I Found a Toxic Waste Dump the Government Has Been Hiding for 50 Years

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Okay, let's rewind real quick. August 2020, my dad and I were exploring some of the most remote areas of Oregon. Us being geniuses drove our two wheel drive car onto a dry lake bed. Except it wasn't that dry. So, we were completely stuck over 100 miles away from the nearest town. While trying to find help, we noticed something that was honestly more alarming than our current situation. Turns out we had just stumbled onto one of the most disturbing toxic waste dumps in American history.

[00:00:24]25,55gallon drums of one of the most toxic substances ever created by mankind. They called it Agent Orange. In the moment, my dad and I just wanted to get out of there, so we didn't even bother looking into it. Fast forward 6 years later.

[00:00:37]Now, I think it's time we go back there and discover what really happened and what led up to dumping 1.4 million gallons of toxic waste in the desert.

[00:01:04]All right, so here's the plan. We're leaving Eugene and driving southeast.

[00:01:07]Our first stop is Salt Creek Falls, a massive waterfall in the Cascade Mountains. We'll continue driving over the Cascades and down into the high desert to see Fort Rock, the site where the oldest pair of shoes in the world were found. Then we're camping overnight at Crack in the Ground, a 2-m long volcanic fisher that drops 70 ft into the earth. And then the next morning, we're driving to one of the most remote places in the country to see something almost nobody knows about.

[00:01:36]>> This is my awesome friend Will, who's going to be joining us.

[00:01:40]We made like six sandwiches and then got on the road.

[00:01:45]The gas prices are actually insane.

[00:01:48]>> More water than >> water.

[00:01:53]Now that I filled up, we're on our way to the waterfall.

[00:01:58]We stopped at this reservoir and this guy caught two fish at the same time.

[00:02:08]If you guys didn't know, I'm a heavy thrifter, so I had to stop at this thrift store. Although, I didn't really find anything. We filled up on burgers since this was the last town with a franchise on our trip. Okay, is this one bigger or this one? Wait, swap them around. This one.

[00:02:21]>> Wait, hold on.

[00:02:23]>> Wait. God.

[00:02:25]>> This side of the Cascades is home to the Douglas fur, Oregon's state tree, which can live for over a thousand years and grow taller than a 30story building.

[00:02:38]This is Salt Creek Falls, the second tallest waterfall in Oregon, dropping 286 ft straight down. And it's been flowing non-stop ever since the last ice age. After this point, every mile you drive up these mountains, you gain about 100 ft of elevation. Almost half the year, this area looks something more like this, averaging 35 ft of snow annually. But the second you cross over the other side of these mountains, everything changes almost instantly like a Minecraft biome.

[00:03:05]Welcome to the high desert.

[00:03:08]The air is drier, the land is flatter, and the population density drops 10 times.

[00:03:13]The farther you go, you'll notice the trees start to disappear, rain is less common, and the environment starts to resemble a much darker place full of disturbing history. But that's about 2 hours from here. Now we're entering cowboy territory.

[00:03:31]Welcome to Fort Rock.

[00:03:33]It was a volcanic island that exploded about 50,000 years ago. Magma pushed up through the lake bed and hit cold water, creating a steam explosion, making this almost perfect ring. We're going to go hike it and then eat some dinner.

[00:03:47]This entire valley used to be a massive lake. And around here is where archaeologists found 10,000-year-old sandals buried in a cave.

[00:04:09]Now we're making our way to the campsite, and you'll see why it's called Crack in the Ground.

[00:04:15]We can't help but stop every once in a while to take in these beautiful views.

[00:04:29]All right, guys. We arrived at our first camp. Crack in the ground. We're going to go explore a little bit. Set up camp.

[00:04:37]Little crack in the ground exploration.

[00:04:39]Look, >> we didn't know what we were getting into, and this one really surprised us.

[00:04:46]What's extremely rare is that this place is perfectly preserved. Usually, debris fills in these cracks over thousands of years, but the farther we went in, the deeper it got. We had to bring out our flashlights because we got to a point where we were about 60 ft underground.

[00:05:01]You're probably wondering, how did this crazy place form long ago? The Earth's crust literally got pulled apart in two directions. The ground stretched so far, it split open 2 mi long and 70 ft deep.

[00:05:11]Because eastern Oregon is so dry, it never filled back in. So, it looks almost the exact same as the day it formed. We'll explore that more tomorrow. For now, let's set up camp.

[00:05:27]Tomorrow we're driving out to the toxic waste dump. So, let me give you some context. During the Vietnam War, between 1961 and 1971, the United States military sprayed 20 million gallons of toxic chemicals across Vietnam to destroy the jungle and expose enemy soldiers hiding in it. They called this chemical Agent Orange. The problem, it contained one of the most toxic compounds ever studied by science. And US soldiers were walking through it, breathing it in, getting it on their skin, and nobody warned them. 2.8 million American veterans were exposed.

[00:05:58]Hundreds of thousands developed cancer because of it. And on the Vietnamese side, 4 million people were affected.

[00:06:03]Birth defects still show up in children born today. And an hour from here is where they buried it and thought nobody would ever find it.

[00:06:11]But that's where we're stepping in.

[00:06:21]If you can't tell, that was a top three worst sleep of my life. But honestly, this view made up for all of it.

[00:06:32]With some light out now, we went back to crack in the ground to investigate.

[00:06:36]The deeper in we went, the more mind-blowing it became.

[00:06:44]The environment is very interesting down here. There's lush grasses that aren't growing anywhere else hundreds of miles from here.

[00:06:52]We packed up our camp and left this very memorable place.

[00:06:57]Now we're heading to our final destination and the real point of this whole trip.

[00:07:04]The further we drove, the more the landscape started to change. The last few trees started to disappear. The grass eventually dried up until the only thing left standing was sage brush.

[00:07:19]The roads extend beyond the horizon like something out of a movie.

[00:07:26]Highways didn't have big junctions, just stop signs.

[00:07:38]This is it. After hundreds of miles, we finally arrived.

[00:07:46]At this point, Will and I were a little nervous because we just didn't know what to expect.

[00:07:51]We parked the car and set out on foot.

[00:08:03]First thing we found was some extremely old trash. cans, barrels, bottles, most likely from the very crew that helped with this operation.

[00:08:14]We continued walking and could see the dry lake bed on the horizon. Found a 50 cal bullet in what looked to be the frame of a very old car.

[00:08:34]The farther we got out here, I started to notice something weird. These yellow poles are showing up everywhere. All right, guys. We're about 90% the way out here. We found these water wells.

[00:08:44]They're everywhere. Probably saw like five or six of them. They have sensors and stuff and they're going in the ground and seeing the quality and if the toxins are spreading throughout the ground, which they probably are. After later research, my guess was pretty accurate. These are used to monitor the harmful chemicals in the soil. The dry lake bed had large deposits of salt that looked almost like bones, which had me kind of nervous for my health and safety. And it seems they're active out here. There was none of this effort the last time I was here. There seems to be some brand new barrels sitting next to the site, which are most likely some type of treatment solution. But let's be honest, those barrels are about 50 years too late.

[00:09:20]>> Have leaked out onto the desert floor, fueling one of Oregon's most bitter environmental controversy. In 1969, a Beaverton, Oregon company called Chemical Waste Storage and Disposition was granted a permit to dump herbicidal chemicals in this desert. The chemicals were the manufacturing byproducts of Agent Orange, the same compound that was destroying Vietnam and the people in it.

[00:09:41]By 1971, the barrels were already leaking and the company was charged with being a public nuisance. Improper handling and toxic waste spilling directly onto the desert floor. So, the state stepped in. And here's where it gets truly unbelievable. Instead of proper cleanup, the Oregon DEEQ sent bulldozers out here in 1976 to crush the leaking barrels and bury them in shallow unlined trenches. No liner, no containment, just dirt. The environmental mistakes of the past have caught up with us here at Alkali Lake.

[00:10:10]And the best thing anybody can say about it is that they hope it will never happen again.

[00:10:14]>> A plume of contamination has been tracked spreading underground over 2,000 ft. And get this, the company responsible, now owned by Bayer Crop Science, one of the largest pharmaceutical corporations on the planet, reporting tens of billions in annual revenue, paid $700,000 to walk away, less than 50 cents per gallon. And the Oregon DEEQ deemed this site safe because of a barb wire fence.

[00:10:38]For our safety, we put on some masks and gloves. This looks like an original barrel from the site here shooting.

[00:10:48]kind of nifty. But so that's the original site over there. And this is like their secondary fence they put up.

[00:10:56]Each one of these numbers represents a massive trench full of toxic waste. They extend so far I can't even see them anymore. The government really buried all this, put a fence around it, and called it solved. But standing here looking at this fence, knowing what's underneath it, watching cattle graze a few hundred feet away from one of the most toxic substances ever created, it doesn't feel solved. This is what happens when we cut corners on environmental responsibility. When profit matters more than people. When the cheapest option wins over the right option. The damage from decisions like this don't go away. It doesn't biodegrade. And it doesn't disappear because we push dirt over it and put up a fence. We should never be cutting corners when it comes to the health of our land, our water, our food, and the people and animals that depend on all of it. I hope we can do better than this because unlike the people who made these decisions, the consequences they left behind don't get to just walk away. The damage is everlasting.

[00:11:53]This was my first YouTube video. If you liked it, please consider liking and subscribing. We've got more adventures coming soon.