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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2017
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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