Bakeoven is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

Wasco County Wasco County is one of the 36 counties in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2020 census, the population was 25,213. Its county seat is The Dalles. The county is named for a local tribe of Native Americans, the Wasco, a Chinook tribe ...

, in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

. It is southeast of Maupin and northwest of Shaniko along Bakeoven Creek, a tributary of the

Deschutes River The Deschutes River ( ) in central Oregon is a major tributary of the Columbia River. The river provides much of the drainage on the eastern side of the Cascade Range in Oregon, gathering many of the tributaries that descend from the drier, easte ...

. Bakeoven was named for a clay and stone oven built in 1862 to make bread to sell to miners traveling along a trail from

The Dalles The Dalles ( ;) formally the City of the Dalles and also called Dalles City, is an inland port, the county seat of and the largest city in Wasco County, Oregon, United States. The population was 16,010 at the 2020 census, and it is the large ...

to gold mines near Canyon City. The baker was said to have been a trader with a pack train of flour whose horses were driven off in the night by Native Americans. Joseph Sherar, another pioneer and businessman, is thought to have been at the scene at the time of the incident. In 1905, the community, at the intersection of two

stagecoach A stagecoach (also: stage coach, stage, road coach, ) is a four-wheeled public transport coach used to carry paying passengers and light packages on journeys long enough to need a change of horses. It is strongly sprung and generally drawn by ...

roads, had a post office, a hotel, general merchandise store, and a blacksmith shop. The

Prineville Prineville is a city in and the seat of Crook County, Oregon, United States. It was named for the first merchant to establish businesses in the present location, Barney Prine. The population was 10,429 at the 2020 census. History Prineville wa ...

road and the Canyon City road merged here and continued as one road to The Dalles. The Dalles – Canyon City road was later included in the land-grant route known as

The Dalles Military Road The Dalles Military Road, also known as The Dalles – Boise Military Wagon Road, was a mid-19th century wagon road surveyed and barely built by The Dalles Military Road Company between 1868 and 1870. To qualify for government land grants, the c ...

. A Bake Oven (two words) post office was established in 1875, and Ellen Burgess was the first postmaster. This office was discontinued in 1913, and for about a year the Bakeoven mail was handled by a nearby post office named ''Flangan''. The Bakeoven (one word) post office was reopened in 1914 but closed again in 1918.

References

Unincorporated communities in Wasco County, Oregon Unincorporated communities in Oregon 1862 establishments in Oregon Populated places established in 1862 {{WascoCountyOR-geo-stub