HistoricSiteMarkers
Progressive & Modern Era

Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge

Siskiyou County, Siskiyou County, California

Marker Inscription

Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge has been designated a Registered National Historic Landmark under the provisions of the Historic Sites Act of August 21, 1955 This site possesses exceptional value in commemorating and illustrating the history of the United States U.S. Department of the Interior National Park Service 1965

Erected by U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service

The Story

Established in 1908, Lower Klamath was among the first federal refuges set aside expressly to protect waterfowl, and in 1965 the National Park Service designated it a Registered National Historic Landmark. Straddling the California–Oregon border, its marshes lie along the Pacific Flyway, drawing vast migrations of birds. The plaque marks the site's exceptional place in the history of American conservation.

Why it matters

It commemorates a pioneering step in the national wildlife refuge system, a turning point in how the United States chose to protect its natural heritage.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related events

  • · Designation as National Historic Landmark (1965)

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

New Pokegama

Klamath County, OR

New Pokegama existed only from 1903 to 1909 as the end of the line for the Klamath Lake Railroad running up from Thrall. Here freight and passengers were transferred to wagons for the overland haul into Klamath Falls, making the little settlement a busy transfer point in south-central Oregon's timber and travel economy. When the rails pushed on, the town's brief purpose ended, and it faded — a marker placed by the Klamath County Historical Society in 1976 keeps its short life on record.

Battle Rock

Shasta County, CA

In June 1855, the Battle of the Crags was fought below this rocky outcrop in far northern California, pitting Modoc people against incoming settlers. The conflict grew out of a familiar frontier grievance: miners had fouled the fishing waters around Lower Soda Springs that the Modoc depended on for food. The marker recalls how the Gold Rush transformation of California's rivers and mountains repeatedly collided with the survival of the Native nations who lived there.

Stephen H. Meek, Pioneer Trapper

Etna, CA

Stephen H. Meek was a fur trapper employed by the Hudson's Bay Company who reached Scott Valley in 1836, remembered here as the earliest known trapper to visit the area. The fur trade drew hardy, restless men across the Far West years before the wagon trains and the Gold Rush, mapping rivers and valleys as they went. Meek later made this northern California valley his home, and the Native Daughters of the Golden West dedicated this marker to him in 1949.

Historic Sawyers Bar Catholic Church

Siskiyou County, CA

Constructed in 1855, the Sawyers Bar Catholic Church served a remote gold-mining camp deep in the Salmon River country of the Klamath Mountains, just a few years after the California Gold Rush drew fortune-seekers into these canyons. A wooden church in such an isolated diggings was a rare anchor of community and faith on the mining frontier. It endures as one of the oldest churches in the region.