Broken Past

by Marnie Patchett

Title

Broken Past

Artist

Marnie Patchett

Medium

Photograph - Photograph

Description

An old car in the most famous Ghost Town in Oregon, Shaniko.

The first European Americans came to the Shaniko area after the discovery of gold in Canyon City, Oregon, in 1862. The route to Canyon City started at the early settlement of The Dalles, 190 miles (310 km) away. Camps were made wherever water could be found. One camp, which became the farming community of Bakeoven, was closely associated with the future town of Shaniko, while another camp, Cross Hollow, was within the present Shaniko city limits. In 1867, following complaints of hostile Indians and fear of robbery of those transporting gold, the State of Oregon received a grant from the United States government to build a military wagon road from The Dalles to Fort Boise, Idaho. Following this road, homesteaders began claiming land in Central Oregon that had been fairly inaccessible.

One of these settlers was August Scherneckau, who came to the area after the Civil War, in 1874. The spelling of the town's name reflects local pronunciation of Scherneckau's name. The town was originally called Cross Hollows, and a post office by that name was established in May 1879 with Scherneckau as postmaster. Cross Hollows post office closed in 1887, and Shaniko post office opened in 1900.

The town's heyday was the first decade of the 20th century, when Shaniko served as a transportation hub spurred by the presence of the Columbia Southern Railway, a subsidiary of Union Pacific Railroad, which built a branch from Biggs Junction to a terminus in Shaniko. That branch was completed in May 1900. At the time, the city was known as the "Wool Capital of the World", and it was the center of 20,000 square miles (52,000 km2) of wool, wheat, cattle and sheep production, with no other such center east of the Cascade Range in Oregon. The region served by the city even stretched into Idaho, south to Klamath Falls, Oregon, and beyond, because of rail connections to the main line.

The residents of Shaniko voted to incorporate Shaniko and elected a mayor, F. T. Hurlbert, and other city officials on January 1, 1902. It was Wasco County's fifth largest city, boasting the largest wool warehouse in the state, from which 4 million pounds (1.8 kt) (2,000 tons) were marketed in 1901. It was surrounded by cattle ranches, which produced livestock for shipment that filled 400 railroad cars that year.

By 1911, the Oregon�Washington Railroad and Navigation Company, another Union Pacific subsidiary, began using an alternate route linking Portland to Bend by way of the Deschutes River canyon. The new line, advertised as the "direct, quick and natural route", diverted traffic from the Columbia Southern, and Shaniko begin to decline. Passenger service to Shaniko ended in the early 1930s, and the entire line was shut down by 1966.By 1982 Shaniko was nearly a ghost town.

Uploaded

June 8th, 2016

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