Harney Basin
endorheic basin in Oregon, United States
The Harney Basin is an endorheic basin in southeastern Oregon in the United States at the northwestern corner of the Great Basin. One of the least populated areas of the contiguous United States, it is located largely in northern Harney County, bounded on the north and east by the Columbia Plateau—within which it is contained, physiographically speaking—and on the south and west by a volcanic plain. The basin encompasses an area of 1,490 square miles (3,859 km2) in the watershed of Malheur Lake and Harney Lake. Malheur Lake is a freshwater lake, while Harney Lake is saline-alkaline.
The basin is bounded on the north by the southern end of the Blue Mountains. The ridge of Steens Mountain separates the basin from the watershed of the Alvord Desert to the southeast. No streams cross the volcanic plains that separate the basin from the watershed of the Klamath River to the southwest. The basin includes archeological sites of the Drewsey Resource Area.
Geography
The central basin receives an average of 6 inches (150 mm) of rain per year, with the surrounding mountains receiving an average of 15 inches (380 mm) per year. The center of the basin is flat and contains Malheur and Harney lakes, which receive the streams originating within the basin in the surrounding mountains, including the Silvies River from the north and the Donner und Blitzen River from the south.
“Harney Basin” enters the record as endorheic basin in Oregon, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Harney, Basin and endorheic can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2887483. The Library of Congress control number is sh2009009662. Authority coordinates are 43.254, -118.715. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Harney Basin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.