Depot Park and DeWitt Museum

The DeWitt Museum occupies the Sumpter Valley Railway Passenger Station, the westernmost depot on a narrow-gauge line that ran 80 miles from Baker City to Prairie City. Incorporated in 1890 to haul logs from forests near Baker City to a South Baker City sawmill, the railway opened passenger and freight service to McEwen by 1891 and pushed west in stages through Sumpter, Whitney, Tipton, Austin and Bates, arriving at Prairie City — a ranching and mining community on the John Day River — by 1910. Within a decade automobiles and trucks were draining its business, and in 1933 the 20 miles of track between Prairie City and Bates were abandoned. The depot then served as a private dwelling until 1973, when the Sumpter Valley Depot Restoration Committee took on its renovation; the building joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1981. The City of Prairie City assumed management in 1984 and installed the DeWitt Museum, whose collections range from lanterns, lights and other railway artifacts and photographs of life along the line to rocks, minerals, family photo albums, and Grant County mining artifacts from the turn of the 20th century.