Sherman County is a county located in Oregon. It is located in Eastern Oregon, about 120 miles east of Portland, Oregon. The county is bounded on the west by the Deschutes River, on the east by the John Day River, and on the north by the mighty Columbia River. The county is about 823 square miles, making it a little smaller than Rhode Island. Sherman County is also Oregon's second least populated county, with a little under 2000 people.

For people familiar with Oregon's rainy reputation, Sherman County would come as a surprise. Directly behind the rain shadow of the Cascade Mountains, most of Sherman County is a desert that gets around a dozen inches of precipitation a year, and is a mostly treeless plateau, outside of the two river valleys. Dryland wheat farming is the major agricultural activity, and other industries include the nearby John Day Dam, as well as facilities for travellers going along Interstate 84 and Highway 97, through the county.

Early in the history of the European settlement of Oregon, many counties in Eastern Oregon had larger populations than they have today, and Sherman County is one of them, with a population that peaked in 1910. Since Oregon itself had much fewer people, they were much more important in comparison to the state as a whole. Farming in the arid plains of Eastern Oregon proved difficult, and they have in general lost population over the past century. I myself have only visited Sherman County when travelling through it along the freeway, although I would hope to visit its many beautiful (if stark) natural areas some day.