Seneca is a city in Grant County, Oregon, United States. Take a look below for 15 fun and fascinating facts about Seneca, Oregon, United States.

1. It is located in the Blue Mountains about 23 miles (37 km) south of Canyon City, on U.S. Route 395, on the edge of the Malheur National Forest.

2. The population was 199 at the 2010 census.

3. Seneca post office was established in 1895 and named by postmaster Minnie Southworth for her brother-in-law, prominent Portland judge Seneca Smith

4. While early homesteaders moved into the valley in the late 1800s, Seneca only began growing in the 1929 when it became the northern terminus of the now-vacated Oregon and Northwestern Railroad, owned by the Edward Hines Lumber Company, which extended south to Burns.

5. At that time, large-scale shipping of Ponderosa Pine logs from Seneca and the surrounding national forest began to the Hines sawmill in Hines.

6. The company established a planing mill and railroad shops in Seneca, and it became essentially a company town.

7. In 1940 Seneca’s population was 275.

8. Logging in the area began to decline in the 1970s, and the Hines company ceased operations of its lumber mills and railroad in 1984.

9. The town was incorporated as a city in 1970 as lumber company control began to wane.

10. According to the 1980 census, Seneca’s population was 285. The estimated population in 2007 was 270.

11. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 0.80 square miles (2.07 km2), all land.

12. Situated at the confluence of Bear Creek and the Silvies River, Seneca is in Bear Valley at the northern edge of the Great Basin.

13. The main industries in Seneca are cattle ranching and timber production.

14. Seneca is served by the Grant County School District (formerly the John Day School District).

15. Seneca School is a K-6 school. After 6th grade students attend Grant Union High School in John Day. Seneca School was built in the 1930s to serve the employees of the Hines Lumber Company.