Snake River-Mormon Basin Back Country Byway
BLM Back Country Byway 148 mi in Oregon.
About the Snake River-Mormon Basin Back Country Byway
Explore the rangelands and immerse yourself in the pastoral settings of eastern Oregon’s Baker and Malheur counties along the 150-mile Snake River-Mormon Basin Back Country Byway. This byway offers a variety of bucolic rural and backcountry traveling options for your high-clearance two-wheel drive vehicle.
The area's high relief is on display in steep canyons, prominent cliffs and massive rock outcrops. The Snake River Canyon high above Brownlee Reservoir has striking color variations included in large basaltic rock outcrops above the Snake River Road, until this road reaches the reservoir, where metamorphic/sedimentary rock is dominant down to the historic hamlet of Huntington. One also sees high, velvety light green hills with many wildflowers in the spring. A wide variety of other natural scenery includes sagebrush plateaus, lush riparian vegetation along waterways. Historic wagon roads traverse the area; ranching, mining, logging, and homesteading occurred throughout the area in the late 1800s.
Bureau of Land Management's own description, in its words. Byway page on blm.gov.
Camping along the byway
- Mile 40 · 1.1 mi offHewitt and Holcomb Parks Campground · City, county or regional park · reservable
- Mile 73 · on the roadSpring Recreation Site · Bureau of Land Management · 17 sites
- Mile 74 · 0.7 mi offSteck Park · Bureau of Land Management · 21 sites
- Mile 77 · 3.7 mi offFarewell Bend State Recreation Area · State park · 104 sites · reservable
Public campgrounds within 5 miles of the road as the crow flies, in order along the byway; each one's page has its facts, season and weather by month.
About this page's facts
The line is the Federal Highway Administration's scenic byways layer (HEPGIS, a snapshot of 2022-06-24, a US government work), cut at the state line and simplified for the map; the length is the line's. The designation is the program's own: the national tiers from FHWA's America's Byways roster, the rest from the layer's designation field. Road conditions, closures and seasonal gates change: check the agency's own page and the state's road conditions before you go.