A popular campground temporarily closed
By Shannon McKone on Friday, September 17th, 2021 in Eastern/Southeast Oregon News Eastern/Southeast Oregon Top Stories
EASTERN OREGON – (Information provided by the U.S. Forest Service) The North Fork John Day Ranger District will temporarily closed Olive Lake Campground and associated day uses effective Friday, Sept. 17, while contractors thin out trees within the campground. This is the third phase in an overall project to address the mountain pine beetle infestation surrounding Olive Lake. Work will be ongoing until snow has accumulated and then remaining work will be completed in the spring of 2022.
This temporary closure includes portions of Forest Service Roads 10-480 and 10-481 that access the campground, the boat launch and docks, and the east side of the lake. Portions of the popular lakeside trail #3169 are also closed within the area. Additionally, the closure prohibits access for day uses like picnicking, fishing or hiking, as well as overnight camping or parking. The public is asked to respect the closure while work is ongoing. Besides falling trees, a woodchipper will be in use that can spit chips of wood long distances at high velocity.
A mountain pine beetle outbreak at Olive Lake Campground that began in 2018 severely impacted lodgepole pine spanning approximately 250 acres surrounding the lake. This infestation resulted in large numbers of hazard trees in the campground that needed to be removed. Hazard trees are dead or dying trees in areas where they could fall on forest visitors at picnic tables or in campsites, parked vehicles in day use areas, or structures such as outhouses.
Umatilla National Forest staff began clearing hazard trees in 2020 on the road leading to and in areas surrounding the docks, boat ramp, picnic sites and campsites on the northeast side of the lake. The contract work this fall and winter is the third phase to mitigate hazards caused by the mountain pine beetle infestation and will focus on cleaning up from this spring’s tree removal project, while thinning to provide a healthier stocking level that is more resilient to wildfire on the back half of the campground.
Visitors are also reminded that the Olive Lake dam is an aging structure and the headgate on the intake to the historic Fremont Power waterline is inoperable.
The portion of Olive Lake closest to the dam itself is closed where monitoring instruments and headgate controls are located. Buoys at the dam can be pulled out of position by ice and wind, so visitors are cautioned to give this area a wide detour when boating or bathing.
Olive Lake is a popular mountain lake and campground located 12 miles west of Granite, Oregon. The natural lake was deepened by a 30-foot-high dam built in the early 1900s by the Fremont Power Company to provide hydroelectric power, generated at the Fremont Powerhouse, to the then-booming gold mining community.
