Photographically, the Wallowa Valley is a subject worthy of many portfolios. So far, there are four collections like this one, and more are on the way.

Over 4,000 feet above sea level at its upper end, the valley is abruptly flanked by the snowy Wallowa Mountains to the south and west which soar impressively well over five thousand feet above the valley floor. To the east, the craggy summits of Idaho’s Seven Devils Mountains can be seen prominently above Hells Canyon. Lacking a traffic light even in its biggest town, the valley nowhere could be described as urban even today more than a century and a half after agriculture-based civilization’s campaign to improve and manage the place. With sometimes no effort at all, you can still take photos here of a “natural” landscape.

The first surveyor who entered the valley in 1866, W. H. Odell, gushed with enthusiasm in explaining why in his opinion white men should not allow mere Indians to have this wonderful valley: “This line passes through the beautiful Wallowa Valley…Narrow streams of clear cold water put down from the high snow mountains just to the south. Timber is to the south and west and along the banks of the streams…The finest trout and salmon abound in the streams, and the surrounding mountains give evidence of plenty of game…Here I found many Indians camped on the banks of the streams, taking great quantities of fish, while their large herds of horses quietly grazed upon luxuriant grass…This valley should be surveyed as soon as practicable, for the wigwam of the savage will soon give way to the white man. Instead of the hunting and fishing grounds of the red men, the valley will teem with a thriving and a busy population.”

Or consider this description from H. R. Findley, a son of one of the earliest settler families who wrote fondly about his parents’ arrival in the Wallowa Valley: “Grand evergreen clad mountains crowned with snow capped peaks towered like mighty sentinels guarding the valley on the south and southwest…while on the east were miles and miles of bunch grass covered hills and valleys which ran on and on in undulating waves. It seemed to them that they had reached the end of their rainbow trail, the trail they had followed all the way from St. Joseph, Missouri…and here they were looking at their promised land.”

Since its “settlement” by palefaces in the 1870s, the valley’s remoteness has so far protected it from the teeming hordes envisioned by the surveyor. After a minor boom in the early 1900s, the valley’s population stabilized for nearly a century at, or not far under, 7,000 people. You can still do landscape photography here. You don’t have to drive a hundred miles or more to a national park or to some other isolated and tenuously protected and beleaguered set-aside where the vistas have not yet been totally transmogrified by the heavy hand of human ambition. But in recent years, the population in the valley has begun increasing. Will the surveyor be right in the end? Will the valley acquire its first traffic light? How ugly will things get? In these galleries can be found a vision, only somewhat phony, of what the place still looks like for discriminating photographers guided by preferences about what looks good in a landscape. You can still find scenes here that look good, landscapes with appeal.