But as I finished, one young man raised his hand and spoke politely. We even got a creek flows through the place in the wet months. It's called Lost Creek. Named after the Lost Wagon Train. A number of students said nothing but nodded appreciatively to signal the triumph of family history over library research.
Every week there's somebody else in there digging up the creek bed.
One guy even brought in a back-loader. Safely away from Burns, I explained with confidence to an audience in Baker City that Halfway was a descriptive term, suggesting the town's central location between the mining-era outposts of Cornucopia and Pine. There was a town meeting, with lots of sentiment toward the name Bellevue, but not enough for a majority vote. It was getting late, so one of the town fathers said, 'Let's go home. Lots of folks began to leave, but another man stood up and said, 'Don't give up just yet.