Not the least enchanting of the highway’s glories are the waterfalls which flutter from sheer cliffs for hundreds of feet, swaying like silver ribbons and filling the air with their weird music. The first of these was Horsetail Falls, a rather unpoetic name for the silver cascade which dashes for two hundred feet down the side of a sloping cliff. It is less than three miles farther to Multnomah Falls, the gem of all the Columbia cataracts, but in that short distance there is much to enchant and overawe the beholder.
At Oneonta Creek the road builders encountered a vast cliff two hundred and five feet high, rising sheer a few feet from the water’s edge. The railway had taken all available space and Mr. Lancaster, nothing daunted, drove a tunnel through the solid rock. So great was the danger that the necessary blasting would tumble tons of loose rock on the railroad that the weak places in the cliff were reenforced with concrete before beginning the work. A strikingly picturesque touch is given to Oneonta Cliff by a lone fir which crowns its summit in solitary majesty—there is no other vegetation except shrubbery.
Near this point is some of the wildest and most grotesque scenery along the whole road. On the Washington side is Cape Horn and Cigar Rock—a tall slender pinnacle whose shape suggests the name—which loom like mighty monuments erected by some titan fire god when the demons of our legends ruled the land. These stern cliffs, mottled with the rainbow colorings of autumn and splashed with the soft green of velvet moss and waving ferns, reach their culminating beauty at the spot where Multnomah Falls pours its crystal flood over a ledge nearly a thousand feet above the highway—a sheer fall of eight hundred and forty feet—into a rocky basin and a second plunge of seventy feet to the green pool by the roadside.
At a point well above the second fall is a graceful concrete bridge—the gift of a Portland millionaire—reached by a flight of steps and affording a wonderful close-at-hand view of the fall as well as a wide panorama of the valley. We paused here for a better view of the scene and a drink of the clear, ice-cold water. As we were about to proceed an officer in khaki approached us. We had no guilt on our conscience—fifteen miles had been our limit on the Columbia Highway—and we awaited his coming with equanimity.
“Could you give a fat man a lift to Portland?” he asked, and then apologized, saying he had mistaken us for some one of his acquaintances. We urged him, however, to come right along—a motor cop ought to be a splendidly posted guide—and we proved quite right in this surmise. A little conversation revealed the interesting fact that some years ago he came to Portland from the county where the writer spent his boyhood.
SHEPPERD’S BRIDGE, COLUMBIA HIGHWAY
From photo by Fred H. Kiser, Portland, Oregon
“I sold my share in a good Iowa farm,” he said, “and invested the proceeds—some twenty thousand dollars—in a dozen acres near Portland in a section that they told me was sure to boom—but it hasn’t as yet. And so I go on waiting and hoping and paying taxes—holding down a job as motor cop in the meanwhile. O yes, they are mighty strict in enforcing the speed limit; there are six officers on the highway with peremptory orders to arrest any driver exceeding twenty-five miles per hour. No, we don’t make many arrests; local people know the rules and generally observe them and we usually give strangers fair warning. You will see how necessary this is when I tell you that there were six thousand cars on this fifty-mile road last Sunday, and for all our care there was one serious accident.” Then he told us the history of the highway and many interesting facts concerning it which I have tried to recount in the preceding pages. He was even posted on the Indian legends—just the kind of a courier we needed.
There are four or five waterfalls in the half dozen miles after passing Multnomah, beautiful, limpid columns of leaping water—Wahkeena Falls, Mist Falls, Bridal Veil Fall, Tookey Falls and Latourelle Falls—each of which might attract much attention and admiration were it situated in some spot less replete with scenic wonders, but they seem almost commonplace amidst such surroundings. Here, also, is Benson Park, a tract of land including Larch Mountain, donated by Mr. Benson of Portland. A trail has been built to the summit of the mountain, 4095 feet above the sea, and the river at this point is only a few feet above sea level. Here may be gained one of the most extensive views along the whole course of the highway. One’s vision covers vast tracts of mountains reaching to Ranier, over one hundred miles to the north, as well as endless panoramas up and down the river. The summit may be reached by a mule-back ride of several miles—which we deferred until some more favorable occasion.