Vale Sites

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation authorized construction of the Agency Valley Dam, on the North Fork of the Malheur River, in 1933. The Hinman Brothers, of Denver, began work on the 110 foot high, earthen structure in March 1934 and the project was completed in December 1935. The reservoir capacity of the dam project is 59,200 acre-feet. Authorization of the dam was based on the needs of the Vale Project, an irrigation and water control plan serving the Malheur River area. It is the second of three dams serving the project and the only one constructed during the Depression. The Warm...

Beulah Reservoir, also known as Agency Valley Reservoir, was created with the completion of the Agency Valley Damn in 1935. Throughout 1939, the Bureau of Reclamation supervised enrollees at a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) spike camp. They built a stone parapet wall on the upstream crest of the new damn. The spike camp was CCC Camp Vale, or Company BR-45 which worked on the Vale Project. The basalt stone wall runs on both sides of the road that crosses the top of the damn. The stone signature plaque left to commemorate their work is located on the eastern end of the...

A spike or side camp of CCC Camp Vale, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp Beulah served enrollees during 1939 when they built the basalt stone wall at the crest of the Agency Valley Dam. As indicated by the company number (CCC Co BR-45), the enrollees worked on this Bureau of Reclamation (BR) project that was part of the larger Vale Project's (#45) irrigation plan. A bureau report indicates that in the spring of 1938, Reclamation negotiated the transfer of buildings from the the abandoned Soil Conservation's CCC Camp Beulah (Co SCS-3) to the new camp's location at the foot of the...

Built in the summer of 1935 and operated through October 1940, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp Vale served as the base for CCC enrollees working on the Vale Project's irrigation system. The Bureau of Reclamation's Vale Project involved construction of the Agency Valley Dam, located along the Malheur River and Willow Creek in east-central Oregon. At the dam's completion, the work of the enrollees at Camp BR-45/Camp Vale began. They finished the necessary means of furnishing irrigation water to area ranchers by building the lateral irrigation system to farm tracts in the area. These "soil soldiers," as the Bureau of Reclamation...

In 1949, the Willowcreek Community Church purchased the former CCC Camp Vale's Recreation/Commissary Building for use as their gathering space. Renovations changed the building soon after its purchase, including the addition of a living space in the back of the building and placing sheet rock on the church's interior walls. Over thirty years elapsed when, in the 1980s, an effort to insulate the building required removal of the sheet rock. That renovation work revealed the original walls and, to the church members' surprise, the murals painted by Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enrollee Frederick H. Kluemper. That discovery sparked an interest among...