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OCEAN
IN VIEW
Mouth
of the Columbia River, 1929
Photo
by Brubaker Aerial Survey, Courtesy National Archives,
Pacific
Alaska Region (Neg. RG77, Portland District L-224)
From
Wallula Gap to the mouth of the Columbia is some 310 miles. While the
rock of the gap is, for all intents and purposes, a solid and
enduring landmark, the mouth of the river is not. River mouths are
fluid constructs and defy fixed positions. As an aid to navigation,
River Miles are begun at a somewhat arbitrary mile 0 point. In the
Columbia's case, RM 0 begins just beyond the North Jetty and extends
perpendicular to the dredged channel. Shifting sand and fast water
makes for change. So the position of the mouth is determined to be
somewhere between Cape Disappointment in the north and Point Adams on
Clatsop Spit in the south.
As
the Corps of Discovery came ever closer to the river's end, all the
men were filled with anticipation. The weather was horrid. Incessant
rain and strong winds from the southwest kept them wet through. No
matter, William Clark sat stolidly in his canoe keeping a notebook
wrapped in oil skin perched on his knee. This served as his log of
the voyage and in it he recorded courses, bearings, prominent
landmarks, and, on occasion, exclamations. On November 7, 1805, he
made this entry in the log: "Ocian in view! O! the joy."
Though the emotion was no doubt genuine, his observation was to prove
false.
He
made that observation from an exposed campsite of rock and rolled
logs near Pillar Rock, "... a rock Situated half a mile from
shore, about 50 feet high and 20 Deamieter ..." The "ocian"
is still around the bend and some 15 miles away. No doubt the rough
water of the lower river looked very like ocean.
Pillar
Rock from downstream, Lyn Topinka photo (the top of the rock was
removed and flattened
to
put a light and navigation aid. Now stands 25' above river
The
view downriver rarely allows much of a distinction between fresh
river water and the salt of the Pacific. The low lying sandy spit
extending out to Point Adams confuses the most discerning eye. And
the width of the estuary as it tends seaward is enough to add to that
confusion. Waves and swell blend and merge. It would take an
experienced eye to say that there the river ends and there the ocean
begins. A distant horizon would be suggestive on those days when wind
and rain and fog allows a distant horizon.
The
view of the river from the ocean is equally obscure, so much so that
English explorer John Meares, in 1788, looking for the entrance to a
river that Spaniard Bruno Heceta had charted, had this to say: We can
now with safety assert, that no such river as that of St. Roc (Heceta
had named the headland he charted as Cabo San Roque) exists. He
rechristened that headland 'Disappointment.'
George
Vancouver, charting the coast in 1791, missed the river as well. He
did conclude that a small bay or river might exist. He was contending
with fog, rough weather, and an unruly crew of young gentlemen at the
time so might be forgiven his lapse.
It
was left to Robert Gray to first cross the bar and enter the estuary.
He sailed up river as far as Tongue Point (RM 19), traded with the
natives (his primary concern), and named the river after his ship,
Columbia Rediviva. His report (and subsequent profit) led the
parade of trading vessels that were to follow. Since Gray's crossing
more than 2000 large ships of been wrecked on the bar earning it the
sobriquet of The Graveyard of the Pacific.
Published
April 28th 1814 by Longman & Co. Paternoster Row
I
mentioned earlier there are places on the river that afford a view
much like that of Lewis and Clark, and one can take from such views a
taste of 1805. But the Columbia of today, controlled by dams,
bridged, overfished, and polluted is certainly not their river.
Estimates of 19th century fish runs count 12 to 16 million fish. This
number has been reduced to a million or so. Take a stadium filled
with 72,000 people and, using the most lowest estimate past runs, reduce
that crowd by the same ratio. 6000 people would remain. One might say
that the stadium was empty with such a sparse crowd. And so the
river. Modern homo sapiens seem driven to dominate the natural world,
and our overbearing presence has created today's Columbia River.
French
bark Colonel
de Villebois Mareuil
passing
over the bar of the Columbia River, ca. 1900
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