History Tidbits: Wallowa County Diversity

Wallowa County may seem to be a place with little diversity today, but in our formative years we were a destination for many cultural groups. Some of these groups came from within the United States, others from foreign countries.

Those from foreign countries had often been in the US for some time, having immigrated in the heavy overseas migration years of the mid 1800’s. Wallowa County did not experience settlement until the later years of the century. The families in these cultural groups tended to settle close by one another for mutual support and social life.

We had a settlement of Swedish folk out on the North highway near Braham Meadows. Upper Prairie Creek welcomed a group of Canadian French Catholics. German culture was well represented in the Lower Valley; a group of German Catholics in and near the town of Wallowa and another German group of families in the Grossman area. LIke other Western States, we welcomed Basque sheepherders in the days before the 1970’s when large numbers of men came to the Western US to be sheep men.

Alder Slope welcomed a group of families from within the US from a specific area, Laurel County Kentucky. Another cultural group in northwest Wallowa County were the West Virginians, mostly in Promise and Powwatka. All of the above mentioned groups have many descendants living in the County today. One short lived cultural group were the Greek railroad builders. They camped north of Wallowa on private land still known today as the Greek camp. There are 3-4 families in the valley today that are descendants of the Greeks.

Prepared and written by Marilyn Hulse March 2023.