Canyon City

In 2021, Home published a short comic called They Called Him Buckaroo Sam and an issue of Oregon Historical Quarterly about Oregon's Chinese diaspora.

He drew inspiration from newspaper clippings, oral histories, and photographs to imagine what life was like for Chinese cowboys like Buckaroo Sam on the farms and ranches of Grant County and in Chinese immigrant communities in John Day or Canyon City.

There was only one image that I could find of Buckaroo Sam in his later years.

So I had to reimagine him as a younger man.

He owned some kind of restaurant in Baker City.

I can't remember what that was called.

And I think he had a place in Canyon City called the Nugget Restaurant.

His restaurants got positive write-ups in several newspapers.

This experience took place in my college years between twenty seven and twenty ten.

My name is Derek, and I grew up in a small town in Oregon called Canyon City.

It was a beautiful town right outside of Malheur National Forest, and the population was roughly six hundred and eighty people back then.

I lived out in the country for most of my childhood a few miles outside of town really close to the national forest.