unincorporated community
An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...
in
Grant County, Oregon
Grant County is one of the List of counties in Oregon, 36 counties in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 7,233, making it Oregon's fourth-least populous county. The county seat is Can ...
, United States. It is located ten miles down the Middle Fork John Day River from U.S. Route 395, between Dale and Long Creek. At one time the locale was also known as Ritter Hot Springs.
When a post office was established in this locale, it was named for the Rev. Joseph Ritter, a pioneer Baptist minister of the John Day Valley, on whose ranch it was situated. The post office was originally near the mineral
hot spring
A hot spring, hydrothermal spring, or geothermal spring is a Spring (hydrology), spring produced by the emergence of Geothermal activity, geothermally heated groundwater onto the surface of the Earth. The groundwater is heated either by shallow ...
s there, formerly known as McDuffee Hot Springs but now known as Ritter Hot Springs. In 1988, the post office had moved to the old schoolhouse across the river. As of 2009, Ritter no longer has its own post office; Ritter's mail is addressed to Long Creek.United States Postal Service ZIP Code Lookup /ref>
The springs were discovered by William Neal McDuffee, an early-day packer who traveled between Umatilla and the John Day Valley mines.