John Day Fossil Beds Historic Resources Study

Chapter Eight:
TOURISM AND RECREATION (continued)

Tourism in the Motor Age

The construction of roads for motorized travel was key to bringing leisure-time travelers into central and eastern Oregon. After 1914, the automobile inspired rapid improvements to roads in the rugged John Day country, to an extent unimaginable even ten years prior. The John Day River Highway, in place as a gravel road through Big Basin, Butler Basin, and Picture Gorge by 1918, gave visitors access from Portland via the Columbia River. The Pendleton-John Day Highway, funded in 1917, opened a route in through the Blue Mountains from Pendleton and points north. In the 1920s, completion of the Ochoco Highway from Prineville to Mitchell and on to John Day, opened up the region to east-west travel (Mark 1996: 29-30, 36).

Fig. 65. Caravan of auto-tourists in the John Day country, n.d. (OrHi 83670).

The tourism potential of Grant and Wheeler counties was not lost on its early-day citizens. From the turn of the century, local boosters were aware not only of the attraction of the hot springs resorts for outside visitors, but also of the growing fame of the fossil deposits. Turn-of-the-century descriptive writings do not fail to mention the geological and paleontological wonders of the area:

In 1890 the University of Princeton sent an exploring expedition into this region and many scientists have explored it besides and much is written concerning it. Surely Wheeler County is not only rich in possibilities at the present, but also is distinguished by the great wealth of lore that speaks like a book of the times that have been (Shaver et al., 1905: 658).

To improve both local and through access, Wheeler and Grant county residents participated in the Good Roads Movement. A photograph at the Fossil Museum shows a work party of local men improving an old wagon road for automobile use on a "Good Road Days" project. Adventuresome motorists did in fact make their way into the area as early as the 1910s, as soon as the condition of roads allowed. Another photograph of a caravan of auto-tourists in the John Day country depicts travel through a landscape of range land and cultivated field, on a graded and graveled road.

Fig. 66. Auto camp serving motorists at John Day, ca. 1935 (OrHi 16001)

The motoring public required services at intervals along the way. Those communities situated along early routes — Mitchell, Fossil, Dayville, Prairie City and others — already boasted sizeable hotels and stage stop facilities. By the 1930s, roadside auto camps — municipal and private — offered a popular form of alternative lodging that was especially attractive to traveling families. Typically, local livery stables expanded their services to include auto repairs, and quickly converted exclusively to automotive servicing. Local mercantiles added curbside pumps, such as the one installed at the Fossil General Mercantile in 1914. Gas pumps also appeared at key rural crossroads, first as independents and often in conjunction with small grocery and traveler supply stores. For example, Scotty's Gas Station and Store at the mouth of Picture Gorge was operated by the Cant and Mascall families in the 1940s. Within a few short decades of the first graded roads, gas stations with modern corporate designs such as the Texaco station in Mitchell penetrated the area. For roadside dining, motorists increasingly preferred quick-stop lunch stands or cafes to hotel dining rooms (Stinchfield 1983: 32; Mascall/Kocis-Mascall n.d.: 1; Lentz 1995).