Joseph Sherar

Joseph Sherar (November 16, 1833 – February 11, 1908) was a 19th-century wagon road builder who, with his wife, Jane, owned and operated a Deschutes River toll bridge and a nearby stagecoach station and hotel in Wasco County in the U.S. state of Oregon. The bridge and buildings were slightly downstream of Sherars Falls, the river's lowermost waterfall, and a traditional fishing spot for the native inhabitants of the region.

Sherar improved the bridge and about of the existing wagon road that crossed it. He and his wife, Jane, operated the Sherar Bridge Hotel from 1871 until their deaths in 1907–08. A concrete bridge has since replaced Sherar's wooden bridge and carries Oregon Route 216 over the river near the waterfall.

Early life Sherar was born in Vermont in 1833 after his parents had immigrated there from Ireland with their first three children. When he was two years old, the family moved to St. Lawrence County in the U.S. state of New York, where Sherar spent the next 20 years.

In 1855, Sherar left New York and traveled to California, where he tried mining, hauling goods by pack animal, and then farming along the Klamath River before moving to Oregon in 1862. Operating out of The Dalles, Sherar developed a business hauling supplies over primitive trails to mining camps to the southeast.

In 1863, Sherar married Jane A. Herbert. Selling the pack train business in 1864, the Sherars moved to Dufur, then Tygh Valley. The waterfall was a traditional fishing site for the Tygh people (Western Sahaptin Indians), who used wooden platforms and dip nets to catch salmon and steelhead migrating upriver. Sherar, employing local Indian laborers, gradually improved the road for on either side of the river.

Post offices In 1868, Ezra L. Hemingway, an earlier owner of the bridge, had established a post office named Deschutes on land he owned next to the bridge. or Sherar Bridge. The post office shut down in 1907, reopened in 1922, and was finally closed in 1938.