We spent the day enjoying Baker City and all that it has to offer… And while it is a lovely town, there is not really much to do here… And we know this because we have been here before, in 2011…

But we drove into town to the Baker City Heritage Museum, dedicated to all things Baker City.

“The mission of the Baker Heritage Museums is to conserve artifacts of historical Baker County, to educate the public about the development of the area, to preserve local archives and to make them available for research”

The museum is located in the 100-year old Baker Municipal Natatorium, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. Presently, the museum is a two-story interpretive collection of Baker County’s history, specifically from the 1860s through 1960s. Core exhibits in the museum include Baker County industries (logging, ranching, and mining), historical Baker City, Wally Byam’s Airstream experience, Chinese heritage, native and non-native wildlife, and a collection of regional Native American artifacts, including stone tools. The special exhibit right now is “The Women of Baker City”…

The museum is located in the center of Baker City, across the street from the large city park. When we were in 2011 the park had about 25 Airstreams parked amid the trees… Not so today – We are camping about three miles out of town.

Inside the Museum, of course, is a room full of artifacts related to Wally Byam, the inventor and manufacturer of the Airstream trailer. Wally Byam was born here in Baker City,,,

We enjoyed the museum in its many parts… There was a video of the life of Leo Adler, born here in 1895. He lived his entire life in the family home. He was an innovative magazine retailer, and a bit of an eccentric… When his parents died, he moved into four rooms at the back of the house, and never returned to the rooms in the rest of the house. When he died in 1993 at age 98, he left a $20 million estate to a trust to provide college scholarships to local students.

After enjoying the museum we walked about the downtown main street. There are many interesting buildings…

There is a brewery, a distillery, and a wine tasting room… We stopped at Barley Brown’s, not for the beer, but for lunch.

It was a lovely time, sitting at a table on the sidewalk. Food was simple, but good, and, plentiful…

After lunch we drove out to the National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center. We had been here before, again in 2011. It is a great place, and I was looking forward to seeing updated and enlarged exhibits. Unfortunately, the museum was closed due to Covid…

We returned to the Villa, and enjoyed a nap… Happy hours ensued.

An enjoyable time was had by all…