Eastern Oregon is another world from the Willamette Valley. Geologically it’s the northern end of the Great Basin, which is mostly in the Northern half of Nevada. The climate is dry and sunny, and much of it is high desert punctuated by giant dry lake bed valleys and some beautiful mountain ranges. The towns are small, and getting smaller, as natural resource extraction either has petered out or has become highly mechanized.
I’m always happy to be out there, where the air smells like juniper and sage, and the population (and traffic) density is sparse. Curtis Perry uploaded some shots from what Spears to be a recent sojourn to that area, with cars shot in Burns, Vale, and Shaniko. Oh, and the cars don’t rust out here, except at glacial rates. And then it’s surface rust. Like on this ’49 Studebaker Champion.
Saw Shot #2 on the flickr cohort. Old car calendar worthy!
Reminds me of what I’d see as a kid* if I snuck around the back of an old gas station to look around.
*And sometimes even today, right CCer’s!?
Below: I took this at K-Mart Auto Service, 1983.
I’m going to call the Studebaker up top a 48 Champion – the 49 had one more crossbar on the grille. But most people less obsessed with these would never notice that.
That certainly looks to be truck territory. I am envious of the way bodies are preserved there. That Dodge crew cab for the fire department has to be the nicest one in existence anywhere.
And behind that 59-62 GMC pickup, do I spy a 61 Oldsmobile? It looks like a C body 98 from what I can see of that roof.
There’s a white ’59 Rambler behind the Eldorado. And a Subaru Brat in front of the travel trailer.
I love shots like these.
Nash Ambassador, produced 1941 to 1948, in Goldfield, Nevada, a not unusual great basin find.
Peculiar, double click and the Nash Pic will be “righted”
The faded blue GMC stepside, God does that bring back memories!
That seemed to be a popular colour around here and after a few years they all seemed to have that chalky look to them
Love driving around eastern Oregon, save for the ridiculous speed limits. Nevada at least has more liberal speed allowances.
We ventured, barely, into eastern Oregon last month for the first time, picking up an airplane project in Bend/Redmond. The area was much more populated than I imagined. Not many CC’s seen there.
I was told it is relatively dry country, yet we got drenched, just like to the west. It was comfortably warm and the scenery beautiful with all the visible volcanic formations. This must still be a little northwest of the Great Basin.
The Bend – Redmond area are generally referred to as Central Oregon, unless one is dividing it into only two. And that area has had explosive growth in the last few decades. And yes, it does rain, especially closer to the Cascades as in Bend-Redmond, and in that time of year.
Yes, the Great Basin area start a bit east of there, and then to the south. Straight east of Redmond a 100 miles or so is Burns, which is pretty much the northern end of the Great Basin. The Lake Harney area, which was once a large inland sea, is to the south of Burns.
And the population really thins out once east of Bend-Redmond.