Oregon State Archives: A 1940 Journey Across Oregon

West of Boardman US 30 follows the river, a green band separating bleak and barren shores.

...

CASTLE ROCK, 25.6 m. [West of Hwy. 730 Junction] (241 alt., 10 pop.), once a busy community, now is a station on the railroad edging an empty plain. The magazine West Shore for October, 1883, records: "Castle Rock. . . . now contains an express office, post office, saloons, dwellings, schools, etc . . . The growth of western towns is wonderful."

These fragments offer a real sense of what that "green band" along the "bleak and barren shores" would have been like back in the day...

Steve Hart, July 4, 2020

This is a place I call the Castle Rock fragment. At one time, there was a town on the highway and the railroad called Castle Rock. If I've located the town correctly, it was just east of this fragment in an area currently flooded by the dam.

This might be the most isolated part of the CRH. It's accessed via a 3.5 mile drive on a 5 mph rocky road. After that, there's a half mile easy hike to the west end of the fragment. The fragment is about a mile long, although it's broken into several segments.

This is one of the most pleasant places I've been on the CRH. Lots of scenery, lots of wildlife, easy walking, even some cool garbage.

To get there take the Tower Road exit off I-84 and follow that rocky road north of the railroad property to the west. The road is passable for any car when it's dry. I drove a Ford Focus there. I parked above that U shaped bay. The last bit of the road down to the water looks to be in worse shape, but it doesn't matter; you'll want to park on top anyway and hike a cow path eastward. You'll see the fragment on the map to the right, running straight as an arrow. BTW the blue spot is some kind of Google anomaly. It's not really there.

July 14, 2020

Normally I'd try to match all the photos up, west to east, in their proper locations but my trip out there was six years ago and, as you'll see at the bottom of my photos, it was late in the day and I was lazy about taking good GPS measurements...

When I get my raw photos back, I may be able to arrange mine better, but until then I am just going to post them, unedited, in the order shot from west to east, straight as they came off the camera...

Then I'll post up Steve's photos from 2020.

This page will be a work in progress for a bit, but as Steve wrote above, it is a pretty remarkable place!

May 17, 2014

Photos by A. F. Litt

July 14, 2020

So I am not sure what to make of the GPS data below. We might not have made it to the end of all three fragments that day! I'll need to do some deeper digging, and probably revisit this location to get it all sorted out...

July 2020

Photos by Steve Hart

Kirk J. Poole, July 4, 2020

Striping is from about 1950.

CLICK HERE to continue exploring the highway