Bulletin E-Edition:
more photosThe lushgrasses of Stone Corral and Bluejoint lakes stretch along the base of Poker Jim Ridge on the western edge of the refuge.
Photo by John Gottberg Anderson / For the Bulletin
PRONGHORN PARADISE
They’re not really antelope, but wildlife refuge has given them an idyllic home on the range
By John Gottberg Anderson
Next week:
Des Moines, Wash.
/ For The Bulletin
Published: August 16. 2009 4:00AM PST
PLUSH —
There are no antelope in southeastern Oregon’s Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge.
I say this with certainty. Not only were they absent when I made a recent visit to the semi-arid rangeland northeast of Lakeview; there are no native antelope in North or South America. Although nearly 100 species of antelope live in Africa and Asia, they are not found in the Western Hemisphere. The Encyclopedia Brittanica confirms this fact.
Hart Mountain does, however, have pronghorn. And I saw scores of those hooved ruminants with their distinctive tan-and-white coats.
The pronghorn is the last surviving member of a family of animals that thrived in North America during the time of early man. Incorrectly labeled “antelope” when first noted by the Lewis and Clark Expedition, pronghorn are in fact more closely related to the giraffe and the okapi than to Old World antelope.
Blessed with a 320-degree field of vision and remarkable speed — the fastest land mammal in the Americas, it has been clocked at more than 45 miles per hour over long distances — the pronghorn nonetheless found its survival threatened in the early 20th century. This creature of open grassland and high desert was no match for hunters with guns. Its numbers, once estimated at 30 million across the Great Basin and Western North America, had been reduced to a mere 20,000 by 1908.
Beginning in the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, hunting restrictions and habitat protection helped the species rebound to well more than half a million animals today.
As home to thousands of pronghorn, Hart Mountain was a key component in that recovery.
Today, the wildlife refuge, which extends across 278,630 acres (435 square miles) northeast of Lakeview, has become known for much more than its pronghorn population. Forty-two different mammals live here, including bighorn sheep, elk, mule deer, cougars, coyotes and bobcats; they share the refuge with 239 species of birds, many of them migratory.
Coming from Lakeview
I began my exploration of Hart Mountain at Lakeview, 174 miles southeast of Bend via the Oregon Outback National Scenic Byway (state Highway 31). The town of 2,600 people is a quiet ranching center that calls itself the “tallest town in Oregon” because of its 4,800-foot elevation. The radio, it seems, plays nothing but country music: Brad Paisley. LeAnn Rimes. Several motels and cafes, none of them fancy, provide lodging for travelers, as do a couple of campgrounds. I found one that cost me just $12 a night and offered free wireless Internet service!
Fiercely proud of its pioneer history, Lakeview has two historical museums that occupy early-20th-century homes. The Lake County Museum displays photographs and artifacts including American Indian artifacts more than 9,000 years old. The Schminck Memorial Museum, owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution, features historic quilts, 19th-century fashions, glass, porcelain, antique children’s toys and more.
The drive from Lakeview to the headquarters of the Hart Mountain refuge is 65 miles. The route turns east off U.S. Highway 395 five miles north of Lakeview. State Highway 140 crosses Warner Summit and passes the little Warner Canyon Ski Area, one of the state’s oldest winter-sports resorts, dating to 1938.
Twenty-one miles from Lakeview, I turned north on the Plush Cut-Off Road. The strip of patchy blacktop lies upon a landscape of sagebrush. Here and there, swaths of well-irrigated ranchland support livestock and hay farms.
A small, unincorporated community of fewer than 100 people, Plush has an old general store that is the traveler’s last chance for gas, food and cold beverages before entering the refuge. Although there’s no lodging here, the village has a quiet, well-kept, oasis-like park that provides rest-area services for RV travelers.
Directly east of Plush is Hart Mountain, a massive peak that rises abruptly 3,600 feet above the wetlands of the Warner Valley to a summit of 8,065 feet. (According to Myrna Oakley, author of “Off the Beaten Path: Oregon,” Hart Mountain was named after the heart-shaped brand on cattle once ranched nearby.)
Seven-mile-long Hart Lake is a permanent water source and a haven for migratory waterfowl; a series of other “lakes” that extend north from here, one after the next, including Anderson, Swamp, Flagstaff, Upper Campbell, Campbell and Stone Corral lakes, were already dry when I followed Hart Mountain Road around their rims in late July. But the grassy lakebeds provided lush pasture for deer and pronghorn. The Department of Fish and Wildlife has declared the Warner Wetlands an “Area of Critical Environmental Concern.”
Petroglyphs and a hot spring
Close to a Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps camp at the foot of the escarpment, I entered the refuge where the Hart Mountain Road changes from blacktop to graded gravel.
As it switchbacks rapidly up the side of the cliff, it offers roadside viewpoints with marvelous panoramas across the Warner Valley. On some of the rim rocks, ancient petroglyphs are etched into the stone, archeological reminders of 10,000 years of American Indian habitation of this region.
At the top of the bluff, the road straightens. Fine dust swirled through the open windows of my car, making me sneeze. At the refuge headquarters village, a few miles on, I found a couple of residences and maintenance buildings as well as a tiny museum and resource library with information on the refuge and a record of wildlife sightings. This is the place to refill your supply of drinking water and to obtain a free permit for one of the primitive campsites within the refuge boundaries.
The main campground, such as it is, is located at Hart Mountain Hot Spring, four miles south of headquarters. There are 30 designated sites beside a tiny stream, but don’t expect picnic tables or firepits, or, for that matter, flush toilets. Outhouses are the best you’ll find. The tiny hot spring is partially enclosed within rock walls but is open to the sky. The water temperature is a constant 101 degrees. Two middle-aged couples were soaking when I arrived, one from Canada, the other from Holland.
With the exception of high-clearance roads and horse trails, there are few roads within the refuge. The main road continues beyond headquarters 49 miles to the hamlet of Frenchglen, at the foot of Steens Mountain. Other than the campground access road, the only other generally passable route is Blue Sky Road, which branches off the Hot Springs road a couple of miles from headquarters and climbs gently southeast. I stopped at a lookout point for an easy view across 50 miles of basin land: The entire eastern expanse of the refuge descends in a gently rolling series of hills and low, sagebrush-covered ridges.
Returning from the lookout point, I saw a lone male pronghorn with prominent horns, standing proudly on a hillside above a small creek. About a mile farther, I encountered a herd of 18 pronghorn, apparently all females and fawns. Later, off the Hot Springs Road, I spotted another 14. In all, I sighted more than 40 pronghorn during a short visit to the refuge.
More about the pronghorn
“They’re sort of scattered in smaller groups right now,” an information officer at headquarters told me. “In fall and winter, we can have hundreds of animals in a single herd. In spring and summer, the males tend to do their own thing and the groups splinter.”
I read in a refuge brochure that it’s easy to distinguish male pronghorns from females: The males sport fibrous “horns” (not antlers) that grow at the front of the skulls. Shed and regrown annually, they average about 10 inches long on males but are generally absent or barely visible on females.
Pronghorns breed in September and fawns are born in late May or early June. During this time, coyotes, bobcats and golden eagles present a threat to the offspring; as they get older, the animals can outrun virtually any predator. Scientists theorize that the pronghorn’s speed may have evolved at a time when the North American animal population included cheetahs, the only animal known to be faster than a pronghorn over short distances. Today, cheetahs are found only in Africa.
The only other large animals I spotted on the refuge were wild horses. They gathered around a watering hole not far from headquarters. But I saw prairie dogs galore, as well as chipmunks and great blue herons. At one point, a long-eared jackrabbit dashed across the road in front of my car. A colorful ring-neck pheasant briefly emerged from dense brush. A whitish owl soared overhead.
Shortly after my visit, I learned, a group of volunteers from the Oregon Natural Desert Association congregated at Hart Mountain to remove the last 4˝ miles of more than 200 miles of old fencing. It had been unnecessary for decades, since sheep, cattle and other livestock were moved out of the refuge boundaries with its creation. The fencing was now merely an obstacle to the free movement of wildlife.
That’s a great thing for the antelope ... I mean, for the pronghorn.
John Gottberg
Anderson
can be reached at janderson@bendbulletin.com.
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