Chewaucan River, OR

The Chewaucan River is part of the Great Basin drainage. It flows 32 miles (51 km) through the Fremont-Winema National Forests, Bureau of Land Management land, and private property in southern Oregon. Its watershed consists of 275 square miles (710 km2) of conifer forest, marsh, and rural pasture land. The river provides habitat for many species of wildlife including native desert redband trout.

The Chewaucan flows for 32 miles (51 km) through Lake County, Oregon. The two sources of the Chewaucan are Elder Creek and Dairy Creek. Both have their headwaters in the east drainage of the Gearhart Mountain. The Chewaucan is the result of their merger east of the Gearhart Mountain Wilderness near Dairy Point. From there, the Chewaucan flows north through the Fremont-Winema National Forests where waters from Ben Young Creek, Coffeepot Creek, Antelope Springs, Corral Creek, Dog Creek, Sage Hen Creek, Bear Creek, and Mill Creek flow into it before the river passes out of the forest near Paisley.

The Chewaucan flows through Paisley and into what was once the Upper Chewaucan Marsh east of the town. The marsh is now pasture land, and the river’s flow through this area is controlled by a system of weirs and irrigation canals. The river is consolidated for a short distance as it leave the upper marsh at The Narrows, where two fingers of high desert uplands force the river into a single narrow channel. The river then opens into the Lower Chewaucan Marsh approximately seven miles northwest of Valley Falls. Finally, Crooked Creek joins the Chewaucan just one mile (1.6 km) before it empties into Abert Lake, which has no outlet.