Malheur River
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The Malheur River (pronounced "muh-LOOR" by non-Oregonians; locals pronounce the name "MAL-hyure") is a tributary of the Snake River, approximately 165 mi (266 km) long, in east central Oregon in the United States. It drains a high desert plateau region south of the Blue Mountains between the Harney Basin and the Snake.
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[edit] Description
It rises in the southern Blue Mountains of southern Grant County, south of Strawberry Mountain. It flows south through Malheur National Forest, then southeast past Drewsey and through Warm Springs Reservoir. At Riverside in eastern Malheur County it receives the South Fork from the south, then turns sharply back northward to Juntura, where it receives the North Fork form the north. From Juntura it flows generally east past Vale, joining the Snake from the west approximately 2 mi (3 km) north of Ontario, Oregon.
The lower river near Ontario is used for irrigation in the agricultural potato-growing in the valley of the Snake along the Idaho-Oregon border. Agricultural runoff has resulted in a phosphorus pollution problem in its lower reaches.
Despite the similarity of name, the river does not flow into nearby Malheur Lake, which is located in the enclosed Harney Basin southwest of the watershed of the river.
[edit] History
The name of the river is derived from the French, literally translated as "bad hour," but commonly meaning "misfortune." The name was attached to the river by French Canadian trappers with the Snake County Expeditions of Donald MacKenzie as early as 1818 for the unfortunate circumstance that some beaver furs they had cached there were discovered and stolen by Indians. The name first appears in the record in 1826 when Peter Skene Ogden, a fur trapper with the Hudson's Bay Company, referred to it as "River au Malheur (unfortunate River)" and thereafter as "Unfortunate River."
The river lived up to its name a second time in 1845, when mountain man Stephen Meek, seeking a faster route along the Oregon Trail, led a migrant party up the river valley into the high desert along a route that has since become known as the Meek Cutoff. After leaving the river valley the party was unable to find a water supply and lost 23 people by the time they reached The Dalles on the Columbia River.
In 1853 the river was used more successfully as the route of the Free Emigrant Road, a branch of the Oregon Trail that cut directly across eastern Oregon to Eugene at the south end of the Willamette Valley.
