Sherman County Harvest Festival

The Sherman County Harvest Festival is listed for Saturday, September 11, 2027, from 10 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon, in Grass Valley, Oregon, at the City of Grass Valley’s address on Mill Street. The listing names four parts: a children’s fair with activities for kids, an artisan market of local makers and crafts, food and beverages, and live entertainment. Beyond that it says only that new things will be coming. The Oregon Frontier Chamber of Commerce runs the festival from its office on Main Street in Condon.

Grass Valley lies twenty-seven miles south of the Columbia River, on the high plateau between the John Day and Deschutes rivers, just off Highway 97. The 2020 census counted 149 people. Wheat fields surround the town, and the town’s own history page says many farming families there trace their roots to the first homesteaders.

A chamber for three counties

The festival is one of the events created by the Oregon Frontier Chamber, which was formed in 2022 when the Condon Chamber of Commerce was rebranded to serve 11 rural communities across Gilliam, Sherman and Wheeler counties. K’Lynn Lane, the chamber’s executive director, described the festival to Go! Magazine in 2023: “It’s just a great community event. It’s all about getting people out to see and experience these places we call home.”

The 2023 festival, billed as the second annual, was held on Dewey Street in Moro, the county seat. The magazine dated it Sunday, July 23. The Sherman County Historical Museum’s calendar gave July 23 at the head of its listing and July 25 in its text. The children’s fair ran from 2 to 4 p.m. and the artisan market from 2 to 5. The band Countryfied played from 4 to 7, and the museum promised live music all afternoon. Lane advised visitors from outside the region to see the historical museum and the country beyond it. “From Moro, it’s just 20 minutes to Cottonwood Canyon State Park, one of Oregon’s newest state parks, and it’s just beautiful,” she said. Of the three counties she added: “There are more services and more things to do than people realize.”

Rye grass over a horse’s head

For centuries Tenino, Warm Springs and Tygh people hunted game and gathered roots and berries between the Deschutes and John Day rivers. Their descendants are members of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs. Oregon Trail travelers of the 1840s and 1850s crossed the country without stopping for more than a few days’ rest. After Samuel Barlow marked his trail across the Cascades in 1845, a shortcut was soon made to meet it at Tygh Valley. The town’s history says the shortcut left the Oregon Trail at the top of the hill west of the John Day River, ran southwest into Grass Valley canyon, and passed the head of the valley where the tall rye grass grew. The Oregon Encyclopedia dates the first EuroAmerican travelers on that cutoff to 1846, just north of the present town. One early settler described the grass as “so tall that it stood over a man’s head, even when he was on a horse!”

Settlement came in 1878 with Dr. Charles R. Rollins. The town’s history calls him a physician from New Hampshire who arrived with a small party of settlers. The Sherman County history site lists the first white settlers as Californians: Dr. C.R. Rollins and his son, John W. Dow and his wife, Mr. Locke and Frank Richie. Rollins built a large two-story hotel with a clinic, where he prescribed and sold medicine. He also kept an inn called Grass Valley House and was the only practicing physician between the rivers and south to Antelope. He claimed to have grown and threshed the first wheat there in 1879.

Several sources say Rollins named the town for its rye grass, which, in the words of the town’s history, “grew rank in the alkaline soil.” The Madras Pioneer credits the name to the post office, established March 21, 1882, with Charles B. Taylor as first postmaster. The county history site says Taylor opened the office in 1882 or 1885 in his house on the stage route. John Fulton surveyed the town site in April 1889, and the town was platted in 1891. The Eastern Oregon Land Company and Charles W. Moore owned most of the lots. Moore started the town’s newspaper and brought a telephone line in from Rufus.

The Grass Valley Journal first appeared in November 1897. By 1898 the business directory listed two blacksmiths, John Dam and Frank Lynn, along with Miss Minnie Smith’s confectionery, William Fairfield’s steam chop mill, O.P. King’s meat market and Mrs. Gleeson, dressmaker. Mail came daily by stage by way of Wasco and Moro. An old photograph shows the inside of the J.J. Wiley Saloon, which stood where the service station stands now. Dr. Rollins’ hotel is long gone.

Rails, a boom, and the Pavilion

The Columbia Southern line ran seventy miles south from Biggs, on the Columbia, to Shaniko. The Madras Pioneer has it reaching Grass Valley in 1900. The Oregon Encyclopedia gives 1898. With the railroad, livestock and wheat could be shipped out by rail. The town incorporated on September 14, 1900, and grew from 25 people in 1888 to 342 in 1910. While the Oregon Trunk Railroad was being built up the Deschutes between 1909 and 1911, Grass Valley served as a staging ground for equipment and supplies. Railroad managers and engineers lived in town, temporary camps housed workers from Italy, Sweden and the Balkan countries, and a temporary hospital treated men injured on the line.

After 1920 the town declined. Passenger service ended in 1932, and the line was abandoned in 1966. Hotels, cafes and stores lost business. The high school closed in 1940 and its students went to Moro. The elementary school closed in 2016.

The Pavilion, built about 1916 and plainly visible from Highway 97, has outlasted the trade. Since 2012 its roof, floors, walls, windows, insulation, electrical wiring and plumbing have been replaced, and a heating system and two indoor restrooms have been added. The hall is used for meetings, bingo games, dances and auctions. Each November it holds the Max Nogle Dinner Dance & Auction, with a meal, a live auction and live music. The city lists the next one for November 21, 2026.