Tour follows Pataha Creek Canyon. To the south the terrain mounts gradually toward the Blue Mountains. The highway traverses mile after mile of rolling hills, which were once covered by thick bunchgrass, giving way to a checkerboard of wheat and barley fields. Pataha Creek rises at Clearwater, in southwest Garfield County. It flows north to the community of Pataha, then west through Houser, Dodge, and Jackson to the Tucannon River northwest of Tucannon in Columbia County. Prior to recognition of this name in 1947, the stream was sometimes called the East Fork of Pataha Creek.