Joseph Canyon is a two thousand-foot-deep basalt gorge in northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington, carved by Joseph Creek within the Grande Ronde, Snake, and Columbia river systems. Its walls and floor preserve evidence of Columbia River basalt flows and Missoula Flood sediments, giving it major geological significance. Named for Chief Joseph, who is traditionally believed to have been born in a cave along Joseph Creek, the canyon long served the Nez Perce as a travel corridor between seasonal camps and as grazing land for horses. Later settlers established homesteads there, and since the late 1990s the Nez Perce Tribe has owned fifteen thousand acres in the watershed for conservation and habitat protection.