I took a very cool back road on my recent trip “Blue Mountain Scenic Byway”. It’s so back roads that it doesn’t have a highway number! It’s mostly paved (some rough spots) forest service roads that run right through the Blue Mountains in Oregon. I spent July 3rd driving along with my window down, watching wonderful scenery go by. I arrived too late to really check out Sumpter, Oregon, but it’s an old historic town. The local state park features a gold dredge and narrow gauge railroad.
One thing that was very obvious was that a fire had swept through sometime in the past. Doing research since I’ve been home, I believe it was in 1980-40 years ago. There is plenty of evidence of the fire, from standing snags to deforested areas. In the above photo you can clearly see snags sticking up above the current forest and that ridge is still devoid of pine trees.
The thing I noticed though was the amount of recovery in the forest. Many, if not most areas are just loaded with 20 to 30 foot (7 to 10 meters) tall pines. They are incredibly thick in places. My best guess is that they are so thick that not all of them will survive, but the forest is well on it’s way to it’s former glory from 40 years ago.
I looked for evidence that these areas had been replanted by people and I couldn’t find any. I could discern no evidence of ‘rows’ or orderly planting. It looks like every tree that sprouted grew and prospered for quite a while.
I’m sure the fire was a huge disaster for the area. Timber and logging jobs lost, wildlife displaced and more. Today the forest is vibrant and healthy for the most part. I did see some areas that had been selectively logged to give the trees more spacing and room to grow larger and faster.
All in all it was a wonderful way to spend a day on a leisurely drive. You may have seen my This Old Barn post from the same road earlier. There will be at least one more post from the wonderfully engaging “Blue Mountain Scenic Byway” to come. Stay tuned!
All words and photos in this post are mine. For better or worse.
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