Ontario, Oregon: Railroad Town and Basque Heartland

Ontario sits at the Idaho-Oregon line where the Snake River bends south, and it owes its existence entirely to a railroad land deal. In eighteen eighty-three, a group of investors from Baker City and Malheur City platted a townsite and secured a depot site on the coming Oregon Short Line. Overnight, Ontario had a depot and a reason to exist.

What made it distinctive was who came next. Basque sheepherders, migrating north out of California and Nevada in the eighteen nineties, found the high desert rangeland of Malheur County suited perfectly to their traditions. In those decades the county's sheep population grew rapidly.

Basque boarding houses served as a home base for herders working ranges stretching to Steens Mountain and beyond. Ontario remains the center of Basque community life in eastern Oregon.