LA GRANDE — One scenic drive, rich in history, is the 1,200-foot climb up Morgan Lake Road, south of La Grande.

It was called Mill Canyon Road for over 100 years. This gravel road winds through shaded forestland and is bordered by Mill Creek and Mill Canyon, both named for the early grist mill established in 1865 by Mr. Woods and a sawmill that the Arnolds operated in the 1880s.

This steep canyon road was also used as a thoroughfare for great bands of sheep that were driven through Old Town in La Grande and up the canyon road to prime pastureland on top. Driving the sheep up and down the road was a risky affair and costly at times, as one La Grande Observer story related.

“In June 1881, a band of one hundred sheep stampeded and piled up in the canyon a mile above town. The dead carcasses formed a fill twenty feet deep from one bank to the other. For several months thereafter, the people refused to drink city water.” Before this incident, Mill Creek was a major source of drinking water for La Grande, but not after being contaminated like this.

Among the sheep drovers who used this road was a young drover named Thomas Morgan, the son of a wealthy sheep operator from The Dalles. During the 1880s and early 1890s, young Morgan pastured his father’s sheep on top of the hill around a natural basin or depression that collected rainwater. It was just a shallow, swampy marsh, never very deep because the water steadily leaked on its north end onto the meadow and down into Deal Canyon.

However, nearby there was fresh water flowing in a creek, where Morgan likely watered his father’s sheep. That creek was later called Sheep Creek.

Due to the regular presence of Morgan’s sheep, locals started to identify the swampy marsh as Morgan basin and then Morgan Lake. The La Grande Observer stated in a 1903 article that it had been called Morgan Lake “for years” before the construction of the dam started in 1902-1903.

This is the story of how Morgan Lake and Morgan Lake Road were named. Oddly, Morgan never owned an acre of land on top of the hill, but he was a man of many land holdings throughout Northeastern Oregon. His ambitious endeavors were always in the newspaper, and even at the ripe age of 84, a 1955 article in the La Grande Observer wrote about him, “Oldster Climbs Icy Mt. Hood to Get New Angle on Country.” Morgan was also the author of a book, “My Story of the Last Indian War in the Northwest.” Surely, he was a man of accomplishments, but in all his pursuits, he always remained first and foremost a sheep man.

The Morgan Lake Park, bearing his name, was developed starting in 1959 when its last property owner, California Pacific Utilities, sold 205 acres to the City of La Grande for $7,500. Then in 1960, the city brought public access to the lake’s shoreline by laying a quarter-mile-long rock road. A campground was developed and today, this beautiful blue water lake is a place for swimming, motorless boating, canoeing, and fishing for trout, catfish, and crappies.

If you plan to camp there, please register at the kiosk and also ask the camp host or city parks and recreation department about using a campfire. The campground is open from April 22 through Oct. 31, and each night the entrance gate is closed at 10 p.m.