Columbia River Gorge
Where the River of the West once tore through chutes to form Celilo Falls, a perilous passage for the Corps of Discovery, our very own Sea Bird slipped quietly into the ship locks at The Dalles Dam.
We docked at The Dalles, the oldest American settlement, along with Astoria, on the West Coast. This is a crossroads of Northwest history. The Corps encamped here in a natural defensive position they called “Rock Fort.”
Capt. Clark recorded some 10,000 native people gathered here to net and spear salmon and steelhead trying to force their way up the constricted torrents of Celilo. The natives split the fish and hung them on racks to be wind and sun dried. The hammer of long stone pestles pounding dried fish reverberated along the river.
As vividly described in Clark’s journal only at Celilo could all the tribes traveling from afar meet for peaceful trading and find such a bounty of food. There was such a surplus of salmon that the dried product was packed tightly in salmon skins and these in rush mats for transport.
The Dalles saw fur brigades, an 1830’s Methodist mission, the first U.S. Army fort between the Cascades and Rockies, the juncture of the Oregon Trail and Columbia River and the launch of pioneers who rafted families and wagons through the Cascade Mountain barrier. Some never made it to their “Promised Land” in the Willamette Valley. They perished in the final great rapids, The Cascades, which gave their name to the surrounding mountain range.
Our buses followed the historic Old Columbia River Highway (built between 1912 and 1917) upward over figure eight loops onto Rowena Plateau. This plateau 1,000 feet above the Columbia River was sculpted by Pleistocene floods that tore through here 12,000 years ago.
At the entry to Mosier Tunnels on the scenic highway, we separated into biking and hiking groups and explored a five-mile section. It was abandoned on completion of the Interstate 84 route but reopened recently for hikers and bikers. In the tunnel was a message carved in stone by two men snowbound for eight days in a 1921 blizzard. Prominent Douglas firs along the gorge face had their branches shredded off one side by the prevailing west winds. They’re called “flag trees.”
The last hour of daylight we caught 620-foot Multnomah Falls with the tap turned on full by the recent deluge in the Cascades. It thundered and issued clouds of mist. The height is exceeded only by Yosemite Falls, but Multnomah has the greatest volume the year around. In Multnomah Creek we watched Coho salmon in the last throes of their spawning cycle.
Capt. Clark wrote of this scene: “Down these heights descend the most beautiful cascades, one of which, a large creek, throws itself over a perpendicular rock…”
Where the River of the West once tore through chutes to form Celilo Falls, a perilous passage for the Corps of Discovery, our very own Sea Bird slipped quietly into the ship locks at The Dalles Dam.
We docked at The Dalles, the oldest American settlement, along with Astoria, on the West Coast. This is a crossroads of Northwest history. The Corps encamped here in a natural defensive position they called “Rock Fort.”
Capt. Clark recorded some 10,000 native people gathered here to net and spear salmon and steelhead trying to force their way up the constricted torrents of Celilo. The natives split the fish and hung them on racks to be wind and sun dried. The hammer of long stone pestles pounding dried fish reverberated along the river.
As vividly described in Clark’s journal only at Celilo could all the tribes traveling from afar meet for peaceful trading and find such a bounty of food. There was such a surplus of salmon that the dried product was packed tightly in salmon skins and these in rush mats for transport.
The Dalles saw fur brigades, an 1830’s Methodist mission, the first U.S. Army fort between the Cascades and Rockies, the juncture of the Oregon Trail and Columbia River and the launch of pioneers who rafted families and wagons through the Cascade Mountain barrier. Some never made it to their “Promised Land” in the Willamette Valley. They perished in the final great rapids, The Cascades, which gave their name to the surrounding mountain range.
Our buses followed the historic Old Columbia River Highway (built between 1912 and 1917) upward over figure eight loops onto Rowena Plateau. This plateau 1,000 feet above the Columbia River was sculpted by Pleistocene floods that tore through here 12,000 years ago.
At the entry to Mosier Tunnels on the scenic highway, we separated into biking and hiking groups and explored a five-mile section. It was abandoned on completion of the Interstate 84 route but reopened recently for hikers and bikers. In the tunnel was a message carved in stone by two men snowbound for eight days in a 1921 blizzard. Prominent Douglas firs along the gorge face had their branches shredded off one side by the prevailing west winds. They’re called “flag trees.”
The last hour of daylight we caught 620-foot Multnomah Falls with the tap turned on full by the recent deluge in the Cascades. It thundered and issued clouds of mist. The height is exceeded only by Yosemite Falls, but Multnomah has the greatest volume the year around. In Multnomah Creek we watched Coho salmon in the last throes of their spawning cycle.
Capt. Clark wrote of this scene: “Down these heights descend the most beautiful cascades, one of which, a large creek, throws itself over a perpendicular rock…”
