Painted Hills

Why should it be a National Park?

The little-known John Day Basin in central Oregon's high desert contains some of the world's most alien-looking landscapes, with colorful hills that extend for hundreds of miles. This rainbow landscape is scattered across a region of five-million-acres with immense visual and geologic importance, yet only 14,000 acres of it are protected as part of John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. Instead of celebrating and protecting this vast and unique painted desert, most of the lands surrounding the John Day basin are ranches, farms, and sites of natural resource extraction which are forever altering this missing icon of the American landscape. The focal point of this region are the spectacular Painted Hills. Unlike the red sandstone of the Southwest, which actually displays shades of orange and yellow, the red pigments found here result from the volcanic ash found in the lowest level of the John Day Strata or rock layer, dating from 33-million-years-ago.

The Painted Hills are perhaps the most visually alluring place in the country that flies under our collective radar. If more people knew about and experienced the natural splendor found beyond the cascade mountains, there would be no doubt that this exemplary desert environment would be better protected and admired.