The Long Way to Pendleton
📍 Baker City to Pendleton, OR
A whole month! We left home May 24th.
Today’s journey to Pendleton was “the long way.”
We were on the advance team and followed our leaders out of town. And into the forest.
The smell of pine!
After the forest and before our parking spot, we drove through a lot of small towns and past a lot of old buildings.
Kam Wah Chung
We stopped at a state historical site commemorating the second largest Chinese community in Oregon “back in the day.”
When I turned on a short film to learn about the community, I saw this small note:
“Sometimes historians get it wrong. We learn new things about the past every day. It’s hard (and expensive) for exhibits to keep up. If you see this symbol, we’ve learned something that contradicts the existing text or video. Read the temporary sign to learn what we know now.”
I have never seen anything like this statement before and, I guess it covers a lot of things which have been found to be incorrect or not true at all.
Two maintenance workers were the first people to see what was inside this building. They opened the door, didn’t disturb anything but started to inventory the items found. This was all left from around the early 1900’s.
Two Chinese entrepreneurs ran a medical practice and sold items from the mercantile here. Boxes in the “pharmacy” still have some drugs and herbs in them.
There were over 200 Chinese living in this community — most of them men who had come to America to earn money to send back home, enable them to go back home or just live well.
One of the gentlemen, the doctor, was well-regarded, practiced Chinese medicine. The gentleman who ran the mercantiles was known to be “a rogue.” He loved to gamble and go out with women.
Toward Pendleton
Today’s journey led us through a lot of farm/ranch land. We were lucky with the weather yet another day!
Lots of small towns — check this name out.
More good use of rocks. The fencepost has a triangular wooden container with rocks in the center.
Finally arrived at the RV park at Wildhorse Casino RV Park. Keith heading out to go flag down trailers.
The Casino has a shuttle bus which will take you to the front door and you have a choice of meals. It is a door-to-door experience.
After dinner, Keith read out loud to interested parties about the end of his connection to the Oregon Trail.
We have two more stops along the way but this one is probably the most anticipated one — tomorrow we are going to the Whitman Mission in the Walla Walla area to lay flowers on the grave of Narcissa, Marcus and Alice Clarissa Whitman.
Keith has been reading excerpts from Narcissa’s diary along the trail. Tonight he related the story of the massacre at Waiialatpu.
Narcissa and Marcus adopted seven orphaned children and the eldest of them was Catherine Carney Sager. Ten years after she arrived in Oregon, Catherine wrote a book based on her account of the Sager family’s journey. It is considered to be one of the most authentic accounts of the American westward migration.
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”
— Maya Angelou