Arock: Oregon's Basque Corner

Arock is a tiny unincorporated community in Malheur County, Oregon, near the Idaho line, with very few residents. What makes it notable is its Basque heritage. Beginning in the eighteen eighties, Basque immigrants from the Pyrenees region of Spain and France began arriving in the high desert of the American West to work as sheepherders. The open range and the lack of established ranching culture made it possible for Basque men to save wages, acquire bands of sheep, and eventually buy land.

The Arock area became one of several concentrations of Basque ranching families in southeastern Oregon. Malheur County's Basque community maintained traditions in food, language, and social organization well into the twentieth century. The broader Oregon-Idaho-Nevada Basque corridor, centered in Boise, is one of the best-known Basque communities outside the Pyrenees. Arock represents the rural end of that world: high desert, sheep, and a people who made their own country in someone else's.