Baker City: Gateway to Eastside Adventure

The (Oregon) trailhead to eastside adventure

written by James Sinks

When 1850s-era wagon trains on the Oregon Trail creaked across what was known as Virtue Flat, near present-day Baker City, they didn’t see much reason to stop.

Lots of sagebrush and dust. No coffee. Zero stars.

But then prospectors found gold nearby in 1861, and the region developed a bit more cachet.

Incorporated in 1874, Baker City swelled to become Oregon’s third-largest city in 1900, thanks to its prime location on the rails between Seattle and Salt Lake City. With a Chinatown, opera houses, luxury hotels and not-virtuous brothels, the so-called “Queen City of the Inland Empire” was royally flush with reasons to visit.

Among the destinations then and now is the circa-1889 Geiser Grand Hotel. Today, bougie chandeliers and the dining room in a stained-glass-topped atrium offer a striking contrast to the sagging building rescued in the 1990s from becoming a parking lot.

The impressive Geiser Grand Hotel brings history and nineteenth-century glamor to Baker City. (photo: James Sinks)

“When we got here the pigeons owned the joint,” laughs Barbara Sidway, a nationally recognized preservation activist who with her husband owns the four-star destination.

Like the hotel, Eastern Oregon’s Queen City has also remade itself, following the fade of the local mining and timber industries. Situated in a scenic valley between the Elkhorns and Wallowas, the city hasn’t grown much since 1900, with about 10,000 residents. To help float the economy, it now serves as a base camp for year-round near-by adrenaline-generators: alpine adventures at Anthony Lakes, fat-wheel bike trails and Hells Canyon, the deepest gorge in North America.

In town, explore creativity via a surprising art scene, from the Crossroads Carnegie Art Center to a former elementary school that’s now a workshop and performance venue.

Every July, the region fetes its golden heritage during the Miners Jubilee festival. This summer, following security upgrades, the Baker Heritage Museum will begin displaying the boot-shaped, 80-ounce Armstrong Nugget, the largest Oregon-dug gold nugget still in original form.

Museum director Lynn Harshman expects more visitors will come. Like Field of Dreams, only with more luster. “It’s very big,” she said.

Day 1

LOCAL HISTORY • CHOCOLATE • BREWS

It’s hard to say what’s weirder, the 1969 movie Paint Your Wagon, or the tales surrounding it. A Clint Eastwood-starring musical Western in which two miners share a wife, it was filmed in a nearby national forest, in a fake town that was built from scratch and then destroyed afterward. Another of the actors, the late Lee Marvin, reportedly also enjoyed real-life bar fights.

A scale model of “No Name City” is on display at the Heritage Museum, where you’ll also find a black light room for exotic rocks and maybe your disco moves. The rock collectors, two local sisters who amassed 18 tons, spurned a purchase offer from the Smithsonian.

Baker City’s historic district is home to more than 100 nationally registered buildings. Towering overhead, the tallest is the Art Deco-styled, 10-story Baker Hotel, which opened in 1929—just in time for its local investors to lose their money, thanks to the Great Depression.

Now an office building, it offers a palatable contemporary investment: lunch at D&J Taco Shop on the street level, with snappy housemade hot sauces.

Afterward, dodge a downtown menagerie of whimsical metal animals—including giraffes on sidewalks and a crocodile climbing a wall. They come courtesy of a gallery called ArtRoamers, which imports from Africa but temporarily closed in May due to federal tariffs.

The Geiser Grand offers daily tours at 2:30 p.m. While the place is rumored to be haunted, you probably won’t see anything paranormal. Probably. “You can never disprove the existence of ghosts, so it is an endlessly entertaining thing to explore,” Sid-way said.

Stretch your legs on the Leo Adler pathway along the Powder River in town. Adler, a millionaire newspaper seller and philanthropist, was known around Oregon as “Mr. Baker” before he died in 1993. His former house on Main Street opens for summer tours.

Art and calories harmonize at Peterson’s Chocolates, founded by a wife-and-husband team and where truffles are just one showpiece. The shop doubles as a gallery with seventy-five rotating artists. Don’t miss the drinking chocolate, which is intoxicating without any booze.

For intoxicating with booze, it’s a half block to Glacier 45, a small-batch distiller whose vodkas and whiskeys are sold in Oregon and Las Vegas. Or visit the cavernous tap room of legendary Barley Brown’s Beer, and heat your liver two ways with jalapeño-infused Hot Blond ale.

Barley Brown’s in Baker City is friendly, cozy and a nationally acclaimed brewery. (photo: Alyssa Freese Photography/Barley Brown’s Beer)

At dinner, eclectic choices wait at The Cabyn, where gumbo and kimchi are mainstays on the small plate menu. For warmth, the building’s old fireplace mantle has been repurposed into a hot sauce library.

Check the schedule at Churchill School, a hip renovated elementary with zany sculptures in front, an Airbnb, a bike hostel and frequent musical acts in the cafeteria. Unlike normal elementary schools, there’s also a bar.

The Churchill School is now an arts center that caters to a growing arts community. (photo: Travel Baker County)

No music? Settle in for nostalgia and first-run movies at the neon-adorned Eltrym, once owned by a silent movie organist named Myrtle Buckmiller. The cinema name? Myrtle spelled backward.

Day 2

PASTRIES • THE OREGON TRAIL • HELLS CANYON

In a former life, Jenny Mowe was a small-town Oregon kid who became an international basketball star. Today, she scores rave reviews at her mouthwatering Sweet Wife Baking shop, where the pecan-glazed cinnamon buns are marquee worthy. The banh mi-style bacon breakfast sandwich on house-made bread? Absolutely a winner.

Sweet Wife Baking’s highly sought pastries are made from scratch each morning. (photo: Sage & Spur Photo/Sweet Wife Baking)

Mowe loves being surrounded by a downtown community where people turn their passions into livelihoods. “It gives Baker City this cool vibe,” she said.

East of town at the hilltop National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, you’ll find a dozen replica wagons, but you absolutely can’t paint any of them. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management site includes dioramas and artifacts and invites you to walk the still-visible trail ruts across the valley floor below.

Curve downhill on Highway 86 into Richland, where you can prowl Copper Belt Wines, Baker County’s only vineyard and winery. In the town of Halfway, snap selfies at tiny liquor store Halfway Sober and peek into a towering old wigwam burner, once fueled with sawmill waste. Browse local art including barbed wire pieces at Gallery 231.

The highway continues to the Hells Canyon Inn & Cafe, with catfish, flatbreads and a bacon apple gouda sandwich, and probably some motorcycles out front. Then, it’s mere minutes to a jaw-dropping wonder: the bottom of Snake River-carved Hells Canyon. At the deepest spot, it’s 7,993 feet from the canyon rim to the water.

Not too far from Baker City, Hells Canyon is a destination for recreation. (photo: James Sinks)

Get wet in the unincorporated hamlet of Oxbow, with its Idaho Power-run campground, day use area, boat launch and dammed section of river that beckons you to plunge, fish or float.

For adrenaline junkies, whitewater and jetboat tours are 23 miles farther north, below the Hells Canyon Dam.

For cheese junkies, meanwhile, adventure waits back in Baker City. The Cheese Fairy, also known as Cody Cook, shares space with Copper Belt Wines on Main Street. In addition to tastings, she’ll mail dairy goodness to you. The storefront is a family affair—her family owns the winery, and her brother Travis is the winemaker.

The 45th parallel traces an imaginary line halfway between the equator and the top of the world, and that path sits just north of Baker City. Celebrating that proximity is Latitude 45 Grille, with locally sourced steaks and pasta, including gluten-free options. Fries come with a truffle aioli dipping sauce, which is also delicious on your fingers.

For drinkable art in a less expected venue, Main Event Sports Bar will concoct cocktails while games flash on the TVs and locals laugh in the loft. Bartender Jason Meeker, a onetime corporate banker, is writing a cocktail cookbook that includes a colorful gin blueberry sour he calls New Process.

“You’ve found the right spot,” he said with a grin, bottles inverted in both hands. Also, happily, Lee Marvin won’t be throwing any punches.

Day 3

GOLF • RIDING THE RAILS • HIKING TRAILS

Back in the day, you did lots of digging in gold country.

Depending on your swing and your aim, you can hopefully avoid digging out at Quail Ridge Golf Course, with nine early holes before the mercury rises.

Brunch is big in Baker City. On Sundays, stroll to Geiser Grand’s Palm Court restaurant, and choose among waffles, trout and eggs, crab cake eggs Benedict and prime rib hash.

South of town, Oregon Highway 7 winds past cattle herds and into pine forests that once fed local sawmills and were the reason for the Sumpter Valley Railroad. Trains stopped running in the 1940s, but a volunteer-run nonprofit resurrected part of the route, three decades later. Some summer and fall weekends, passengers can book roundtrip runs between the mining town of Sumpter and a depot 6 miles away. Check to see when steam engines are running.

Sumpter Valley Railroad’s classic steam engines take visitors between an old mining town and a train depot. (photo: Travel Baker County)

Nearby, Phillips Lake was created by damming the Powder River, and one of its shore-line features is Social Security Point, which feels maybe harder to reach nowadays. From there, it’s a 4-mile out-and-back hike to the end of the Shoreline Trail, with lake views and fewer bugs earlier in the day. Several longer routes beckon mountain bikes.

Gold mining is never particularly good for the environment. At Sumpter Valley Dredge State Heritage Area, a preserved mining boat stands as a monument to particularly destructive ingenuity.

The Sumpter Valley Dredge State Heritage Area pays homage to Sumpter’s mining past. (photo: Travel Baker County)

Over forty years, a fleet of floating excavators tore up 8 miles of the fertile valley floor and turned it into a serpentine trail of rock piles—while crushing and extracting gold that today would be worth more than $250 million.

Depending on your traveling party, there’s treasure of the herbal sort at Sumpter Nugget, the only cannabis dispensary in Baker County. Nearby, if you now have an appetite, there’s pizza and pulled pork tacos at the newly refurbished Sumpter Stage Stop Fueling Station and Bar.

Back in Baker City, grab road drinks at Sorbenots Coffee, started by a local family. Inspired by the Eltrym Theater, Sorbenots is the reverse of “Stone Bros.” Their slushy Arnold Palmer granita is amazingly refreshing, no matter how you spell it. And unlike the dusty Oregon Trail riders in these parts, you can have coffee for the long trek home.