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

by William Denison Lyman

Remarkable Change in Climate and Topography—Farms and Villages—First View of Mt. Hood on West Side—Vancouver and its Historic Interest—The North Bank Railroad—View at the Mouth of the Willamette—Sauvie’s or Wapatoo Island—Beauty of the Willamette and its Tributaries—Simpson’s Poem—Approach to Portland—Site of Portland—Transportation Facilities—Portland’s Commerce—Homes and Public Buildings—Art in Portland—The Historical Society Museum—The Oregonian and its Editor—Once more on the River—The Fishing and Lumbering Villages—Scenery of the Lower River—Astoria and the Outlook to the Ocean—Industries of Astoria—The Fisheries—The Fleet of Fishing Boats on the Bar—The Ocean Beaches and the Tourist Travel—Through the Outer Headlands to the Pacific.

Having returned from our side trip to the mountain peaks of Hood and Adams and having resumed our station on the bank of the River just below Rooster Rock, we see that we are now in a new world. We are at sea-level. Dense forests clothe the shores, except for the places where the axe of the settler or the saws of the lumberman have made inroads. Moss drapes the rocks. Ferns and vines take possession wherever the trees have been removed. Even in summer a feeling of humidity usually pervades the air. A certain softness and roundness seems to characterise both the vegetable and animal world. The smell of the sea is in the atmosphere, even though the sea is yet distant. No longer do our eyes wander over boundless expanses of rolling prairie, crowned to the highest knolls with wheat-fields, as on the other side of the mountains. The mountains fall away, and low bottoms, sometimes oozy with the inflowing river or the creeks from the forests, stretch away in the lazy, hazy distance. The River no longer flows tumultuously and with that militant energy which is so characteristic of the long stretches from Kettle Falls to The Dalles. It has a calm and stately majesty, the repose of accomplished warfare and victory. It has hewn its way down to the level of the ocean and no longer needs to fret and storm. It has conquered a peace.

Band of Elk on W. P. Reser’s Ranch, Walla Walla, Wash.
Photo. by W. D. Chapman.

Below Rooster Rock, the shores are flats with low hills in the background, and the River expands to a width of from one to two miles. If we still imagine ourselves in a small boat, we find the most delightful of sensations in gliding past the grassy islands and shores thick with fir or cottonwood. Or if we choose to take our way to one of the elegant steamers, Spencer or Bailey Gatzert, we shall still partake of the same life and feel the same sense of repose and contentment which belong by natural right to this portion of the River.

Soon after leaving Rooster Rock, we begin to pass frequent pleasant farms on either bank. On the Washington side we see two pretty villages, Washougal and La Camas. The first has the historical distinction of being at or nearly at the highest spot reached by the English explorer Broughton in 1792, and named by him Point Vancouver. La Camas is the location of the most extensive paper mills in the North-west.

If, while we are in this section of the River and our eyes are bent eagerly forward to catch the ever-changing shore and river lines, we happen to glance backward, our gaze is fastened as with a magnet, and for a moment utterance fails. For what do we see? Glistening white, ethereal, Mt. Hood rises before us, a vision which, of the many mountain visions that we have seen, seems the most beautiful. Mt. Hood indeed is the background of many a noble scene upon the River, but there is none quite equal in amplitude, in variety, to this,—River, forest, shore, foreground of timbered hills, Cascade Gorge, distant white and purple chain of Cascade Mountains, and the volcanic cone overtopping and overawing all. This view of Mt. Hood from the vicinity of La Camas has perhaps been oftener the subject of painting than any other.

A few miles below La Camas we reach the most historic and perhaps the most beautiful spot upon the Columbia, Vancouver. As the capital for twenty years of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fur Empire, associated with the name of Dr. John McLoughlin, the centre of almost every event of importance in the early history, connected with both American and British occupation, and later as the location of the United States military post and preserving the names of Grant, Sheridan, McClellan, Hooker, and others of our famous generals, Vancouver has indeed a rich historic setting. But aside from such associations with the past, every tourist must note the location of Vancouver as one of rare beauty. In fact, the spot is almost ideal for a great city. The splendid River, a mile and a half in width, offers limitless facilities for shipping, while, beginning at the water’s edge, a gradually rising slope of land extends in a superb swell several miles to the north. Every feature of scenery that could delight the eye—Mt. Hood with the Cascades to the east, the Willamette Valley to the south, the Portland and Scappoose hills to the west, the River blending all—seems to have been lavished on Vancouver. It has been a surprise to many that the great city had not grown here rather than at Portland, which, though on an equally fine location, is on the tributary and much smaller Willamette. The chief reasons of this were the nearer proximity of Portland to the rich farming country of the Tualatin and the presence in the Columbia a mile below Vancouver of a sand-bar which embarrassed shipping. This is now removed.

Oregon City in 1845.
From an Old Print.