Frenchglen
I got to Frenchglen around noon. The town consists mostly of a general store/tavern and a hotel on one side, and a couple houses and a small hamburger stand on the other side.
In the 1870’s, a man named Peter French took a few Mexican vaqueros and 1200 shorthorn cattle and headed north from California into Oregon. When they reached the Blitzen Valley, they set up tentative operations. With financial backing from a California stock grower named Hugh Glenn, French set up the P Ranch and the French-Glenn Live Stock Company. The ranch headquarters was just a few miles east of what became the town of Frenchglen. At its height, the ranch covered almost 200,000 acres. There were many land disputes with other settlers, which eventually lead to French’s murder in 1897. Glenn’s heirs lacked the management skills to maintain the enterprise, and it slowly declined. In 1916 it was sold to what eventually became the Eastern Oregon Live Stock Company, partially controlled by Chicago-based giant Swift Meat Packing Company. They established the hotel and store at Frenchglen in the 1920’s. In the 1930’s they sold about 65,000 acres to the government for inclusion in the Malheur refuge.
Frenchglen was a quaint little place, and seemed peaceful despite a surprising number of visitors coming and going. The serenity was only broken when a young hippie-wannabe couple rolled in for about 10 minutes. While she went inside to shop, he sat in the car smoking a cigarette and blasting reggae from the stereo.
I walked down with my camera to photograph the hotel and surroundings. As I was about to head back to my car, I noted a dilapidated barn across the road. I find old barns intriguing, but I’ve photographed a few, and was wondering if this one was worth another shot. About that time, I noticed something moving in the high grass near the barn. Suddenly I realized that I was looking at a buck, about 30–40 feet away, half hidden in grass but unmistakable. I estimated that he was a four-point or eight-point, depending on how you count.
Of course, while I did actually have my camera with me, which was an amazing stroke of luck, I only had my 28–105 lens, and the 70–210 was effectively miles away considering the likelihood of getting there and back in time. I made a couple false starts at snapping a photo at 105mm, but it was just too far away and against the black gaping mouth of the barn. The buck seemed quite taken by the old barn, and peered curiously inside. Eventually he stepped in.
I decided to go get the 70–210, in the hopes that I would return as the buck emerged and get something recognizable on film. But when I returned I could not see him, and in the darkness of the barn I couldn’t tell if he was still in there or not. After waiting around a couple minutes, I decided it was yet another opportunity lost.
I would have liked to visit more of the refuge, but it was already after noon and I had many miles to cover, so I headed back to Burns.
Malheur NWR