Author: Mark Salvo and Anne White | Published: October 28, 2025 | Category: In the News
There’s more to Steens than meets the eye
Those who are familiar with Steens Mountain will know of its dramatic glacial valleys, groves of quaking aspen, uplands lush with bunchgrasses and wildflowers, and sheer mountain cliffs falling to an expansive alkali playa below.
But there’s more to Steens Mountain than meets the eye. Most notably, it’s Oregon’s first desert wilderness. The Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Act was enacted on October 30, 2000, permanently protecting this icon of Oregon’s high desert and conserving its wildlife, wild rivers and cultural resources. This achievement was the result of decades of work led by ONDA and our partners, and today Steens serves as a model for conservation management in the West.
To celebrate the Steens Act turning 25, we compiled a list of 25 facts about this irreplaceable landscape that you may not know.
About Steens Mountain
1. Often mistaken for a mountain range, Steens Mountain is actually one contiguous monolith and is perhaps the largest fault block mountain in North America, stretching some 60 miles long and reaching a mile high.
2. Less than a million years ago, alpine glaciers carved four dramatic and stunning gorges in this region that descend thousands of feet to the desert floor.
3. Award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin described Steens as “that strange ridge standing across the sagebrush range” in her volume of poetry and original sketches dedicated to the Steens Mountain region.
4. The Indigenous name for the mountain is Tse’tse’ede, meaning “The Cold One.”
5. Steens Mountain was eventually named after Enoch Steen, an officer in the U.S. military who played a part in the country’s unfortunate war against the Northern Paiute.
6. You can look out over four states from high points along the top of Steens: Oregon, Nevada, Idaho and California.
7. Steens Mountain is home to at least six endemic plant species—four wildflowers, a bluegrass and a reedgrass—that are a colorful reminder of the rich diversity of habitats on the mountain.
8. Steens is one of only two places in southeastern Oregon where American pika, an adorable but imperiled alpine critter, make their home.
9. The Steens Mountain sulphur—a newly discovered butterfly—is only found on Steens.
10. The mountain contains essential habitat and a vital connectivity corridor for greater sage-grouse. In fact, it’s the only corridor that connects the bird’s western and eastern populations in the state.
11. Steens Mountain has marvelously dark night skies for stargazing and has been proposed for inclusion in the Oregon Outback International Dark Sky Sanctuary in southeastern Oregon, the largest night sky preserve in the world.
About the Steens Mountain Act
12. Congress established a half-million-acre Cooperative Management and Protection Area in 2000 “to conserve, protect, and manage the long-term ecological integrity of Steens Mountain for future and present generations.”
13. The law also designated more than 174,000 acres of public land as the Steens Mountain Wilderness, of which more than 99,000 acres of the most sensitive and pristine habitat were made livestock-free, the first and only legislated livestock-free wilderness in the country.
14. This visionary act also created the first ever Redband Trout Reserve to improve stream health and fish habitat.
15. The Steens Act designated three Wild and Scenic Rivers on the mountain—Wildhorse Creek and Lake, Little Wildhorse Creek, and Kiger Creek. The Act also added three new protected segments to the existing Donner und Blitzen Wild and Scenic River—Ankle Creek, South Ankle Creek, and Mud Creek. Steens now features 105 miles of federally protected rivers and streams.
About Ongoing Conservation and Stewardship of Steens Mountain
16. The Department of the Interior included Steens Mountain in its National Landscape Conservation System, established by Congress in 2009 to protect nationally significant landscapes recognized for their outstanding cultural, ecological, and scientific values.
17. ONDA led volunteers in completing deferred maintenance on trails in the Steens Mountain Wilderness that overlap with the Oregon Desert Trail, a 750-mile route that connects many of the iconic landscapes found in Oregon’s high desert.
18. Between 2000 and 2017, ONDA led volunteers in removing 125 tons of obsolete barbed wire fence from Steens—equivalent to the weight of 10 school buses. This provides safer habitat for wildlife like greater sage-grouse and pronghorn.
19. ONDA surveyed about 610,000 acres of public land on and around Steens, including about 445,000 acres with wilderness characteristics or special values.
20. Since 2007, ONDA inventoried 405 miles of routes on Steens Mountain to inform balanced management that supports recreation and landscape health.
21. In 2009, ONDA blew the whistle on the “Burnt Car Road” illegally bladed into the Steens Mountain Wilderness. Under an ensuing legal settlement, ONDA and our volunteers joined federal land managers to repair the damage and restore pristine high elevation meadows, completing the work in 2022.
22. In 2015, ONDA protected wildlife and habitat when a federal judge agreed with ONDA that agency land managers could not drive cross-country in Wilderness Study Areas on Steens to conduct juniper removal. Under the Steens Act, these sensitive habitats require more environmentally protective approaches to vegetation management.
23. In 2016, ONDA successfully blocked a proposal to build an industrial energy facility on Steens, protecting essential winter habitat and population connectivity for the imperiled greater sage-grouse.
24. In 2019, a federal appeals court threw out a motorized travel plan for Steens that threatened wilderness values and intact sagebrush plant communities, affirming decades of community-led efforts to ensure the mountain continues to be protected.
25. In 2023, BLM agreed with ONDA’s assessment that 6,430 acres of public land adjacent to the Blitzen River Wilderness Study Area contained wilderness characteristics and designated the area the Blitzen River South Land with Wilderness Characteristics, strengthening conservation management in this key area.
It’s clear that the Steens Mountain region’s natural, cultural, historical and recreational values are extraordinary, and ONDA’s enduring commitment to conservation of the mountain is essential. Learn more about Steens Mountain region, or dive deeper into the history of Steens Mountain Wilderness.
