The Columbia River: Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery, Its Commerce

by William Denison Lyman

CHAPTER IV

Where River and Mountain Meet, and the Traces of the Bridge of the Gods

The Most Unique Point yet on the River—River, Mountains, and Tide—The Only Place where the Cascade Range is Cleft—Distant View of Mt. Hood and Gradual Appearance of Lesser Heights—Limits of Region where River and Mountain Meet—Geological Character of this Region—Forces of Upheaval and Erosion and Volcano—We May Journey by Rail, by Steamboat, Horseback, Waggon, or Afoot, but we Prefer a Rowboat—Paha Cliffs—On the Track of Speelyei—Memaloose Island—Hood River and White Salmon Valleys and their Fruit—Beginnings of the Great Heights—The Sunken Forest—The Bridge of the Gods—Loowit, Wiyeast, and Klickitat—Difference in Climate between the East-of-the-Mountains and the West—Sheridan’s Old Blockhouse—Passing the Locks—Petrified Trees—Fish-wheels—Castle Rock—Ascent of Castle Rock—Story of Wehatpolitan—St. Peter’s Dome—Oneonta Gorge—Multnomah Falls—Cape Horn—Getting out of the Mountains—Cape Eternity and Rooster Rock—This Section of the Journey Ended—Comparison of the River with Other Great Scenes.

In the long journey down our River we have had a panoramic view of towering mountains and broad plains, foaming cataracts and tranquil lakes, fruitful valleys and volcanic desolations, growing cities and lonely wastes. All illustrate that infinite variety of the River which imparts its unrivalled charm.

But now we are approaching a point which is unique even in the midst of the unique, varied in never-ending variety, sublime even in almost continuous sublimity, singular even upon our most singular River. This place is where the mountains and the River meet. By mountains we mean the great chain of the Cascades, which under various names parallels the Pacific Coast all the way from Alaska to Southern California. But not only do mountains and River meet here, but the ocean sends his greetings, for at the lower end of the rapids which here mark the gateway of the mountains, the first pulse-beat of the Pacific, the first throb of the tide, is discernible, though it is a hundred and sixty miles farther to where the River is lost in that greatest of the oceans. River, Mountains, Ocean,—a very symposium of sublimities.

Eagle Rock, just above Shoshone Falls in Snake River.
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.

There is, too, another especially interesting feature of this spot, and that is, it is the only place for twelve hundred miles where the Cascade-Sierra Range is cleft asunder. In fact it is the only place in the entire extent of the range where it is cut squarely across. This fact imparts not only scenic interest, but commercial value. It is the only water-level route from the seacoast to the Inland Empire.

The place where River and mountains meet had been heralded to us long before we reached it. For as we passed the plains of the Umatilla we got an intimation of the mountain majesty which we were approaching. Clear-limned against the south-western horizon, a glistening cone, cold-white in the earliest morning, rosy-red with the rising dawn, and warm with the yellow halo of noon, fixes our eyes and bids us realise that from the far vision of a hundred miles we can see and worship at the shrine of Oregon’s noblest and most historic peak, Mt. Hood. As we speed on down the current we begin to see long lines of lesser peaks rising to the westward. The prairies of the Umatilla have been succeeded by picturesque bare hills, and these by ragged palisades of columnar basalt, with higher hills yet, crowned with gnarled oak-trees. Of the wheat-fields and orchards and sheep ranges centring at The Dalles, we have already spoken, and we have paused at Celilo and gazed on the historic “Timm,” or the Tumwater Falls, and the “Big Chute,” observing especially the Government canal and locks now started, from whose completion such vast commercial possibilities are plainly foreshadowed. Our present quest is therefore yet farther on, to the gateway of the mountains. This is found at the “Cascade Locks,” fifty miles below Dalles City. The section of river which we have styled “Where River and Mountain Meet” may be considered as extending from the mouth of the Klickitat River, a few miles west of Dalles City, to Rooster Rock, about thirty miles east of Vancouver. The distance between these points is about fifty miles, and through this space we may see all the evidences of a titanic struggle between the master forces of fire and water and upheaval. As we descend the majestic stream with the majestic banks on either hand and mark the apparent ancient water-marks hundreds of feet above our heads, we recall the Indian myth of Wishpoosh in an earlier chapter. The opinion of geologists in regard to this extraordinary passageway of the River is that it represents ages of gradual elevation of the mountain chain and a cotemporary erosion by the River, so that as the heights became higher, the river bed became deeper. The one-time shore slowly mounted skyward, and as the new upheavals rose from the ocean deeps the lines of erosion were in turn wrought on them, and river shore succeeded river shore through long ages. With these fundamental forces of upheaval and erosion there were eras of local seismic and volcanic activity, more cataclysmic in nature, from which there came the magnificent pillars of columnar basalt and the first trenching of the profound chasms which subsequent lateral streams carved through the rising base of the great range.