A video I made of Christmas Valley Lake in Lake County in the Great Oregon Outback!
Christmas Valley is located in the Great Oregon Outback in Lake County about 100 miles SE of Bend. It is a high desert region on the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains. It is a mixture of farmers growing the largest concentration of alfalfa in Oregon and people seeking rural land. The biggest highlight is the 11,000 acres at the Christmas Valley Sand Dunes for ATV enthusiasts to play on, the largest in the Pacific Northwest.
It is a friendly town and I really have come to enjoy stopping at the hotel on the lake and being woken up by the birds at the crack of a beautiful dawn! It has a small town beat of its own and about 1300 people call this place home.
Originally subdivided back in the 1960's this place never really took off and instead has slowly grown over the years. Today the town consists of a post office, 9 hole golf course, health clinic, a couple of restaurants, church, grocery/gas stores, a school, the rodeo grounds, library and airport to name a few. One afternoon we stopped at the clubhouse for lunch and I found myself chuckling to myself as the farmers came driving right up in their big tractors!
This area is best known by off-road enthusiasts who spend vacation time at the nearby Christmas Valley Sand Dunes! Christmas Valley contains 11,000 acres of sand dunes up to 60 feet high and is available to off-highway use. The dunes are open to Class I, II and III ATVs year round, but can be inaccessible during the winter and spring months due to extremely muddy roads. The dunes are composed largely of ash and pumice that blew into the area over 7,000 years ago when Mt. Mazama erupted, forming Crater Lake. People trek here many weekends in the summertime to play in the famous dunes!
To the west is Fort Rock Basin which some of the earliest known inhabitants of this continent called home. Sandals found in the cave date back 9,000 years.
We included a map of the Christmas Valley Back County Byway. In April 2012 I drove County Road 5-14C. It sure was stunning and beautiful as I saw herd after herd of antelope and deer. I finally had to quit stopping and taking photos as we would never have gotten out of there! I was so surprised to once again find something cool on my travels - how many times had I driven by that road and never realized what was down it! Oh I love rural America!
It is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, National Scenic Byways Program. The program is a grass-roots collaborative effort established to help recognize, preserve and enhance selected roads as All-American Roads or National Scenic Byways based on one or more archeological, cultural, historic, natural, recreational and scenic qualities.
Fossil Lake is also in the area as seen in the Back Country Byway map. It is home to many fossils ranging from 10,000 to over 2 million years old. I included a few photos of tiny shells I found a few miles SE of the lake in April 2012. I read an article online from 1978 about the ban of off road vehicles in this area to protect these fossils. I was wondering what shells were doing out there - or at least that's what I think they are! Scientists have collected and identified fossil remains of 25 species of birds, 7 species of fish and 11 species of mollusks.
Below are some helpful links for our sand dune junkies!