Shaniko Oregon Ghost Town

When we left the Coast where we stayed most of the winter, our destination was going to eventually be Bend to stay for a few weeks. We did not want to cross the pass in March due to the unpredictable snowfall, so we headed north to cross the mountains by driving along the Columbia along I-84, where the elevation stays pretty low. This plan turned out to be a good one. We had our eye on a couple of locations near the Columbia using the campendium app, but they were not working out due to not being open in March. So we started scanning campendium again and see this location, Shaniko, that people had commented about staying in that city. It is a mostly abandoned town, I think the population is 25, but there are some really old buildings, and an abandoned hotel that has a very interesting story behind it. There is a museum that charges on the honor system, open 24/7, with a little donation receptacle.

There seems to be a documentary in the works at https://www.shaniko.org/

There is a teeny general store, where we stopped when we first arrived to get some general information about the place. There was a gentleman at the counter. When we walked in he gave us the kind of cold look you’d see in a dirty Harry movie. I asked “I understand you guys are amenable to staying over night in the town?”, as the app campendium indicated. “I don’t know ‘nuthin about that.” We said “thank you”, about faced, and scurried out before we got shot. A rather dry fellow. It was odd there was a store at all, as we didn’t really see anyone around. Kind of a spooky deal.

Here’s the wiki on the place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaniko,_Oregon. The hotel was most recently owned by a couple in the early 2000’s, one of them died and the other did not stay. Looking through the window, it looks in rather fine shape, as they had did a complete renovation after they bought it. It may be in fact a decent investment opportunity for the right people. We talked about it, only about 2/3 joking. hmmmm.