15 August 2009

Sumpter:  Heyday of Gold
Gives Way to Tourist Trade

Sumpter Oregon USA - Sumpter, before all else, is a gold town, the center of one of Oregon's richest strikes. Now it's a town of about 170 in the shadow of the Elkhorn Mountains 30 miles west of Baker City.
 
Slouched along the main street is a collection of buildings, some dating from the late 19th century, but this is hardly a replacement for the original business district, all 11 blocks of it, that burned to the ground in 1917.
 
Large-scale mining dried up here in the 1950s, but a few miners still hack at the rocky soil and insist that there are riches to be found. The town lives now mostly on tourists, drawn by the gold dredge and the Sumpter Valley Railroad. The locals are friendly, not too much changed, I think, from the hard-working, fun-loving miners.
 
Getting There:  The most efficient way is to take Interstate 84 east 300 miles to Baker City, and then Oregon 7 west toward Sumpter.
 
Where to Stay:  For a town of its size, Sumpter offers a range of accommodations, including the Sumpter Bed and Breakfast (800-287-5234). My choice is the Depot Inn (800-390-2522). It's run by Lillie Olson, who knows the community and keeps the 14 units well-cared for.
 
Where to Eat:  The Elkhorn Saloon & Restaurant offers 42 variations on the hamburger (541-894-2244), and Borello's across the street serves Italian specialties (541-894-2480) on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. The Scoop-n-Steamer Station Cafe (541-894-2236), housed in a handsome log structure, is the best place for breakfast.
 
Do Not Miss:  A bizarre artifact of the gold era is the Sumpter Valley Dredge, which sits in a pond on the edge of town. It looks something like a derelict three-story boarding house and weighs 1,200 tons. Size becomes all the more impressive when it's considered that it moved, and that it and two predecessors ground through the Sumpter Valley digging a swath six-and-a-half-miles long and a mile wide.
 
A moving line was fitted with 72 iron buckets, which gouged deep and brought up earth that was washed and sent through a rotating screened cylinder that separated rocks from gold-bearing sand. 541-894-2472, friendsOfTheDredge.com>.
 
Night Life:  Social life here revolves around Borello's, a bar and restaurant well-known locally for its Italian fare, particularly the pastas. Ron and Cheryl Borello came to Sumpter in 1969 and bought a little restaurant to which they later attached a bar. The restaurant's recipes were passed down from Ron Borello's family, which immigrated from northern Italy. Cheryl Borello works the kitchen, preparing the pastas and lasagna from scratch.
 
History:  History and tourism come together in Sumpter. Gold was discovered in the vicinity in 1862 by five Southerners who named the cabin they built Fort Sumter, after the place in Charleston Harbor, S.C., where the first engagement of the Civil War took place in 1861. The town's name was later changed to Sumpter.
 
Gold exploration continued in three waves of technology, first placer mining, then hydraulic, and finally hard rock. The town memorializes its mining history in the Sumpter Municipal Museum, located in an old mercantile building on Mill Street. An intriguing exhibit is a small collection of artifacts left by the Chinese miners who flocked to the place.
 
It includes a barrel that once held soy sauce, an old leather shoe that even today seems exotic and, most important, a collection of tiny wooden carvings recalling the old country. It's a moving record of what must have been a lonesome effort by a homesick carver to recall home.
 
Take a Trip:  Sumpter people like their wheels, and for recreation they come in two sizes:  little rubber rollers attached to all-terrain vehicles and the big steel wheels that carry steam locomotives. The Sumpter Valley Railway (866-894-2268, sumpterValleyRailroad.org) runs on a five-mile stretch each summer on weekends and holidays.
 
Foster Church.