Baker City looks across a wide, dry valley at the Elkhorn Mountains, a jagged line of peaks that stay snowy well into the summer, and the contrast between sage-covered flats and white summits is the first thing you notice. It is a town of about ten thousand people in the far east of Oregon, on the old Oregon Trail, and its brick downtown is better preserved than most in the West. The Geiser Grand Hotel, a grand 1889 building with a stained-glass ceiling in the dining room, recalls the gold boom that made the town rich.
Gold was found in the Blue Mountains in 1861, and Baker became the commercial hub of the region, with miners spending their dust in its saloons and shops. Many of the old mining sites still lie in the surrounding hills, including the ghostly remains of dredges in the Sumpter Valley. On the ridge above town, the National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center tells the story of the emigrants who walked this route in the mid nineteenth century, and from its viewpoint you can see wagon ruts still faintly scarring the land.
From Baker, the Hells Canyon Scenic Byway runs east and north toward the Snake River, which forms the border with Idaho. Hells Canyon, carved by the Snake, is the deepest river gorge in North America, about 2,400 metres from the rim of the Seven Devils Mountains to the water, deeper than the Grand Canyon. The road follows reservoirs behind the Brownlee and Oxbow dams, with long, easy bends and views over the water, and the canyon only reveals its depth when you reach the viewpoints near the far end. It is a remote road, with very little traffic.
Services are thin once you leave town. Fuel in Baker City, and fill up, because gas stations along the byway are few and far apart, and mobile coverage drops out in the canyons. Pack water, since summer temperatures in the valley bottom can be fierce.
Late spring and early autumn are the best seasons. In June the hills are green and the wildflowers are out, and in September the cottonwoods turn gold. Winter brings ice and snow, and the high roads often close. Watch for wildlife, particularly deer and elk at dusk, and for cattle on open range roads.