For the week ending Sept. 22, 1957

BOAT ON THE DESERT

A friend reports a strange discovery in Oregon’s High Desert, a bit of the inland plateau noted for its aridity.

He found, near a waterless depression, the sun-beaten, weathered remnants of a boat.

Why a boat in the High Desert?

The area in which the sun-warped frame of the old boat was found provides a clue to the story of the boat.

This is the area known as Benjamin Lake, out in the highlands south of Stauffer and Rolyat. In some years, the depression is occupied by a shallow lake. Other years, it is not.

Generally, by late summer, “dust devils” are swirling over the juniper-fringed depression. In winter, it is a basin into which drifts snow.

But apparently, long ago, Benjamin Lake was filled from shore to shore, and it remained so for several years. Old-timers say that in those years an attempt was made to stock the desert lake with trout. The boat possibly was used at that time.

The story of the restocking of the lake on the High Desert appeared in a Portland paper, we recall. With the story was a cartoonist’s conception of conditions in the area.

The cartoon pictured a fish strolling through the junipers, with a canteen on its back.

But even in earlier days, Benjamin Lake, in the era when rather lush conditions prevailed on the desert, played an economic role. It provided water for flocks of sheep.

It was in that area, more than 50 years ago, that masked riders tied a sheepherder to a tree and shot or clubbed several hundred sheep to death.

It was the era of Central Oregon’s costly range wars.

For years, bones of the slaughtered sheep could be found in the sagebrush, in the high basin where ancient junipers rule the rocky ridges.

In this lonely land, an old boat is now bleaching in the sun, to add its bit to the interesting story of Benjamin Lake in Oregon’s High Desert.