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Dan,  Wonderful stuff! Thank you for this post.  I've driven this lonely and
long road several times in drives from Wallace, Idaho (where I live now) to
the SF Bay Area (where I used to live).  My wife and I have stayed in one of
the for-hire cabins at Rome, OR.  The room, which was entirely adequate for
our overnight stay, featured a sign on the door admonishing guests that "no
plucking" was permitted (bird hunters, I suppose, like the place too).  A
couple of rabbits roamed around outside the room, undisturbed, it seemed, by
the big semis that storm by on US95 every now and then.  Needless to say, at
night the 100-mile stretch from McDermott to Jordon Valley is particularly
stark -- on moonless nights only starlight and the occasional -- and welcome
-- headlights of other cars or trucks break the darkness.  I've driven this
road for stretches of scores of miles without seeing a another vehicle going
either way.  Incidentally, I always smile when the road goes into Oregon,
where the speed limit drops 10 mph because of that state's more cautious
attitude toward vehicular speed.  How odd it is to be in the middle of
nowhere and yet have the long arm of state culture reach out to change the
speed limit!  If you keep going northward on US95, into Idaho's rich
agricultural southwestern corner, and then up into higher county around New
Meadows and slightly beyond, you see a official looking sign on the road
that announces, serenely and confidently, that you are at the 45th parallel
-- on one side of it, closer to the North Pole and on the other, to the
equator.  (Perhaps one of the locational savants on this list will check the
accuracy of this sign's location one day!)  Anyhow, much enjoyed your post!

Ron Roizen
Landlocked in Idaho

-----Original Message-----
From: Navigation Mailing List [mailto:NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM]
On Behalf Of Dan Allen
Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2004 9:40 PM
To: NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM
Subject: Another time zone oddity [long]

The boundary between the Mountain and Pacific time zones generally follows
state boundaries, e.g., the Utah/Nevada border is one such dividing line,
but in the Idaho/Oregon area, there is something quite puzzling...

Drive north from Winnemucca Nevada up into Oregon on highway 95.  When you
cross the NV/OR border at McDermitt, the time zone is still Pacific time,
like all of Nevada.  In fact most of Oregon is in the Pacific time zone.
Continue on into Oregon travelling north.  This is an amazing stretch of
country.  It is like America's Outback.

Let me describe what it is like: in a word, desolate.  Many valleys are
untouched except for skinny highway 95, a two lane road, one lane each way.
There are no power lines, no telephone lines, no dirt roads off to small
ranches and the like, all of which are common in the rest of the Western US.
This area would actually look today about what it would have looked like
thousands of years ago.  Totally unspoiled and unchanged.  Scrub, dirt,
rocks, sand, and volcanic rock is about all there is.  There is very little
wildlife, except for perhaps reptiles.

Incidentally, highway 95 and this SE corner of Oregon are considered to be
the most remote part of the Lower 48 states by National Geographic, as
considered by this measure: the farthest distance from an Interstate
highway.  My metric is this: SE Oregon is 8 hours of driving without a
McDonalds!  (McDonalds are in Winnemucca NV to the south, John Day OR to the
north, Ontario OR to the east, and Bend OR to the west.)  Within this area
is a lot of nothing.  The only real town of any consequence is Burns OR,
population 3064.

Now as we drive through this open land we hit a VOR/DME station called the
Rome VOR station.  It is about 28 miles from the actual place known as Rome
OR, which is too small to show up on the year 2000 census.  Anyway, the road
is all by itself until you are surprised by a white "milk bottle" shaped
radio station out in such remote country.  (VORs are for traditional
aircraft navigation - there I got in traditional nav! ;-)

This VOR reminds you of civilization, and then there is a road sign stating
that you are now entering the Mountain time zone!  One continues driving
north about 20 miles with very little around, until the road divides at
Burns Junction.  One would think a store is at Burns Junction, but one would
be wrong.  One or two old abandoned homes and that is it.  It is basically a
place for highway 78 and highway 95 to join.

Highway 95 makes a right hand turn to the east, but we continue on highway
78 NW toward huge Malheur Lake.  One drives for miles without seeing
anything other than scrub and volcanic rocks.  And then, one sees a new road
sign: "Pacific time zone".

WHAT?  The time zone changes back and forth in the space of about 40 miles.
For no one!  One drives into the time zone and then back out, and in that
space of road there is not a single occupied dwelling, not a single
establishment of any kind.  And yet the time zone changes!  It is quite a
puzzle indeed.

It appears that the northern four fifths of Oregon's Malheur County is in
the Mountain time zone, but not the whole county.  All of the rest of
Oregon, including Burns, is in the Pacific zone.

WHY would they change the time zone for 40 miles of highway driving?

Anyway, if you want to see some wide open untouched places, try Southeast
Oregon.  Bring lots of food and water with you, and a full tank of gas.

Dan Allen

   

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