The land now known as the Oxbow Conservation Area has a long history of human use, from Native Americans who have lived in the region since time immemorial and reserved rights in 1855 to hunt, fish, and gather on millions of acres in Oregon under a treaty with the United States, to late-1800s homesteading, the DeWitt family's ranch, and later gold mining after veteran dredge operator Charles H. Timms bought the ranch's mineral rights in the late 1930s and the Timms Company dredged about 200 acres of riverbottom. In 2001, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs bought the 1,022 acre property with help from the Bonneville Power Administration and, with many partners, began restoring damage done to the Middle Fork John Day River, where from 1939 to 1943 a gold dredge overturned and processed 200 acres of valley bottom, destroyed fish habitat, and straightened the river channel. Restoration work re-excavated and moved huge volumes of dredged gravel and sand so the river could function more naturally with meanders, healthy flows, and wetlands that absorb floodwater, and added habitat complexity by placing thousands of logs along the river, creating new wetlands and river and creek channels, and planting thousands of grasses, shrubs, and trees to provide food, shelter, nesting areas, and cooler water. A central goal is restoring habitat for juvenile salmon, which need food, cover from predators, and slow, shady, cool water before swimming downstream to the ocean and returning after two to three years to spawn. This work is part of a larger restoration plan in the John Day River Basin led by the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs—comprising the Warm Springs, Wasco, and Paiute tribes—to restore river resources vital to their cultural traditions in a basin that once supported vast numbers of salmon and lamprey but where salmon now struggle because of habitat loss, dams, and other stressors.