Pacific Coast Scenic Byway - Oregon
Battle Rock, OR

The Tututni people lived on and near this site thousands of years prior to the arrival of white settlers, and their tribe stretched over the Southern Oregon Coast and lower Rogue River. In 1792, George Vancouver, one of the first Europeans to come into contact with these natives, described them as being curious, mild, and peaceable. Understandably, the Tututni's Quatomah band was not as friendly some years later when Capt. William Tichenor came with muskets and cannons to establish a European settlement right in their village.

In the early 1850s, trappers, miners, and farmers infiltrated the entire length of the Rogue River, and their plows and livestock destroyed the grass seeds, acorns, camas, and other food sources important to the native people. Mining depleted trout and salmon. And, in 1855, as had been done across the continent, US troops forced-marched the natives from their land to a reservation.

About 1,200 people were held at Port Orford in open pens until the steamship Columbia deported them north to the Coast Reservation. The tension this caused mounted and broke into attacks all up and down the Rogue River by both whites and natives, culminating in the 1855-56 Rogue Rivers wars. The last resistors, Chief "John" and his band were marched 125 miles up the coast to the reservation.