Merrill, OR

Merrill is a Klamath County city in the Lost River and Tule Lake Basin, about five miles from the California line. The 2020 census counted 821 residents. Oregon Route 39 runs through the agricultural country between Klamath Falls and Tulelake, while the Lost River passes the city’s edge. Potatoes, grain, cattle, irrigation, and school services set the everyday scale, with the larger Klamath Falls market to the northwest.

Nathan and Nancy Merrill laid out the townsite in 1894 after acquiring land along the Lost River, reserving streets, a school site, and a park. The Thomas Martin flour mill made Merrill a regional “Flour City” by 1909, and the town rebuilt after major fires in 1911, 1920, and 1921. Southern Pacific and Great Northern railroads arrived in the early 1930s. Merrill also sits within Modoc ancestral lands and near the site of the 1872 Battle of Lost River. The Klamath Basin Potato Festival, held since the 1930s, ties the city’s agricultural present to its older civic calendar.