Photo and Article by Shiraz Mukarram, Manager of Communications
Drive any highway in Oregon Trail Electric Cooperative’s service territory, and you can read the fire history in the hillsides. The 2024 Durkee Fire burned roughly 300,000 acres of Eastern Oregon. Most of us know those hills by heart. Visitors do not.
And the visitors keep coming. In Travel Oregon’s latest survey, 56% of Eastern Oregon’s visitors said outdoor recreation was part of their trip, more than any other activity. Most did not grow up reading a fire-danger sign. On land protected by the Oregon Department of Forestry, recreation accounts for 12% of wildfire starts, campfires and target shooting chief among them. Many of those fires are started by people just passing through. A single out-of-state weekend can rewrite a fire season.
That is why OTEC, working with local chambers of commerce, produced free visitor campground guides for Baker, Grant, Harney and Union counties.