Ontario Basque Club, Inc.

The Ontario Basque Club, of Ontario (Oregon), was born in 1947 as a women's club, the Ontario Basque Ladies Club. The idea came from Serafina Uberuaga Mendiguren, who took it to Timotea “Timmie” Yraguen Echanis, who with her family owned the Echanis boardinghouse: opened in 1922, it was an obligatory stop for the Basque sheepherders who worked between Homedale, Marsing, Jordan Valley and the Steens Mountains, and it could serve 34 meals at one sitting. Together they called the first meeting. Today the club has its premises in Ontario's old railway station, it has held a charity dinner dance with a live lamb auction for more than seventy years and, since 1994, it has been gathering family histories, documents and photographs of the Basques of the area in the “Sustraiak” (“Roots”) project.