"Joseph, Oregon" a Joseph Travel Page by ZanieOR

My home page has some photos and information about Joseph, population about 1,200, which is the second largest of four incorporated cities in Wallowa County, population 7,000, Oregon's most northeastern county.
It is a very pretty town, with six large public bronze sculptures on Main St., all cast at fine arts foundries in the county.
The oldest is Valley Bronze foundry, founded in 1982, which has done some casting for the WWII monument in Washington, D.C.
Joseph is a great place to live, with a view of the mountains any place in town. The reason there's not more people is that it's hard to make a living in Wallowa County, and a high unemployment rate in the winter.

A few years ago there was a Main St. improvement project, which includes the beautiful bronzes by local artists, cobblestone sidewalks, and flower boxes w/ big boulders (adopted by different people).
It makes the town very picturesque, Some people hate to see the town change, but I would rather see art galleries than boarded up empty businesses.
One of our sculptures is an eagle called "The Spirit of Joseph" (both Chief Joseph and the town of Joseph). It's a beautiful bronze, and very appropriate, as the high school sports teams are Eagles.

A lot of great people live here and what I love about it is that the population is very diverse, unfortunately not in terms of race, but in terms of personalities, politics, etc. There are artists and ranchers (sometimes the same person), environmentalists and cowboys (again, sometimes the same person), old timers and new blood. It's not always easy to make a living but there's a lot of creative people and ideas always trying to make things better; for example since we only have one mill in the county now, a nonprofit called Wallowa Resources has been successfully working to create local natural resource jobs with fire prevention, wildlife habitat and weed control contracts. There's usually always some big controversy brewing (especially in the winter) and not everyone agrees on everything, but that's what makes it interesting to live here.

Update, Sept. 21, 2005: To find out about hiking here in the Eagle Cap Wilderness be sure to visit the Joseph page of mtncorg -- we had a "meet" in my front yard while drinking a Terminal Gravity beer this summer. His page is almost exclusively about his experiences hiking in the wilderness and has some great photos!