Biggs Junction: Where the River Road Split

Biggs Junction takes its name from William H. Biggs, an Ohioan who settled near the mouth of the Deschutes River in eighteen eighty. The Oregon Railway and Navigation Company arrived in the early eighteen eighties and created a siding nearby called Spanish Hollow.

The real pivot came around the turn of the twentieth century, when the Columbia Southern Railroad branched off here and ran south across the high plateau to Shaniko, turning Biggs into an actual junction. Before rail, westbound emigrants are said to have paused near the Deschutes mouth to decide whether to push on by wagon or abandon their rigs and float the Columbia by raft to The Dalles. That same strategic chokepoint, where the river road and the plateau road split, is why Biggs Junction still exists as a crossroads today.