Andrews, Oregon: The Alvord Desert Ghost Town Where an Artist Lived Alone

Andrews, Oregon is a vanished ghost town in Harney County, south of Steens Mountain and near the Alvord Desert in southeastern Oregon's high desert. It was founded around 1880 by a rancher named Peter Andrews, peaked at about 150 residents, and lost its final structure to fire in 1996.

01Why Was Andrews Founded?

Peter Andrews settled in the high desert south of Steens Mountain around 1880, in ranching country so remote that the nearest real town was Burns, seventy miles north. The area offered what high desert ranchers needed: open range, seasonal water from snowmelt, and isolation from the law and the land office.

A post office was established on Andrews' property in 1890. In 1900 it was moved a short distance north and renamed "Wildhorse" — but locals kept calling it "Wild Hog," which apparently embarrassed the postmaster enough that he changed the name back to honor his friend Peter Andrews.

02Life at Andrews

Andrews peaked at about 150 residents, serving as a supply point for ranchers working the high desert between Steens Mountain and the Nevada border. The town had a school, a post office, and the modest commercial infrastructure of a remote Oregon ranching community.

The area also carried military history. Old Camp Alvord, a Civil War-era Oregon military post used during the Rogue Indian Wars, was located nearby on the east side of Steens Mountain. The camp was one of several frontier outposts positioned to control the vast, sparsely populated basin-and-range country of southeastern Oregon.

03What Happened to Andrews?

Andrews declined as ranch consolidation reduced the number of families the land supported. Mechanized ranching meant fewer hands. Children left for Burns, Bend, or Portland. The school closed. The post office closed. One by one the buildings emptied.

The last occupied house in Andrews burned in 1996. After the fire, Andrews had no residents and no structures — a ghost town in the literal sense.

04The Artist in the Schoolhouse

In 2011, painter John Simpkins found the abandoned Andrews schoolhouse and moved in. He lived in the teacher's cottage and used the schoolhouse as his studio, spending nearly a decade painting the Alvord Desert landscape. His online exhibit of paintings from the Andrews years documents the high desert light and isolation that defined the place.

Simpkins left in 2020 when the property owner ordered him out. His decade at Andrews was one of the more unusual second lives a ghost town has had — not a restoration or a museum, but a single artist quietly inhabiting a dead town.

05What Remains of Andrews Today

Essentially nothing. The schoolhouse that Simpkins used may still stand, but the original town structures are gone. The site is in extremely remote high desert — Harney County is one of the least populated counties in the United States. Visitors need a vehicle, water, and the expectation of encountering nothing.