Pendleton and Klamath-area photographs, circa 1900

In the 1860s, Richard Beswick and his wife bought property along the California-Oregon Stage Road in Siskiyou County, California. They built a ten-room hotel for visitors when the new stage road came to their area. The property was sold to the Edson family in 1887. They transformed the hotel into the Klamath Hot Springs Resort, which boasted 75 private rooms, a barber shop, and health spa, among other amenities. The Edsons sold the resort in 1922, and the structure was destroyed by fire in 1924.

Pendleton is a city in Umatilla County, which began as a trading post in the 1850s and whose original name was Marshall. By 1900, this trading center was the fourth largest town in Oregon. Soon thereafter, the Pendleton Woolen Mills and the Pendleton Round-Up were founded and have become hallmarks of this Eastern Oregon cultural center.

Klamath Falls was named Linkville at the time of the town's origins, in 1867, as a tribute to the nearby Link River. The town name was changed in 1893. By 1907, the area was beginning to focus on agricultural enterprises. With the arrival of the Southern Pacific Transportation Company in 1909, the town grew from several hundred inhabitants to several thousand, largely due to the thriving timber industry.