A living record · Community

Joseph

Art, making, and everyday life at the foot of the Wallowas.

Explore this record Add a photograph ↗

Joseph and the surrounding valley, with Wallowa Lake and the mountains beyond. — Joseph and the surrounding valley, with Wallowa Lake and the mountains beyond.
Sam Beebe · 2007-07-08 · CC BY 2.0 · Image & source ↗

Joseph’s public life extends from the library and school to workshops, exhibits, and businesses along Main Street. Bronze casting is part of the town’s working economy as well as its artistic identity.

The county museum occupies the former First Bank of Joseph. The Josephy Center and its library connect contemporary arts with historical collections.

A town’s story is also told through ordinary routines: borrowing a book, attending a meeting, going to school, and making a living. This introduction places those routines alongside the landscape that attracts visitors.

Wallowa County Chamber of Commerce ↗City of Joseph ↗Wallowa County Museum ↗Valley Bronze of Oregon ↗

Follow the connections

Arts and gatheringJosephy Center for Arts and Culture

Josephy Center for Arts and Culture ↗

A building with changing usesFirst Bank of Joseph building

Wallowa County Museum ↗

Public libraryJoseph Public Library

City of Joseph ↗

Connected from organization recordBuilding Healthy Families Connected from organization recordChief Joseph Days Rodeo Connected from organization recordEagle Cap Ski Club Connected from organization recordFriends of the Wallowa County Museum Connected from organization recordHurricane Creek Grange #608 Connected from faith community recordJoseph Baptist Church Connected from organization recordJoseph Chamber of Commerce Connected from faith community recordJoseph United Methodist Church Connected from organization recordPandion Institute Connected from organization recordPoint of Connection Ministries Connected from service recordWallowa Memorial Hospital Connected from service recordWinding Waters Clinic

Joseph

Further reading.

About these sources

0 of the 4 links shown have been read for this edition. The shelf shows at most two links from any one publisher; the rest are in the research records. Collected links are leads for further reading; they are not all evidence used in this place’s account. See the research records.

Original recordings · Connected to this page

Watch this part of the story.

Building Community Series: Healthcare

From Josephy Center · 2025

Community & culture

Building Community Series: Religion

From Josephy Center · 2025

Work & livelihoods

Building Community Series: Main Street Business

From Josephy Center · 2025

History & memory

Oregon Historic Cemeteries and the 1879 Robbery of Old Chief Joseph’s Grave

From Wallowa History Center · Date unconfirmed

History & memory

The Wallowa Story

From Wallowa History Center · Date unconfirmed

Indigenous life

hitoláayca (Going Upriver)

From NRS · 2026

Meet the community

Around Joseph

Business · Joseph

Arrowhead Chocolates

A chocolate shop and gathering place in downtown Joseph.

Organization · Joseph

Chief Joseph Days Rodeo

The all-volunteer nonprofit that has run Joseph’s late-July rodeo and Western celebration since 1946.

Business · Joseph

Curtiss Studios

A sculpture studio connecting artistic design with the valley’s bronze trade.

Organization · Joseph

Eagle Cap Ski Club

The volunteer club behind Ferguson Ridge Ski Area, a community-run hill about nine miles from Joseph.

Building · Joseph

First Bank of Joseph building

A Main Street building that connects banking and local historical memory.

Organization · Joseph

Friends of the Wallowa County Museum

A tax-exempt membership organization whose sole purpose is raising funds for the Wallowa County Museum.

Organization · Joseph

Hurricane Creek Grange #608

A Grange chartered in February 1923, with a hall on Airport Lane west of Joseph and a monthly all-you-can-eat breakfast.

Business · Joseph

Joseph Art Castings

A historical fine-art casting business documented in a sculptor’s professional history.

Historical record

Faith community · Joseph

Joseph Baptist Church

A Bible-based Baptist congregation in Joseph known so far only through its own Facebook page.

Organization · Joseph

Joseph Chamber of Commerce

Joseph’s chamber of commerce, which ran the Chief Joseph Museum in the First Bank building from 1960 to 1972.

Service · Joseph

Joseph Charter School

A local school and an enduring part of community life.

Service · Joseph

Joseph city government

City meetings, public records, and municipal services in Joseph.

Service · Joseph

Joseph Public Library

Books, local references, computers, and a shared place to learn.

Faith community · Joseph

Joseph United Methodist Church

A congregation at 301 South Lake Street in Joseph whose free Monday dinners feed a large share of the town each late winter.

Organization · Joseph

Josephy Center for Arts and Culture

An arts center where creative practice and regional history share a home.

Organization · Joseph

Josephy Library

A collection connecting Western history, Nez Perce accounts, and Wallowa County.

Organization · Joseph

Pandion Institute

A Joseph nonprofit, formed in 2023, that takes Nez Perce descendants and other Native youth onto the rivers and lands of the Columbia Plateau to learn, guide and lead.

Organization · Joseph

Point of Connection Ministries

A Christian nonprofit begun in 2009 that took over the former Wallowa County Family Youth Center building on the Joseph Highway.

Business · Joseph

Stein Distillery

A grain-to-spirit business with a Joseph tasting room.

Business · Joseph

Valley Bronze of Oregon

A foundry connecting sculpture with skilled manufacturing.

Organization · Joseph

Wallowa County Museum

Local historical collections inside a former bank on Main Street.

Organization · Joseph

Wallowology Natural History Discovery Center

A place where natural history, art, and science meet.

A collecting priority

Help us know Joseph.

What the Record holds for Joseph today: 22 researched records, 527 state business registrations (a starting inventory, not a directory), 3 photographs and 1 first-person account.

What we are asking

When did Joseph’s congregations first gather, and where does Joseph Baptist Church meet?
Where do people gather informally, apart from the organizations already listed?
Which businesses were on Main Street before the ones there now?
Which everyday services do residents rely on that the directory does not yet name?

See the 527 registrations

Add to this record

Tell us one thing about Joseph

A sentence is enough. A photo or a voice note is welcome, and you choose the credit.

Add one thing I would rather talk to someone

Or answer one of the 2046 questions for Joseph: What makes this home? · Skills worth passing on · A decision that changed a place

Original accounts

Voices connected to this place

Interviewed by the Record

One community, with its towns as neighborhoods

Shannon McNerneyOctober 2, 2026

The larger story

Read the connections.

Brick storefronts along a street in Enterprise.

Chapter 03 Towns & settlement

Every main street has many lives.

In Enterprise a theater waited out the flu, in Joseph a bank kept a hospital upstairs, and in Lostine a pharmacy shared its roof with a lodge. On these main streets, every doorway has a second story.

Joseph and surrounding fields. This modern landscape photograph does not identify the fields used in the historical lettuce experiment.

An atlas essay Beyond the familiar account

Lettuce, a carousel, and firewood bound for Dallas

In 1923, Wallowa County set out to become lettuce country, and by 1939 the climate had won. The trying is the story: a horse-powered carousel, firewood shipped to Dallas, a general store with its own radio.

Wallowa’s combined city hall and fire station in September 2013, nine years before the hailstorm. This is a place photograph, not a damage or recovery photograph.

An atlas essay Wallowa · August 2022 and its aftermath

After the hail

On the night of August 11, 2022, hail smashed windows across Wallowa, and a lumber yard in Joseph showed up with plywood. Covering the holes took one night; fixing the houses before winter took money, contractors and time the town did not have.