Whit Deschner, the founder of the Great Salt Lick auction, poses with salt licks at the Oregon Trail Livestock Supply store in Baker City, Ore., on Sep. 12, 2024, in this provided photo. The salt licks will be auctioned off at at the annual auction event in Baker City which has raised more than $212,000 for Parkinson's disease research since it started in 2006.
Courtesy Walt Berling
At a charity art auction taking place this Saturday in Eastern Oregon’s Baker City, it might be a bit of a stretch to call the lots up for bid “art.” They were sculpted not from clay or stone but from blocks of salt left out by ranchers for cattle, horses, goats or other animals to lick with their tongues or nibble bites out of in fenced corrals or on the open range.
Whit Deschner, a retired commercial fisherman, photographer and poet, created the Great Salt Lick auction and contest after a day spent mushroom hunting with a friend at his cabin in the woods in the foothills of the Wallowas.
“We were just having a glass of wine and he puts out a salt lick for the deer,” Deschner said. “And he had one that was severely licked … and I just said, ‘Boy, that looks like a sculpture that you’d stick in front of a federal building or something.’”
Mib Dailey, a rancher in Baker County, has served as the auctioneer for the Great Salt Lick auction and contest in Baker City since its launch in 2006. In this undated provided photo, he auctions off a salt lick at the Crossroads Carnegie Art Center in Baker City where the event was formerly held.
Courtesy of Whit Deschner
Deschner then coaxed his friend and neighbor Mib Dailey, a rancher who has worked as an auctioneer in Baker County for more than 50 years, to get involved.
“I thought he was crazy. You know, art’s all in the eye of the beholder and Whit’s got some pretty weird eyes, I think,” Dailey said. “A picture, a painting or something is art, but a salt lick? Well, I guess you could distinguish [them] as art. They’re all different. There’s no two alike, that’s for sure.”
Related: 'Oregon Art Beat' first visited the Great Salt Lick in 2011
Over the years, Deschner and Dailey have become skilled at identifying which animal’s distinctive imprint has been left on a block of salt, which can vary in color, from cobalt blue to bone white, depending on its content of vitamins and minerals.
The blocks of salt licks that are auctioned off at the Great Salt Lick auction and contest vary not only in shape and size but also in color, depending on the content of minerals and vitamins they contain. This undated photo provided by Deschner shows a pair of salt licks that were auctioned off that contained cobalt, giving them a distinctive blue hue.
Courtesy of Whit Deschner
“Goats and deer are really realists. Cows are kind of modernists. They’re like cubists. Horses are worthless. They just don’t have any sense of art whatsoever,” Deschner said.
Art or not, the salt licks routinely fetch up to thousands of dollars at auction and compete for honors and cash prizes, including a people’s choice award.
Since its launch in 2006, the Great Salt Lick auction and contest in Baker City has raised more than $200,000 for Parkinson's disease research at OHSU. The blocks of salt licks that are auctioned off vary in shape, size and color, depending on the vitamins and minerals they contain. The salt lick in this photo was titled "Negative Space" and sold at the auction in Sep. 2016.
Courtesy of Whit Deschner
But Dailey, who has served as the Great Salt Lick’s auctioneer for nearly 20 years, thinks it’s not so much the appearance of the salt lick that drives up the price, but instead the generosity of the community.
“I think this Baker County is one of the most giving communities I have ever seen anywhere in my life … No matter what the salt block looks like — it might be the last one that’s as flat as a pancake and no shape to it at all — and it might bring $2,000 … It’s in the eye of the beholder and the heart of the giving,” he said.
Since 2006, the event has raised more than $212,000 for the Parkinson’s disease and movement disorders program at OHSU. Deschner himself was diagnosed with the disease nearly 25 years ago.
The Great Salt Lick auction and contest held each year in Baker City has raised more than $200,000 for Parkinson's disease research at OHSU. The annual event held in Baker City was created by Whit Deschner who was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2000. This undated photo mosaic provided by Deschner features some of the hundreds of salt licks that have been auctioned off over the years.
Courtesy of Whit Deschner
He’s been relatively lucky with his fight against the neurodegenerative disease by his own assessment. But the illness is taking a toll on Deschner’s health and this will be his last year organizing the event before handing over the reins to the Baker City Lions Club.
“I just don’t have the energy for it anymore,” Deschner said.
Reflecting on its future, he hopes the auction will continue and that it helps put Baker City on the map as a place in Eastern Oregon that’s “synonymous with a cause.”
“I’d like people just to drive through and say, ‘Boy, this is the town that’s for Parkinson’s disease research,’ and go from there,” he said.
The Great Salt Lick auction and contest takes place on Saturday, Sept. 21 at the Churchill School in Baker City. Doors open at 5:30 p.m.
Whit Deschner and Mib Dailey spoke to “Think Out Loud” host Dave Miller. Click play to listen to the full conversation: