If
this is your first visit to CwHD, a brief introduction is available.
Just click on the CwHD
Intro link
in the sidebar. To return, simply click the Home
link.
Older editions are archived and listed by date. Conversations
with a Hypoxic Dog began on May 1 of this year. Words
and Language
and other Nonsense
remains
the focus; but a bit of History
was added several weeks ago.
SKAMOKAWA
(Ska-
mock-a-way)
"
... a cool wet raney morning we Set out early ... " Lewis and
Clark had camped at Prescott Beach, just below Rainier on the Oregon
side and Kelso-Longview on the Washington side. This area of the
river, other than where the dams were located, is the most changed.
The mill at Longview and the bridge spanning the river speak to the
commerce that has developed along the Columbia's shoreline.
When
Robert Gray sailed across the bar at the mouth of the river, only
native villages dotted the shoreline. From Fort Vancouver, built in
1829, to Astoria, settled first in 1811, a number of small
communities with their attendant commerce had begun to supplant the
native villages. The industrial age had caught up with the Columbia.
And with the discovery of gold in the interior Columbia basin and the
development of canneries on the lower river, the die was cast.
Two
brothers, George and William Hume, were major players in the
development. In 1866, with declining salmon runs on the Sacramento
River in California, they packed up and moved their operation north
to the Columbia. With their partner, Andrew S. Hapgood, they built a
cannery located at a place they called Eagle Cliff on the Washington
side some 50 miles upriver opposite the mouth of the Clatskanie
River. That year they packed 4,000 cases of salmon, 48 one-pound cans
to the case, all done by hand. By the 1880s, more than thirty
canneries lined the river from Astoria to the Dalles, and 600,000
cases of packed salmon were shipped yearly. By 1911, just 100 odd
years since Lewis and Clark, the salmon catch peaked at 47 million
pounds.
from
The Oregon Encyclopedia
Increased
boat traffic, from steamboats to double ended gill netters, created a
need for a safe channel and aids to navigation. The river's seasonal
rise and fall and its many shoals posed a challenge for the larger
ships that began to sail up river. In 1877, Congress approved the
creation of a channel from Portland to the mouth of the river. In
1891, dredging deepened the channel from 17 feet to 25 feet.
Skamokawa
and the shoals at the west end of Tenasillahe Island mark the end of
the river proper and the beginning of the Columbia's estuary. From
Bradford (RM 41), once a booming logging town, across to the
Elochoman Slough is just a mile and a quarter. Beyond Tenasillahe's
western point, the Columbia widens to over six miles from Svenson
Island in Cathlamet Bay to the mouth of Gray's River.
Tenasillahe
Island from near Bradford; called the Marshy Islands by Lewis and
Clark, the island's name is composed of two Chinook jargon words,
"tenas," meaning small, and "illahe," meaning
land
As
with the character of the activities along its shoreline, the
character of the river itself between St Helens and Skamokawa begins
to change. Beyond the Cascades, across a wide plain, and through the
less formidable Coast Range, the river slows and its course becomes
dotted with islands, large and small. Their names speak to the nature
of each island: Goat Island, Deer Island, Martin Island, Sandy
Island, Cottonwood Island, Walker, Fisher, Hump, Crims, Wallace,
Puget, and back to Tenasillahe.
All
these landforms are products of the vast amounts of sediment that the
Columbia transports. A good deal of that sediment is deposited at
the mouth creating the hazards of the bar. Much is washed out to sea.
Known as the Astoria Fan, this asymmetric wedge of sediment is 6000
feet thick and extends over 60 miles out to sea. The most obvious
product of deposition though are the islands.
As
a river meanders down its course, the flow on the outside of a bend
will accelerate, and erode the corresponding bank. The flow slows on
the inside of the bend, and this allows deposition of the silt, sand,
and gravels carried by the river. One aspect of this corresponding
erosion and deposition is the maintenance of a river's width. Often,
an anabranch, or side channel, will cut a path through the easily
eroded sediment and an island is formed.
From
Clark's journal, November 7, 1805:
...
A cloudy foggey morning Some rain. we Set out early ...fog So thick
we could not See across the river, two Canos of Indians met and
returned with us to their village which is Situated on the Starb.
Side behind a cluster of Marshey Islands, on a narrow chanl. of the
river ... Those people call themselves War-ci-a-cum
... we See great numbers of water fowls
about those marshey Islands; here the high mountainious Country
approaches the river on the Lard Side, a high mountn. to the S.W.
about 20 miles ... and 18 miles of this day we landed at a village
... at the foot of the high hills on the Strb Side back of 2 Small
Islands it contains 7 indifferent houses ... opposit to this Village
the high mountaneous Country leave the river on the Lard Side below
which the river widens into a kind of Bay & is Crouded with low
Islands Subject to be Covered by the tides ...
Please
leave a comment or question in the Comment's box below (or, if
no comment's box appears, click on No Comments). You may add your
email address or publish anonymously. Preview your comments,
then Publish. The Z-dog thanks you.