Going out on a limb here, my guess is that most of you don’t live in Oregon. Or, perhaps, even the West. If that’s the case, may God be with you. Worse yet, you may not have places nearby that are beyond the back of never. A lot of Oregon is like that, beyond the beyond. These pictures are from the basin & range country where never vies with forever. What few people live here live in the basins. The ranges can be fierce, although the basins aren’t much better.
The names "Paisley" and "Fort Rock" will be familiar to students of the first Americans. Both places have caves associated with them, which have provided some of the most significant findings in American paleoanthropology. Luther Cressman in the 1930s found at Fort Rock what is, probably, the oldest pair of sandals extant in the world. Recent revisiting of the Paisley Caves have produced human coprolites 13,500 years old, old enough to upset many traditional academic apple carts.
Needless-to-say, this is some of my favorite hunting country. There aren’t that many cemeteries out here, but they’re mighty fun finding. I’m known to drive here all day until dark falls and then pull off the road and sleep in the front seat. There’s a lot of sky and a lot of quiet at night.
Parts of the West are overrun with tourists and would-be cowboys. The Oregon outback resists gentrification. This is what you’ll find when you get here.
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| Summer Lake Cemetery |
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| Juntura Cemeteries |
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| Brown Cemetery |
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| Fort Rock Cemetery |
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| Westside Cemetery |
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| Paisley Cemetery |
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| Fort Harney Cemetery |
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| Brown Cemetery |
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| Chief Schonchin Cemetery |
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| Drewsey Cemetery |
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| Denio Cemetery |
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