Believe it or not: There are Painted Hills in Oregon

Painted Hills, OR.

Around 85 miles northeast of the city of Bend, Oregon is a little known treasure – a natural gallery of some of nature’s best masterpieces. It is called Painted Hills and that’s exactly what the structures are — colourful hills with strokes of red and black and shades of orange and grey too.

I don’t remember when exactly I first heard of this place. But I had made a mental note of it, in BOLD. Looking up pictures of Painted Hills made me put it down in my travel wishlist it was as good as printed in BOLD ‘an’ underlined too.

Then when we were making plans to go see Crater Lake, the deepest and probably the bluest lake in the United States, I saw my opportunity. If we were going to southern Oregon, we could stretch the trip a bit northeast and take ourselves to central Oregon and see this place that not a whole lot of people know about. Fewer people speak about it, although it ought to be more celebrated than it currently is.

To Painted Hills — The Trip Route

Our trip to Painted Hills started at Bend. We took US 97 and passed through Powell Butte, Ochoco Lake, Ochoco National Forest and the towns of Redmond and Prineville. After we left Prineville, the traffic on the roads kept thinning and we barely passed a car when we were in the wilderness of the Ochoco Forest area. And I remember hubby asking me if it was a place people had even heard about — “this Painted Hills place.” He hadn’t read up on the place; that’s mostly my department. When it was time to present my case, I had shown him some images of the painted hills and he’d easily agreed. But I had looked up if the place was one we could visit along with little kids and what I had gathered was that it was just fine.

We passed more forested area, tall cliffs and hills and all kinds of rock formations before we spotted a farm or two that looked too strange in the middle of all that rocky terrain. And still there were maybe 2-3 vehicles that we had came across after that exchange and I wondered if I’d be in deep trouble for taking my family to a deserted place.

To make matters more uneasy, our GPS signals had been long gone. However, having come so far, we drove on. Thankfully there was more than enough gas for the journey and back. And I had with me some notes on where to turn off the highway and what roads to take to our destination.

My trip-homework had told me that we’d pass a tiny little town called Mitchell and that just didn’t seem to come our way and I gathered from the non-interactive map that we had already passed the settlement. A few miles later there was that sign that read ‘John Day Fossil Beds’ and I heaved a sigh of relief. The sign directed us off the highway and into a narrow road that curved around several small hills and craggy rock forms.

Now, this route was quite quiet too and we were lost in our own thoughts when we turned around a bend and saw an enormous mound of land in bright red. Wow!! hubby, sonny boy and I literally chorused. And I’m sure my heart missed a beat at that sight.

Soon another seemingly misplaced farmland came into view and we turned into an unpaved road that led us to one of the prettiest picnic areas and a kiosk that had some information boards and a box of maps.

Just as we left the paved roads, we saw an SUV pass by and when we got to the picnic/restroom area, an elderly couple was preparing to leave. In the next 20 minutes that we sat down to have our picnic breakfast, we were the only ones there and I wondered again if it would be safe to take the kids to the trails in the area. Then a couple of cars arrived and then another couple.

We got back into the car and made our way to the Painted Hills overlook.

Before we knew it, more coloured hills came into the view and we were in the middle of a painted landscape.

Painted Hills Overlook Trail

At the overlook, we parked — and our car had some company this time — and I hurriedly slathered some sunscreen on my kids and led them and the hubby onto our first trail.

This one was the Painted Hills Overlook trail. This trail is a half mile hike with an elevation of around 400ft, say the maps. The higher up we went on the trail, the sights only got better and we were shown more hills with nature’s master strokes on them. There were red and tan striations and black spots on several of the hills. And they all made interesting patterns in the big picture.

Painted Hills Overlook

Another view from the Overlook.

One more sight from the overlook.

Now these hills are quite barren except for some brush and some wildflowers. But the hues and shades on the hills prettied up the place and made it a landscape like no other.

Some striated Hills, OR

Tan and Red hills with some black patches.

 Some striations up close.

Painted Cove

We were a bit exhausted after the walk up the overlook trail, more by the summer temperatures than the distance. But I had to go on this next trail. I thought I had to make it to Painted Cove even if I weren’t able to do any of the other ones. (There are around 6 trails up here in Painted Hills. )

I had read that this trail takes you up close to some of the coloured hills; so close that you could see the painted soil and its pores. They have boardwalks for a part of this trail to prevent hikers from stepping on the fragile landforms. My walk on this trail led me to more colours and more knowledge about the area, much more than I had read about before the trip.

How did these hills get painted?

I learnt that nature took millions of years to paint these hills in these vivid colours. These parts of Oregon have been treated with ash from the volcanoes of the cascade range. Then there was the erosion it was subjected to, plant and animal life and the climatic changes that came about in these parts in the last millions of years.

The colours of the land here are indications of the periods of wetness and dryness they went through, as well as the mineral content in the hills and the soil. The Iron Oxides reddened the hills and the manganese oxides added the yellows, oranges and tans. Concentrate Manganese (from certain plants, perhaps) seems to have added some black splashes. And rhyolitic lava is said to have created some lavender hillsides near Painted Cove.

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