One of the seven great wonders of Oregon as Travel Oregon promotes is the Painted Hills. Located 4 hours east of Portland, the Painted Hills are actually just one unit of three that comprise the John Day Fossil Beds National Park. Besides the Painted Hills Unit, you can also visit Sheep Rock Unit (the location of Blue Basin) or Clarno Unit (location of dramatic Palisades). We visited all three March 25-26 2022, and we’re happy to share our tips in planning a trip to the Painted Hills and other units. This post will focus on getting to the area, and future posts will cover visiting each of the park’s units.
Timing Your Visit, and Planning the Drive
Because this area is in the high desert, the best times of year to visit this National Park is in spring and fall, when the weather isn’t as hot, and you don’t have to check the weather conditions of the winter passes which could require chains or have limited alternate routes when there are vehicle accidents or poor conditions. During our visit in end of March, we enjoyed temperatures in the comfortable 60s-70s during the day that cooled off to the 50s (Fahrenheit) in the evenings. Even though we went on hikes that had no shade, it was pleasant because of the cooperative weather. We enjoyed partly cloudy skies and sunshine, but even if you get some rain during your visit, it’s a treat because it will intensify the colors you see in the rocks and soils of the Fossil Beds units. There is no entrance fee to enter any of the units, but note that only the Sheep Rock Unit offers a visitor’s center. Each of the units is about an hour drive from each other.
If you are coming from Portland, there are several routes you can take to the area depending on what you would like to see. The fastest route is to take Highway 26 through Mt Hood Village and Government Camp, and Madras and Prineville to get to Mitchell. This is the fastest route and has the best access to food options, gas stations, and cell phone service. Taking this route will give you views of driving to and through Mt Hood. It wasn’t open yet in 2022, but this route also can take you pass by Kahneeta hot springs. I opted to take this route on the way back, versus to, the national park – take two different routes to and from to make a circle.
Another route you can take is I-84 through the Columbia River Gorge, giving yourself scenic views there past Multnomah Falls and Hood River and part of the Dalles, and then taking Highway 197 or 97 down. Going this way, you can make a stop by going on Highway 218 to visit Shaniko Ghost Town, and also the Clarno Unit on your way as your first unit of the John Day Fossil Beds. You can also choose to swing up to Fossil to do your own fossil digging at the only legal fossil dig site in Oregon behind a high school (great overview here at YesDirt!)
We opted for 97 because it is also part of the Journey Through Time Scenic Byway, even though we were not planning on taking it all the way to its end at Baker City. This route takes a little longer but only by about 10 minutes (not including stops), and has less access to towns including notably gas and cell service. But the byway name seems to promise good scenery we figured, so why not since we were already starting in the mid-morning so had the time. The route gave us glimpses of the top of Mt Hood behind us as we wove our way through swaths of greenery from Tussock-bunch grasses and sagebruch, farmland and wind turbines, valleys and canyons. It is a fun, picturesque drive that I recommend.
We opted to use the town of Mitchell as our home base during our stay in the area. Mitchell is a small town (population less then 150 people) with one local market for groceries, one gas station, one brewery/restaurant for lunch/dinner, and two options (one of which is a drive-up cart) for breakfast/lunch. This is the closest place to stay (if you are not camping) to the three units – about 20 minutes to Painted Hills. Alternatively, you can stay in the larger town of Prineville or Dayville, an hour away. You could make visiting the area a day trip though that is a lot of driving – the area is about a 4 hour drive from Portland. It is only half that time and thus more day trip doable from Bend as another option.
Staying overnight 1-2 days lets you take your time and enjoy multiple trails at each unit, and we watched two sunsets in the Painted Hills. We used this modern AirBnB rental for a 2 bedroom house just for ourselves and took advantage of the kitchen to cook our meals, and the host was great in providing details about the area and things to do with a mini written guide before we started our trip, so thoughtful. A lot of other rentals are more rustic and we appreciated how clean and chic the vibe here is. The other option we considered are the Painted Hills Cottages. There’s also an Airbnb above the Little Pine gift shop which may be tempting given its in town location but when on their social media I saw their windows painted to support Trump and posing with guns in front of the building I immediately crossed it off.
Three main tips additionally for your drive here. Download any maps locally to your device or print the directions as cell phone service may be intermittent at times. We didn’t have much problem with this and many of the routes you are going many miles on a road anyway, but it may vary depending on your cellular carrier and the weather. Also, with gas stations few and far between on some portions of routes, do not wait until you are almost empty to fill your tank. Finally, be sure to pack some snacks/lunch and water with you for your road trip – we didn’t encounter any issues but if there’s traffic incidents you may find yourself waiting a long time.
Shaniko Ghost Town
Shaniko is a town of less then 40 people, incorporated in 1901 and originally a center for wool (at one point nicknamed Wool Capital of the World), a hub connecting via railroad to Biggs Junction. Then an alternative railway line route diverted traffic in 1911, and two fires in the town in 1910 and 1911 marked when the town began to decline – that’s right, the boom of this town was only a decade long. The passenger rail service ceased in 1930, and entire rail service to Shaniko ended in 1966, with Shaniko first being called a “ghost town” in 1959 at the Oregon Centennial Exposition when it was awarded “Ghost Town of the Year” (Wikipedia article or Oregon Encyclopedia articles on Shaniko). Today, Shaniko operates mostly as a ghost town for tourism, with literally a handful of local businesses open seasonally. 
For instance, we stopped at The Seven Directions (shown above) which offers the best sandwiches in town – though it honestly notes it is also the only sandwich in town. We opted for coffee, though they also have ice cream (soft serve and hard scoop), hot dogs and mini pizzas, and had a small gift shop of various vintage native jewelry and crafts and Pendleton blankets and towels, as well as functioning as a thrift and consignment shop. I couldn’t resist getting a Pendleton spa towel to support the business with our dollars and the towel is so eye-catching. We also stopped at General Store Shaniko, where we purchased the stained glass like bowl you see below. For another souvenir idea, consider buying a postcard at the general store and mailing it to yourself at the Shaniko post office so you’ll have a postmark from this town (and supports USPS).
The attractions we visited are free or a have a donation box if you’d like to support this tiny community. As soon as you pull into town, you will probably notice the largest building, the Shaniko Hotel built in 1900 that functioned as a hotel, bank, stage stop, saloon, dance hall and more. Unfortunately it is closed though you can peek in the windows and pose with two wooden old west cowboys on a bench by the lobby entrance. The hotel is renovated, but apparently the big business owner (who had several purchases of land here) and the town had a disagreement, and the owner abandoned his ghost town tourism development plans. This helps explain though why this building looks a lot better shape then some of the others you can peer into. 
Right across the street from the abandoned hotel you can see the Wagon Yard. This is a covered picnic area if you were clever enough to pack snacks or a lunch for your trip if you want to enjoy an al fresco meal here.
Across the street from the Wagon Yard, look for the red barn with the open doors – this is the Shaniko Livery Barn circa 1900 that houses free/donation box a museum of many vehicles from the past. We are not car aficionados so may not have recognized or appreciated the transportation museum fully – there are signs identifying some of these nostalgic vehicles in various stages of aging, but not much other description. The other big red barn with Shaniko emblazoned on it proudly was a wool storage shed.
Walk towards the strip of old wooden buildings where you can find and enter (free/donation box) the Shaniko Sage Museum to see a free library and many old articles and photos of Shaniko hey days. You can walk past the old saloon, and the rotting piano on this old group of buildings. Supposedly ghosts still haunt the Shaniko hotel and the rest of town, but we didn’t stay around to find out and who are the ghosts. From the Shaniko Star front page clipping in the museum, the mayor John C Fowles was assassinated by the former town Marshal – wonder if he is still lingering here? You can probably take some beautiful black and white or evening photos here to capture the quiet mood, like in this Architectural Afterlife post.
Logistically, here in town there is a 24 hour self-serve gas pump here by 97/4th Street called the Outpost (though it is pricier then other towns you may pass by: we saw$ 6/gallon), and separately a public bathroom is in the middle of town on E street with a donation box.
Next to the public restrooms, at the big yellow building of a city hall, look for the side door to visit the Shaniko jail. There is some information printed to read about some of the old time shenanigans here – such as explaining scorch marks in one cell because the prisoner set his blanket on fire to try to start an escape. You can go in one of the jail cells, and along this same street you can also find the old prison wagon which functions as a pretty good photo op too – you see me showing of the new $10 bowl from the general store. Apparently there is also an old school and chapel, which we missed seeing.
Our next stop after Shaniko were the Palisades at the Clarno Unit. Hopefully this post was useful in planning a trip to the Painted Hills with our route and and sharing the interesting stop of Shaniko on the Journey Through Time Scenic Byway. 
Painted Hills Trip March 2022 Posts
- Planning a trip to the Painted Hills (this post)
- Visiting the Clarno Unit and Sheep Rock Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Park
- Visiting the Painted Hills
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