The Museum at Warm Springs

The exhibits ably unpack how the Warm Springs, Wasco and Northern Paiute tribes ordered their lives around the bounty of the land and water.

Museum at Warm Springs (Courtesy of Museum at Warm Springs)
By Aaron Mesh

2189 Highway 26, Warm Springs, 541-553-3331, museumatwarmsprings.org. 9 am–5 pm Tuesday–Saturday. $7, students 50 cents, children 5–12 $3.50, under 5 free.

I suspect that most people who stop at this tribal museum on the Warm Springs Reservation are looking to stretch their legs on the standard weekend drive between Portland and Bend. But it merits a more intentional visit. Modest in scale but rich in historical scope, the exhibits ably unpack how the Warm Springs, Wasco and Northern Paiute tribes ordered their lives around the bounty of the land and water: Feasts marked each year’s first harvests of huckleberries and salmon. Inside a plank house, a wedding trade diorama highlights the delicate economic negotiations that surrounded a happy couple. Both the exhibits and the striking 1993 building that holds them, standing in a valley of cottonwood trees across the highway from a casino piled with Star Wars doodads, feel like an anchor, tying a people to traditions that endure despite a century of invaders trying to sweep them away.

Don’t miss: Driving in, tune your radio to 91.9 FM. That’s KWSO, a tribal station where programming ranges from honky-tonk to drum circles.

Will kids like it? Honestly, this is probably a hard sell. But get them some fry bread at Eagle Crossing Restaurant just up Highway 26.

See the rest of Oregon’s Museum Trail here!

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