‘Stop Requested’: Salt licks and squad cars in Baker City

Editor’s note: This is the fifth in “Stop Requested,” OPB’s multi-part series about a journey to the corners of Oregon by public transit. You can read the first, second, third and fourth installments of the series.

For 14 days, and using more than 30 buses, OPB’s Lillian Karabaic and Prakruti Bhatt experienced the joys and difficulties of rural transit — and talked to many people along the way.

Friday, Sept. 20

Bus 15: Bend Hawthorne Station > Malheur Council on Aging, Ontario

Oregon Eastern POINT, $53, 261.6 miles

After a two-day layover in Bend, we’re back on the bus and headed east on the Oregon Eastern POINT, which provides stops at eight different communities between Bend and Ontario. It’s the only option for long-distance travel in this part of the state, subsidized by Oregon Department of Transportation funds.

The five-hour hour journey isn’t cheap though, at $53 per ticket, but it’s a comfortable ride with slow-but-functional Wi-Fi, outlets, and only three other passengers on the full-sized coach bus.

One of our fellow passengers, who is using crutches, has been taking this bus frequently. She begins in Salem and connects in Bend, on the way to her parents’ house in Burns which she is working to clean up. She departs at Reid’s Country Store in Burns, and is met by Harney County’s paratransit service.

The bus pulls into Malheur Council on Aging in Ontario, and a new time zone, a little after 7 p.m.

Saturday, Sept. 21

Bus 16: Malheur Council on Aging, Ontario > Love’s Travel Stop, Baker City

FlixBus, $23.49, 74.2 miles

A quick overnight in Ontario, the birthplace of tater tots. Then we face the challenge of getting to Baker City by public transit. It turns out, it’s not exactly … legitimate.

FlixBus, the company that acquired long-distance bus operator Greyhound in 2021, travels from Ontario to La Grande on its way to Portland.

Right in the middle of Ontario and La Grande is Baker City. But earlier this year, Baker City disappeared off the list of FlixBus destinations. This happened as FlixBus has been closing down bus stations across the country.

I am left wondering — how are we going to get to Baker City? Grant County People Mover’s twice-a-month bus from John Day to Baker City was discontinued earlier this year due to low ridership (“approximately eight riders in the past year,” according to their general manager). There’s no official public transit route into Baker City from the east or the south anymore.

Through a series of phone calls, we find out we can buy a ticket to La Grande and simply get off the bus in Baker City at the truck stop, and not get back on — as long as the bus driver would let us.

“It’s an unofficial stop,” says our bus driver. “You’re an adult, you’re 18, I can’t force you back on the bus.”

When we reach Love’s Travel Stop in Baker City, we get off the bus and are met by local transit enthusiast Matt Krabacher. “At least for Baker City in particular, we now have very, very limited public transit options to get out of the city,” says Krabacher.

Krabacher is trying to change that. He’s part of the Association of Oregon Rail and Transit Advocates, who are attempted to restore service on the Amtrak “Pioneer” route that ran from Salt Lake City through Eastern Oregon until 1997.

Krabacher thinks trains are ideal in a region where driving, especially in the winter, can be difficult. “There’s two passes to the north of us that close regularly in winter due to inclement weather, and one valley to the south of us, towards Ontario, that closes. So in wintertime, you can get stuck here,” says Krabacher. That makes it even harder to access health care in a part of the state that has dwindling health care resources.

We have two days until we can catch our bus to La Grande, so Krabacher recommends we spend our Saturday evening at an event you wouldn’t find anywhere else in the world: The Great Salt Lick auction.

Baker City local Whit Deschner says he got the idea for the event when he looked at a salt lick sideways and thought, “doesn’t that kind of look like a sculpture?”

Now, for almost 20 years, ranchers have donated salt licks from their livestock to be auctioned off at The Great Salt Lick to raise money for Parkinson’s disease research at Oregon Health & Science University. They’ve raised more than $200,000 from selling blocks of salt.

Related: How East Oregon’s Great Salt Lick auction helps in the fight against Parkinson’s disease

Related: Watch Oregon Art Beat episode on the Great Salt Lick Contest in 2011

This is the first year Baker City Lions Club is running the event, taking over from Deschner, whose own Parkinson’s has made running the event harder. He still makes jokes from the stage, however.

The event, which is where “culture meets agriculture” is about bringing the Baker City ranching community and the artist community together. A few of the salt licks tonight are “forgeries” — actually sculptures from other materials meant to look like salt licks. The event has become beloved in Baker City. There is even a large salt lick sculpture in Baker City’s downtown — not made from real salt, though.

Locals Susan and Irv Townsend are ready to add to to their collection of salt licks. “We have several blocks at home. In fact, we’ve resold them,“ said Irv Townsend. ”We just run ‘em through, we’ll buy ‘em and then put ‘em up for auction again."

Once everyone has picked their favorites … it’s time for the auction, by professional auctioneer Mib Dailey. The audience of several hundred people cheers as salt licks are paraded down the aisle. A few of the salt licks come with poems, or names like “Mount Lickmore.”

Monday, Sept. 22

‘Bus’ 17: Churchill School, Baker City > NEO Transit Baker County

Baker County Patrol Car, $0, 1.6 miles

One of the volunteers at The Great Salt Lick event is Baker County Sheriff Travis Ash. Word spreads during the evening in a particular small-town way about our adventure by transit. When Ash hears we need a ride to the bus stop on Monday morning, he asks what “counts” as public transit. There are no taxis or ride-hailing services in Baker City.

And that’s how at 6:30 a.m. on Monday, we end up riding in a brand-new Baker County patrol car. The tiny holding cell is fresh enough that I might be the first person to sit inside. It’s certainly one way to arrive in style to the bus station.

Baker City Herald reports that Baker City now has one Uber driver as of Nov. 14 — and it’s not Sheriff Ash.

Bus 18: NEO Transit Baker County > La Grande Transit Hub

CCNO Baker City to La Grande Connector, $8, 46.6 miles

Community Connection of Northeast Oregon (CCNO) operates a connector bus between Baker City and La Grande on weekdays. Our bus driver, Beth St John, is 70 years old and said that she appreciates that CCNO hires seniors. She likes driving the bus and knows all her regulars — she even waited a few minutes for one of her regular riders in Haines when he didn’t show to the bus stop.

Today, the bus has one student and one professor on board riding to the first day of school at Eastern Oregon University. We pull in right on time to La Grande Transit Hub, where we have most of the day to wait before our next bus to Wallowa County.

Next in the series: We head from La Grande to Enterprise, where the bus driver fills us in on all the local sasquatch sightings.