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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 24, 2017)
1C THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2017 CONTACT US Rebecca Sedlak | Weekend Editor rsedlak@dailyastorian.com WEEKEND BREAK FOLLOW US facebook.com/ DailyAstorian Enormous Columbia plays hide and seek By NANCY LLOYD For The Daily Astorian T he Columbia River rises in Canada’s Rocky Mountains, fl ows north, then south, west, south again, east, south, east again, south again, west, north and fi nally west into the earth’s largest ocean. It gathers water from approximately the totality of the Pacifi c Northwest and travels about 1,200 miles before colliding with the surf of the Pacifi c Ocean. THIS NEST OF DANGERS _______ On its trip downhill from the mountain ranges surrounding its drainage basin, the Columbia picks up desert sand, volcanic ash, rich topsoil and forest debris, which all jostle along in the fl ow, some piling up behind the many dams punctuating the stream. At the mouth of the river between Oregon and Wash- ington, the remaining debris drops out of sus- pension, creating an ellipse of muck that the surging and retreating tide and the outfl owing river incessantly shove around. That ellipse is called the Columbia River bar. Most great rivers have a delta near their mouth where water slows and meanders over a wide fl at tideland until it eases into the ocean. Not so with the Columbia: It fl ows full force abruptly into the ocean. The height difference in tidal elevation between the river and the ocean is about 10 feet, meaning one body of water is almost always trying to shove the other out of the way. Ice Age fl oods Perhaps 15,000 years ago, when the world was frozen, a series of ice dams stoppered the downhill outfl ow of water from glacial Lake Missoula. Repeatedly, that water fl oated the ice dams and forced its way free to tear through the lands west of northern Idaho’s Rocky Mountains, breaking through several stony blockages — at Washington’s Wallulah Gap and the Cascade Mountains in the Colum- bia River Gorge — before fl ooding into the primordial Pacifi c Ocean. The Ice Age coastline was farther west in those days; all that ice meant that sea level was a lower proposition than it is today. When those fantastic fl oods of water and debris per- haps 600 feet high roaring toward the sea at 40 miles an hour reached the ocean, they scoured a great and deep gorge, the Astoria Canyon. Today, within perhaps 35 miles of the shore, the sea bottom at the Astoria Canyon drops abruptly from sea level to over 3,000 feet. No room is left for a fl attened delta to calm the meeting of the waters. As you stand near the mouth of the Colum- bia River and look to the southeast you see Saddle Mountain. Its height is slightly more than the depth of the Astoria Canyon and its distance away from you is about the distance between the river’s mouth and the commence- ment of that canyon. Big change in a short distance! The Astoria Canyon is one element creat- ing the horrifi c Columbia River bar; another is the weather of the North Pacifi c Ocean blow- ing toward our coast, particularly in winter; a third is the distance swells may travel — from Japan, Hawaii, Alaska or Chile — before fetching up uninterrupted on this lee shore. With nothing offshore to break up those big onshore swells, and with an abrupt rise in sea fl oor between the Astoria Canyon and the riv- er’s mouth, and with storms from the west, the place where the Columbia meets the Pacifi c Ocean is often a watery riot. Seven-fanged horror Then there is the amount of water coming downstream. As it nears its oceanic destiny, the river widens into an estuary nearly 10 miles across, is nowadays narrowed by rock jetties AUTHOR’S COLLECTION English explorer John Meares failed to find the mouth of the Columbia River, supposing instead that “River Oregon” discharged far to the north. It was Meares who named Cape Disappointment, in the mistaken belief that it did not mark the river’s entrance. into an entrance six miles wide, and blasts hun- dreds of thousands of square feet of water per second into the Pacifi c Ocean. Picture a fi re hydrant open at full blast, aimed at a stout stone wall. Here, where river and ocean scrimmage fi ercely back and forth over the same few muddy leagues of center fi eld, sand and down- stream debris piles up. Water may riot in waves of 20 feet, or 40, shoving that stuff around. Breakers may show white the entire width of the bar. Not for nothing did old-timers call it “the seven-fanged horror.” Today, author Michael Haglund sums it up bluntly: “… (T)he Columbia River bar is the most dangerous entrance to a commercial waterway in the world.” One fact was that it didn’t look like any major river they’d ever seen. The coast betrayed only a “slight and gradual inner curve,” silt-col- ored water, and often the unbroken row of frothing breakers looked like a coastline with no opening. Sailing closer and climbing to the top of their tallest mast, most sailors still saw only what looked like an elbow of the sea. In 1775 Spaniard Bruno de Hezeta observed “a great bay” which he thought might be the entrance of “some great river or pass to some other sea,” but his crew was too debilitated by scurvy to attempt an entrance. The captain named several points of land and sailed on. Thirteen years later England’s John Meares saw the telltale discolored water but couldn’t get beyond the breakers. He named the head- land and what he took to be a harbor, “Cape Disappointment” and “Deception Bay.” He, This elusive coast, too, sailed on. this elusive river In 1792 England’s George Vancouver, As we Pacifi c Northwesterners look at old determined to fi nd “Hezeta’s River,” noted off- maps, we note an appalling lack of informa- shore of Deception Bay that “the sea had now tion about our coastline. Ofttimes our region changed from river-coloured water, the proba- is blank. ble consequence of some streams falling into Much before 1775, English, Spanish, the bay. Not considering this opening worthy French and Dutch shipmasters drew coast- of more attention, I continued our pursuit to the lines of Mexico and Baja California that we northwest.” How this fi ne mariner must have recognize today; the farther north their pens come to regret making a record of that opin- moved the sketchier the out- ion. Vancouver’s failure to line got. “New Albion” was enter that “opening” eventu- “… (T)he decidedly unclear. Russians ally contributed to England’s and Scotsmen etched won- losing claim to the Oregon Columbia derfully detailed coastlines Country. southward from the Aleutians A month later on May 11, River bar to Vancouver Island, where 1792 Robert Gray of Bos- is the most ton had what sounds like a the edge of the paper conve- niently intervened. of a bar crossing into dangerous breeze The coast between Cape the Great River of the West. Flattery near Neah Bay, eight, A. M., being a little entrance to a “At Washington, and Cape to windward of the entrance Blanco near Brookings, Ore- commercial of the Harbor, bore away, and gon, was sometimes miss- ran in east-north-east between ing completely. A few maps waterway in the breakers, having from fi ve show a line labeled “great seven fathoms of water. the world.” to When river of the west” wandering we were over the bar, due eastward from this vague we found this to be a large Michael Haglund coastline. river of fresh water, up which author Those of us who’ve drawn we steered…” maps know about fudging USA on the Pacifi c Northwest Coast what we don’t understand. How did it come to be that the U.S., barely Why so mysterious? out of rompers in terms of its nationhood, suc- Just why was it that it took the world’s best ceeded in the competition to fi nd that so-called sailors until almost 1800 to accurately draw “Great River of the West?” How did its mar- the coastline of Oregon and Washington? And itime explorers beat out those more experi- why was the Columbia apparently the last enced sailors from nations that were far older? major river in the temperate world to be found After determined Americans, with the help by non-Natives? of France and Spain, had defeated Great Brit- Today, as we look at the mouth of the ain in the revolutionary War of Independence, Columbia River, fi xed in place by jetties made it found itself in the quandary of having to sup- of boulders the size of Volkswagens and which port its own currency and fi nance its own gov- weigh almost as much as a Mack truck, we ernment. Fortuitously, they heard rumors of a can’t imagine how the world’s fi nest mariners wealth of furs to be trapped on the north coast repeatedly missed it. of the Pacifi c Ocean and sold in China. Those tales were being spread by sailors from Capt. James Cook’s third voyage, and some Boston businessmen listened. Among them were Joseph Barrel, merchant; Charles Bullfi nch, recent Harvard graduate; Samuel Brown, another merchant; John Derby, ship- master; and others. One vessel the group bought for their fi rst expedition west was the Columbia Rediviva. The word “rediviva,” Oregon historian Horace Lyman tells us, “indicat[ed] the patriotic feel- ing of the promoters that Columbia — America — was alive again.” This venture was planned to resuscitate the fortunes of the young nation. The fur trade In February 1846 the Connecticut Cou- rant reprinted an article from the Boston Jour- nal about the business of the fur trade. Bos- ton merchant William Sturgis who had sailed to the Pacifi c Northwest and traded for furs before 1800 — he was aboard the vessel Car- oline at the Columbia River in 1804 — spoke 42 years later to a group in Boston about early American presence in the region. (These were the days when “The Oregon Question” rankled between Great Britain and the United States: who would control that land drained by what would come to be known as the Columbia River?) “In 1787,” the Courant repeated, “the fi rst American expedition to engage in the fur trade, started from Boston; it consisted of two vessels [Columbia Rediviva and Lady Washington] … Mr. Sturgis spoke of the boldness and daring of the undertaking and said that the whole fi eld of commercial enterprise, at the present day, could afford no parallel to it. It was not easy now to estimate the dangers and diffi culties attendant upon it. The country had but just passed through the Revolution … and the vessels which car- ried out the undertaking were not such as would pass an insurance offi ce of this day. “Medals were struck, on that occasion; of the inscription upon them, Mr. Sturgis was enabled to procure a facsimile, from a medal preserved in the Department of State, at Wash- ington. The inscription was as follows — In the circle round the medal, ‘North America, for the Pacifi c Ocean, fi tted at Boston, (in the centre) By J. Barrel, S. Brown, C. Bullfi nch, J. Derby, C. Hatch, J. M. Pintard, 1787.’ “On the reverse was ‘Columbia and Wash- ington, commanded by J. Kendrick.’ [Robert Gray was the second in command.] In the cen- tre, were drawn two ships under full sail. … The voyage of the Columbia was not profi table in a pecuniary point of view, but it opened the way to others. “In 1791, seven vessels from the United States were in the North Pacifi c in pursuit of furs. American traders gained the ascendancy, and the whole North-West fur trade, except See COLUMBIA, Page 2C An engraving from the May 30, 1868 edition of Harper’s Weekly depicts Astoria and the mouth of the Columbia River. The Columbia estuary is so easily confused for a large bay, and the line of breakers over the old river bar was so violent, that the river’s mouth long eluded efforts to discover it. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION
