[3] An automated weather station is located here, as well as highway maintenance facilities.

The Santiam Junction State Airport is an emergency/recreational/aerial firefighting landing strip that is closed from the first snowfall until spring.

[3][4] The Santiam Junction vicinity is listed by the National Register of Historic Places as the site of the Oregon Pacific Railroad Linear Historic District, which consists of roughly 20 miles (32 km) of the old railroad grade between Idanha and the line's Cascade Range summit.

[5][6] Geologically, much of the area is a lava bed created during a period of volcanic activity around 1000 B.C.

[7] Santiam Junction experiences a dry-summer humid continental climate (Köppen Dsb) with warm, dry summers and cold, wet winters with heavy snow and rain.