Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Sumpter, OR

Sumpter is a city in Baker County, Oregon, set in the Blue Mountains near the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest and the Elkhorn Mountains at about 4,400 feet above sea level.

Sumpter was named after Fort Sumter in South Carolina, and when first postmaster Joseph D. Young was not allowed to use the spelling Sumter in 1883, he chose Sumpter, a form close to the original that also evoked the sumpter mule used to haul freight to the region.

The community was platted in 1889 and incorporated as a city in 1898.

The 2020 census counted 204 people in Sumpter, in 120 households, with a median age of 60.4 years.

A narrow-gauge railway reached Sumpter in 1897, and the Sumpter Valley Railway ran 80 miles from Baker City through Sumpter to Prairie City, which it reached in 1907, before shutting down in the 1930s.

Shortly after the railway arrived, Sumpter expanded around deep-shaft gold mines with a combined 12 miles of tunnels, and its population grew to more than 2,000, reaching 2,216 in the 1900 census, with electric lights, churches, saloons, a brewery, sidewalks, three newspapers, and an opera house.

As the mines played out the city declined even before a devastating fire in 1917, which destroyed 12 blocks of buildings and was fought in part with dynamite, and a few of the surviving structures remain in use as retail shops.

Sumpter now relies heavily on tourism, including a restored 6-mile stretch of the Sumpter Valley Railway that runs excursion trains on summer weekends and major holidays from Memorial Day through the end of September, with stations in Sumpter and McEwen.

The Sumpter Valley Dredge State Heritage Area preserves the last of three dredges that mined gold from surface deposits along the Powder River, which operated here from 1935 through 1954.

McCully Fork and Cracker Creek meet to form the Powder River near Sumpter, which sits along Oregon Route 410, also known as the Sumpter Highway, 26 miles from Baker City.