Fish Lake

Sometimes, readers’ tips pan out quite nicely.

“Jim — I do not remember you ever writing about the Fish Lake Remount Station on the McKenzie River highway up near the beginning of the river. It is a fascinating reminder of the early days on the McKenzie. A beautiful spot. Some of the original cabins are still there. It is easy to picture the early pioneers living up there. It must have been very difficult. Down the road a ways is the Olallie campground. It is where the Olallie Creek joins the McKenzie. I think it is one of the prettiest camps in the Cascades. Yesterday the fall colors were at their peak along the McKenzie River. Beautiful.”

Alex Morley’s e-mail piqued my interest (and the destination seemed like a splendid place to spend a shoulder-season afternoon). So I called Map Guy and we headed up there.

This time of year, Fish Lake is no lake at all.

It’s an expansive meadow, blanketed in late-season wildflowers and fringed by fir and deciduous vine maples blazing red and yellow.

Not far from the headwaters of the McKenzie River, Fish Lake is a geologic anomaly with a fascinating human history.

First, the geology. The lake was formed 3,800 years ago when lava vents dammed Hackleman Creek. Given its porous lava underpinnings, the lake goes dry in the summer. Its trout have adapted to heading back up into Hackelman Creek in the dry months, spilling down into the lake come winter and spring.

Despite a steady rain Monday, the “lake” was in full meadow mode. Map Guy and I hiked along a trail that bisects the lake bottom, noting that what looked like prime elk habitat would actually be home to insect-gulping trout a few months on.

Fish Lake is rich in history of the human kind as well.

Located along the Old Santiam Wagon Road, Fish Lake was a stopover for pioneers traveling between the Willamette Valley and Central Oregon in the late 1860s. According to the McKenzie online visitor guide (http://mckenzie.orenews.com), there was a hotel and livery stable there until 1906.

About that time, the Forest Service built a log cabin ranger station on the lake’s northeastern shore, according to Bend’s Les Joslin, whose “Uncle Sam’s Cabins” is the definitive guide to historic Forest Service ranger stations of the West. The original cabin, built in 1908, was crushed by snow during the winter of 1912-13. The cabin was replaced and other buildings were added. Still in use are the dispatcher’s cabin (1921), the supervisor’s cabin (1924) and the commissary cabin (1924).

“During the 1930s, Fish Lake became an important fire fighting remount station for crews and pack animals sent to forest fires throughout the Central Cascades, and served as a Civilian Conservation Corps work camp on the Willamette National Forest,” Joslin writes. “ … By 1940 the station comprised just over a dozen major structures.”

These days, the dispatcher’s cabin and the old commissary house the Fish Lake Guard Station. The outbuildings and rock walls, built in 1934 by the CCC, are now the Fish Lake Remount Depot, which provides pack animals for wilderness, trails and fire management missions, Joslin writes.

The Forest Service has provided informational signs on the 20-acre site that relay some of the history that went down there. The place reeks of it.

From the main cluster of buildings, we walked up a dirt road framed by big firs, There’s a grave there beneath the fallen leaves, the final resting place of Charity Ann Marks and her infant child. The pioneer woman died in childbirth in October 1875 after an early snowstorm barred the way through the Cascades.

Morley was right. “It is easy to picture the early pioneers living up there. It must have been very difficult.”

This place is worth a visit.

If you go

Getting there: From Sisters, drive west on U.S. Highway 20 and turn left on state Highway 126. Fish Lake Campground is about a mile south of U.S. Highway 20 on the right. Visitors can walk up the Old Santiam Wagon Road through two gates to the Fish Lake Remount Depot.

Note: Keep in mind, Forest Service personnel still use the depot. Be thoughtful and don’t disturb any relics there.

Contact: McKenzie Ranger Station, Willamette National Forest, 541-822-3381.