Lake County is one of the 36 counties in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2020 census, the population was 8,160. Its county seat is Lakeview.Lake County, Oregon website The county is named after the many lakes found within its boundaries,McArthur, Lewis A. and Lewis L. McArthur, "Lake County", Oregon Geographic Names (Seventh Edition), Oregon Historical Society Press, Portland, Oregon, 2003, p. 553. including Lake Abert, Summer Lake, Hart Lake, and Goose Lake.
Lake County is in the high desert region known as the Oregon Outback, on the northwestern edge of the Great Basin. The county is generally divided between the communities around Lakeview and Paisley to the south and the communities around Christmas Valley, Fort Rock, and Silver Lake to the north.
Its economy consists largely of agriculture and natural resource management and extraction. It is home to many large cattle ranches, hay farms, and timber holdings (both public and private), as well as several frontier towns and early 20th-century homesteads. Although lumber was once a primary economic driver in Lake County, today only one mill remains, at Lakeview.
History
Pre-Columbian Pre-Clovis era coprolites found in the Paisley Caves in northern Lake County in 2007 have been radiocarbon dated to 14,300 calendar years before present. DNA extracted from these human remains bears certain genetic markers found only in Native American populations. Luther Cressman found prehistoric artifacts in the Fort Rock Caves of northern Lake County in 1938, including basketry, stone tools, and a cache of woven sagebrush bark sandals which have been dated to more than 10,000 years ago.
Modern European traders, explorers and military expeditions arrived in the region during the early part of the 19th century. Peter Skene Ogden led Hudson's Bay Company trappers to Goose Lake in 1827. In 1832, the Hudson Bay trappers under John Work were in the Goose Lake Valley and their journals mentioned Hunter's Hot Springs. Work's expedition visited Warner Lakes and Lake Abert and camped at Crooked Creek in the Chandler Park area. There they documented eating wild plums, which still grow in the area. They also reported being attacked by Indians. In 1838, Colonel J. J. Abert, a U.S. engineer, prepared a map that includes Warner Lakes and other natural features using information from the Hudson Bay trappers. In 1843, John C. Fremont led a party which named Christmas (Hart) Lake.
Lake County once hosted significant populations of Basquehttp://www.heraldandnews.com/articles/2008/10/12/news/diversions/doc48d2fbf09b840436604006.txt and Irish sheepherders. Disputes over grazing rights, exacerbated by the introduction of wheat farming, led to the eruption of range wars between cattle ranchers and sheep herders. At least one band of masked rifle-armed cattlemen killed sheep in the northern part of the county and in Deschutes County during the early 20th century and they came to be known as "sheepshooters". According to the Oregon History Project, 2,300 sheep were killed in a single night in April 1904 in Lake County.
Lake County grew with the arrival of homesteaders, but the dry climate made for challenging development.
Lake County was created from Jackson and Wasco Counties on October 24, 1874, by the State Legislature. It then included the present Klamath County and all of the present Lake County except Warner Valley. In 1882, land was assigned to create Klamath County, and in 1885 the Warner area from Grant County was added. Linkville, now Klamath Falls, was the first county seat.
M. Bullard gave as the Lakeview townsite. By the 1875 election, a town had been started and an election moved the county seat to Lakeview. Because of poor transportation connections with the rest of Oregon, the early economic orientation of Lake County was toward California: both the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner arrived in Lakeview daily, often before The Oregonian. During the 1840s and 1850s the county was part of the military courier route between The Dalles on the Columbia River and the Presidio in San Francisco.
The county acquired a railroad connection in the 1890s. That railroad spur, the Nevada–California–Oregon Railway line running from Lakeview to Reno, Nevada, emphasized the isolation of the county from the rest of Oregon.Nevada-California-Oregon Railroad from trainweb.org A devastating fire in 1900 destroyed much of Lakeview, including 75 businesses.
During the summer of 2012, two wildfires burned large areas of Lake County. Both fires were the result of lightning strikes. The Lava Fire burned over of public rangeland and scrub forest in and around lava beds north of Fort Rock. The Barry Point Fire burned of public and private forest land along the California border."Morning update - August 7, 2012" , "Wildfire - Oregon Department of Forestry", Oregon Department of Forestry, Salem, Oregon, August 7, 2012.Barry Point Fire Retrospectives and Lessons Learned , United States Department of Agriculture, United states Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Region, Fremont–Winema National Forest, Lakeview, Oregon, May 3, 2013.
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (2.6%) is water. It is the third-largest county in Oregon.
Lake County ranges in elevation from . The highest point in Lake County is Crane Mountain. The mountain is located north of the California border. Lake County has six other peaks with elevations above , all located in the southern half of the county. Hager Mountain is the highest peak in the northern part of the county."Feature Detail Report for: Crane Mountain", Geologic Names Information System, United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior, Reston, Virginia, November 27, 2014."Oregon Top 100", SummitPost.org, accessed January 6, 2015."Feature Detail Report for: Hager Mountain", Geologic Names Information System, United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior, Reston, Virginia, November 27, 2014.
The area includes alkali lakes, high desert scrub, and forests of Western Juniper, Ponderosa Pine, and Lodgepole Pine in the hills and mountains. There are also several unusual geologic features and good areas for rockhounding and geological touring.
Lost Forest Research Natural Area is a protected relic forest closely associated with the Christmas Valley Sand Dunes in northeastern Lake County. Fossil Lake is an area nearby where many fossils of prehistoric animals have been identified. Glass Buttes is an obsidian complex in the extreme northeast corner of the county. Crack in the Ground, northeast of Christmas Valley is a long fissure with ice in its floor year round. Big Hole, Hole-in-the-Ground, and Fort Rock are ancient maar craters in the northwestern part of the county.
The southern portion of the county was designated as a dark-sky preserve by DarkSky International in 2024.
Watersheds These twelve watersheds occur in whole or in part within Lake County: Beaver-South Fork watershed Goose Lake watershed Guano watershed Lake Abert watershed Little Deschutes Lost River watershed Crooked River, South Fork Silver watershed Sprague Summer Lake watershed Warner Lakes watershed Williamson
Lakes
Named lakes wholly or partly in Lake County include: Abert Lake Alkali Lake Duncan Reservoir Thompson Reservoir Ana Reservoir Campbell Lake Crump Lake Deadhorse Lake Dog Lake Drews Reservoir Goose Lake Hart Lake Heart Lake Silver Lake Summer Lake Warner Lakes (Pelican, Crump, Hart, Anderson, Swamp, Mugwump, Flagstaff, Upper Campbell, Lower Campbell, Stone Corral, Turpin, and Bluejoint).McArthur, Lewis A. and Lewis L. McArthur, "Warner Valley", Oregon Geographic Names (Seventh Edition), Oregon Historical Society Press, Portland, Oregon, 2003, p. 1010-1011.Gottberg, John Anderson, "Pronghorn Paradise" , The Bulletin, Bend, Oregon, August 16, 2009.Jackman, E.R. and R.A. Long,The Oregon Desert, Canton Press, Caldwell, Idaho: 1964, p. 361.
Adjacent counties Deschutes County (north) Harney County (east) Washoe County, Nevada (south) Modoc County, California (south) Klamath County (west)
National protected areas Deschutes National Forest (part) Fremont National Forest (part) Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge (part)
Demographics
2020 census +Lake County, Oregon – Racial and ethnic compositionRace / Ethnicity (NH = Non-Hispanic)Pop 1980Pop 1990Pop 2000Pop 2010 Pop 2020% 1980% 1990% 2000% 2010% 2020White alone (NH)7,2426,6896,6176,8756,50896.15%93.08%89.15%87.08%79.75%Black or African American alone (NH)35837490.04%0.07%0.11%0.47%0.60%Native American or Alaska Native alone (NH)831781661491141.10%2.48%2.24%1.89%1.40%Asian alone (NH)52415344520.69%0.57%0.71%0.56%0.64%Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander alone (NH)x included in the Asian category in the 1980 Censusx included in the Asian category in the 1990 Census10510xx0.13%0.06%0.12%Other race alone (NH)0367420.00%0.04%0.08%0.09%0.51%Mixed race or Multiracial (NH)x not an option in the 1980 Censusx not an option in the 1990 Census158233583xx2.13%2.95%7.14%Hispanic or Latino (any race)1522704045458022.02%3.76%5.44%6.90%9.83%Total7,5327,1867,4227,8958,160 100.00%100.00%100.00%100.00%100.00%
As of the 2020 census, the county had a population of 8,160. Of the residents, 19.1% were under the age of 18 and 24.7% were 65 years of age or older; the median age was 47.3 years. For every 100 females there were 116.3 males, and for every 100 females age 18 and over there were 120.8 males. 0.0% of residents lived in urban areas and 100.0% lived in rural areas.
The racial makeup of the county was 82.0% White, 0.6% Black or African American, 1.6% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.7% Asian, 0.1% Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, 3.9% from some other race, and 11.1% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race comprised 9.8% of the population.
There were 3,387 households in the county, of which 24.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them and 22.9% had a female householder with no spouse or partner present. About 33.3% of all households were made up of individuals and 16.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.
There were 4,195 housing units, of which 19.3% were vacant. Among occupied housing units, 69.5% were owner-occupied and 30.5% were renter-occupied. The homeowner vacancy rate was 2.3% and the rental vacancy rate was 8.4%.
2010 census As of the 2010 census, there were 7,895 people, 3,378 households, and 2,148 families residing in the county. The population density was . There were 4,439 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the county was 90.3% white, 2.1% American Indian, 0.7% Asian, 0.5% black or African American, 0.1% Pacific islander, 3.1% from other races, and 3.3% from two or more races. Those of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 6.9% of the population. In terms of ancestry, 27.9% were German, 19.3% were Irish, 19.2% were English, and 5.1% were American.
Of the 3,378 households, 24.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 52.1% were married couples living together, 7.4% had a female householder with no husband present, 36.4% were non-families, and 31.3% of all households were made up of individuals. The average household size was 2.20 and the average family size was 2.73. The median age was 47.4 years.
The median income for a household in the county was $41,105 and the median income for a family was $47,188. Males had a median income of $39,435 versus $26,000 for females. The per capita income for the county was $22,586. About 13.1% of families and 17.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 27.4% of those under age 18 and 5.8% of those age 65 or over.
2000 census