had meant to capture the beauty of the place, not to harp on politics again, so you are perfectly justified in just looking at the photographs. Fall after an intensely dry summer has left his mark in gold, yellow and ochres,

 

 

 

dust blowing everywhere.

Even the bullrush ponds were largely dry, just a few puddles left, attracting the first migratory birds (which will in the spring, when water is back in the marsh, number in the 1000s.)

 

What’s with the pelicans? They follow me everywhere!

Sand hill cranes

Wild antelopes settled under the irrigation lines or close to them, in hope of water. So did the birds and live stock.

 

 

Only the sunflowers gave up.

Music today is accompanying a compendium of images of those who lived here before they were driven into reservations. I do not know the source of the music, or the source of the photographs, but thought we should remind ourselves of our history.