In 1930, logging in the mountains north of Burns led to the creation of Hines, a lumber company town, and the timber industry remained important to the local economy until the 1990s. Since the arrival of Euro-Americans in the 19th century, cattle ranching and other forms of agriculture have dominated land use in the area.
Northern Paiutes or their ancestors, who were hunter-gatherers, have lived in the region for thousands of years. Remnants of an ancient lake that reached as far north as Burns are at the center of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, south of the city. The Harney Basin was the largest of many depressions in which lakes formed in southeastern Oregon during the late Pleistocene. The Burns–Hines region has a high-desert climate but was much wetter in the recent geologic past. Burns and the nearby city of Hines are home to about 60 percent of the people in the sparsely populated county, by area the largest in Oregon and the ninth largest in the United States.
According to the 2010 census, the population was 2,806. Burns is a city in and the county seat of Harney County, in the U.S.
