Detroit Lake

So we're going to head up toward Mount Jefferson is the future hope, the goal for this weekend.

We're going to spend some time in the Mount Jefferson wilderness area, probably camp there for one night, and then head in and do some kayaking near Detroit Lake, and then head over to Silver Falls and try and work a little bit more on some things, you know, in that area.

So I've been to Silver Falls before.

It'll be good to go back.

Welcome to 50 States of Fear, Oregon, everyone, and remember, a legend begins with a sighting.

Now, our first case that we're gonna talk about tonight, you guys, is called the Detroit Lake Logging Camp Visitor, and this happened around 1970 east of Detroit Lakes, Marion County, Oregon.

And the primary witness for this encounter was a girl named Chloe, and she was 16 years old at the time.

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Our first Oregon encounter takes us back to approximately 1970 to a working logging camp east of Detroit Lakes.

16-year-old Chloe was staying at the camp with her father.

I'm your host, Zach Urness, and in each episode, we highlight Oregon's most beautiful and interesting places.

Today, we're gonna have a good old-fashioned news podcast where I'm gonna talk about some of our recent reporting centered on the 2026 wildfire season, the Detroit Lake deep drawdown, and a handful of hot button topics like the roadless rule, mining around Opal Creek, razor clam harvest, and even walleye spreading into the Willamette River.

So we got a whole bunch of scattershot topics, which is right on brand for us, so stay with us.

Before we get rolling, I wanna highlight the sponsors of this podcast that make it possible for us to hire and pay our outdoor journalism interns every spring, summer, and fall.

This season brought the most acres burned and was the most expensive to fight in modern Oregon history.

And I've got some pretty interesting numbers that show how wildfires have ravaged the east side of Oregon while leaving the west side pretty spoiled, at least for the last three years.

Then we'll talk about the plan to drop Detroit Lake to historically low levels in an effort to save endangered salmon that could also harm drinking water for more than 200,000 people in the Salem, Stayton, and Santiam Canyon area.

I was in court for six hours last week listening to arguments from the city of Salem and Marion County as they attempt to stop this drawdown from going forward.

Get started today at StitchFix.com. That's StitchFix.com.

This is a first-hand account of a camper describing a 24-hour stretch of strange Sasquatch activity near Detroit Lake on the west side of Mount Jefferson, Oregon, in October 2021.

I was nervous telling this, but I'm going to lay it out straight.

A close friend of mine is an elder from a local tribe.

Some people even have cabins around there and there are a lot of stories.

It was a rainy Friday afternoon, dark, wet, and we were out of cell range.

I was driving on a forest road between Detroit Lake and there were normal campgrounds where most people stay, but our group decided to go roughly 15 miles farther back on an old logging road.

I pulled in and found them in a tiny little campsite.

I'm going to date myself here.

I got a page from a friend of mine who was camping a couple hours south of me at Detroit Lake.

And she said, call me.

So I called her.

A dog would have different ones than a deer that have different ones than a bear and what have you, just because of where they're at in their environment.

So he told me that he, I think he said he kind of floated it in a formula like sodium hydroxide that broke down inorganic stuff.

And then, wrote me a paper that told me that the diet consisted 90% of watercress, which just happens to grow all along the shoreline there on Detroit Lake, which made sense.

And he was able to identify six very specific parasites, both living, dead, or their egg casings, all in this, you know, under a microscope.

And then another guy, uh, speaking of comments, I think he emailed me, um, 'cause I know you like this area.

Uh, Detroit Lake.

Oh, yeah.

Uh, this guy emailed me and said he had an encounter there, and his buddy had an encounter there in the same spot, like couple years apart.

Um, on, you know, the, uh, man, I forget the name of the actual island on Detroit Lake.

Um-

Oh.