We kind of thought we were out in the sticks when we went all the way to Crane to watch the Mustangs play football, but northern Harney County was a veritable metropolis compared to the country we went through to get to our next game. If you continue southeast from Crane for another hour or two, you get to see a lot of those farms and ranches that supply students to Crane High School. They’re few and far between, but every once in a while you’ll see a ranch house to let you know the area isn’t completely uninhabited.
Eventually you’ll cross into Malheur County. My French is a little sketchy, but I believe the literal translation of mal heur is “bad time”, which makes sense, since you have to set your clock to Mountain Time in northern Malheur County. Just after that you’ll pass the turn off for Folly Farm Road, and you can go that way, if you want to. Having been down that road before, I chose not to. Then you’ll reach Burns Junction, where you’ll have the choice of either continuing south to Nevada or turning east toward Idaho. We took that Idaho option at Burns Junction and kept driving.
We got on Highway 95 to reach our final destination: Jordan Valley High School in Jordan Valley, just this side of the Idaho border. On the way, though, there are a few points of interest. First, we took a little detour at Rome to see the Pillars of Rome. They’re interesting rock formations outside of town that look like Roman architecture if you use your imagination, and they provided the town with its name. They’re pretty cool, but Mrs. Ednold says this doesn’t count as the Roman holiday I’ve always promised her.
The river that flows through Rome got its name after three Hawaiian scouts were sent down it on a recon mission in 1819, and never returned. Apparently, they had told people they were from Owyhee. And right there in Rome, at the Owyhee River crossing, is where Sacagawea’s son, Charboneau, was involved in some kind of accident while en route to mining areas farther northeast. He was an old man (61) by this time, and nobody knows exactly what happened, but he was taken several miles east to the town of Danner, where he died, and where you can now find his gravesite. He was an interesting man who led an interesting life, and it seems like he deserved to be buried closer to a paved road. Just sayin’. Not to be outdone, between Rome and Danner people found a rock with some ancient petroglyphs on it, and decided to name their town… Arock. A rock. Really, people? That was your best effort? I don’t even know what to say about that.
We finally did make it to Jordan Valley, where the highway takes a left turn in the middle of town and heads north. There’s a curious stone structure at that corner, with a sign letting us know that it’s a pelota frondon, which made me wonder how anyone could have mistaken it for anything else. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, many people from Spain’s basque region immigrated to this part of the country, mainly to work herding sheep. You can find their whole story elsewhere, but their influence is still apparent all over southeast Oregon and into Idaho. Pelota is a game, apparently related to jai alai, played on a court, or frondon. The basques built themselves this court in 1915 and the frondon is a conspicuous cultural landmark in the little town.
Jordan Valley was incorporated in 1911, but there had been a post office there since 1867, a few years after gold had been discovered along Jordan Creek. Yes, Jordan Creek was named for Michael Jordan. Michael M. Jordan, that is, a member of that mining party. But it was Silas Skinner who built the road out to the creek that passed through current day Jordan Valley, and the small town came to serve as a base of operations for the several mining settlements in the area. There are still mines in that part of the country, but it’s mostly a ranching community now, and cattle have replaced sheep as the livestock of choice for most of them.
We followed the highway around that corner and came to the high school a block or two later. It’s not a very big place, with 4 or 5 teachers for the 40 or so students, drawn from a huge area that includes parts of western Idaho. In fact, when we turned off of California street and parked behind the western edge of the football field, the three cars in front of us all had Idaho license plates. I’m not sure when the building was built, but it’s obviously been there a while and has a very old, traditional look.
Jordan Valley plays in Special District 1 of the 1A-6-man classification, and were 1-0 after having won a close opener against Dayville/Monument/Long Creek. They would be facing a combined team from Ione and Arlington that’s classified as a 1A-8-man school, but doesn’t have any conference affiliation this season, and this would be their first game of the season. Jordan Valley has never won a state football championship on their own, but in 2017, due to low turnouts for the team, they partnered with the team from Adrian, and in 2019 that Adrian/Jordan Valley team won the state title. Now they’re back to having their own team again, and last year they posted a 1-6 record.
The bright, sunny afternoon was perfect for watching a football game. There were two small portable aluminum home bleachers on either side of the press box/snack bar on the home side of the field, and one on the east side, which was ample for the few who had made the long trip from Arlington or Ione. There’s no running track around the field, so many fans chose to set up their folding chairs along the sidelines, or just stood throughout. Maybe the most remarkable thing about Jordan Valley’s football field is its name: Yturriondobeitia Field. I asked one of the locals about it, and she kindly explained that it was named for a local family that had long ties to the school. It’s a basque name that rolled off her tongue naturally, but didn't sound quite the same when I said it. Give it a try and you'll probably come closer than I did.
When play began, I was a little concerned for the Mustangs, since they only had two substitutes, and the visitors had a good dozen players more. I needn’t have worried, though, because their quality made up for their lack of quantity. They used a balanced offense to open up a 13-0 lead in the first quarter, and never looked back. Once the Mustangs got rolling, there weren’t many surprises on the field. But there were a few in the sky during the first few minutes of the second quarter, when three mammoth military cargo planes flew directly over the field extremely low. At first, it looked like they might be landing on the field itself, but they stayed at what I would guess was maybe 1000 feet and held their trajectory due south as we all stared up, wondering what was happening. I still don’t know where they were headed or what their mission was, but we had our own little air show for a few seconds until they disappeared.
In the 6-man game, just a couple of studs can make a huge difference, and Jordan Valley had them. When the planes were gone, they resumed their dominance and had a 32-6 lead at halftime, and scored another 21 points in the second half to win 53-6. There were no cheerleaders or band, the hot dogs from the snack bar were good, but nothing special, and the lopsided scoring meant there wasn’t much drama on the field. But it had been a beautiful day to sit outside with a friendly group of people on a Friday afternoon and watch kids run up and down a football field in the Mountain time zone. Afterward, we drove that extra half-mile over to Idaho, just so we could say we had, then pointed The Bucket back west.
Comments