Steens Mountain

Columbia River Basalt Group

Leschi (1808-1858), Part 1 (historylink.org) Leschi (1808-1858) and his half-brother, Quiemuth (ca. 1798-1856), were respected members of the Nisqually Indian Tribe of South Puget Sound. In 1854 they were appointed by Washington Territory’s first governor, Isaac Stevens (1818-1862), to represent their tribe during treaty talks near Medicine Creek in north Thurston County. Outraged by the inadequate reservation imposed by the treaty, Leschi took up arms and became the leading chief of a fighting force comprising members of several Puget Sound tribes. Outgunned and outmanned, in the spring of 1856 Leschi and his remaining followers retreated to the Kittitas Valley. But he had become the primary focus for the vengeance of Governor Stevens, and upon returning west in late 1856 Leschi was betrayed, arrested, and charged with the murder of a volunteer militiaman. After two trials and a convoluted and error-filled legal odyssey, Leschi was convicted, and on February 19, 1858, was hanged at Steilacoom. Still, the Puget Sound War had not been fought in vain; in January 1857 larger and more appropriate reservations were approved for the region’s tribes. Nearly 150 years later, in 2004, a specially formed historical court exonerated Chief Leschi of the crime for which he was executed.

Steens Mountain (summitpost.org) Stretching across the High Desert of Southeast Oregon is the most massive of the state’s peaks. From Baker Pass in the north to Long Hollow in the south, The Steens as a mountain range is nearly 60 miles long and 18 miles across. Taken as a mountain with a nine thousand foot crest, the peak runs over eight miles from north to south. This massive fault block of basalt is the highest point south of the Three Sisters in Oregon, has 4373 feet of prominence, and is the highpoint of Harney County. The nearest higher peak is Eagle Peak, a distant 125 miles away to the west in California.

Steens Mountain (Wikipedia) Steens Mountain is a large fault-block mountain in the northwest United States, located in Harney County, Oregon. Stretching some fifty miles (80 km) north to south, on its west side it rises from the Alvord Desert at an elevation of about 4,200 feet (1,280 m) to 9,738 feet (2,968 m) at the summit. Steens Mountain is not part of a mountain range but is properly a single mountain, the largest of Oregon’s fault-block mountains.