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American Road Magazine
Celebrating our two-lane highways of yesteryear…And the joys of driving them today!

Columbia River Highway Us30 Winter 2007


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ARMultnomaFalls.jpgARCrownPoint.jpg

I note that the Columbia River Highway is among the vote leaders in the West in the voting for favorite drives. I agree! It is always a beautiful drive, any time of year. We have taken it many times, including two visits this winter (12/06-1/07).

 

If you are not familiar with the highway, it is the two lane road designed in 1916 by famed highway engineer Samuel Lancaster along the south side of the Columbia River. The history of the road is almost as fascinating as the road itself.

 

The road follows along the Oregon side of the River. It was an engineering marvel in its day, because the Columbia runs through a steep walled volcanic canyon carved out in part by the humungous Missoula Lake floods of the ice age, about 15,000 years ago. The Missoula Floods were so gigantic that they swept huge boulders the size of locomotives many hundreds of miles, and scoured the land in much of the eastern part of Washington, in the process forming gigantic water falls (e.g. Dry Falls) that dwarfed today’s Niagara.

 

Creeks entering the Columbia were cut through by the 650 foot deep rushing water and now fall hundreds of feet into the canyon. Multnomah Falls (620 feet) in the photo is the best known.

 

The Columbia cuts through the Cascade range of Mountains on the route followed by Lewis and Clark. Many of the landmarks they note in their journals are landmarks along the Columbia River Highway today. For example, in the photograph of the river from historic Chanticleer Point (today called Women’s Forum Viewpoint), in the far distance on the left is a basalt plug called Beacon Rock by Lewis and Clark. This view is upriver, looking east.

 

The photograph of Multnomah Falls was taken when the temperature was low enough to freeze the mist onto the banks. For scale, the spots on the bridge are people viewing the falls. Lewis and Clark note the falls: “ ….streams fall from a much greater hight, and in their decent become a perfect mist which collecting on the rocks below again become visible and decend a second time in the same manner before they reach the base of the rocks.”

 

The old road can be entered at several places. Coming from the west, I find the best exit off the I84 freeway is Exit 22 to Corbett. This takes you up to Chanticleer Point, the site of the river photo. You can then stop at famed Crown Point (the building in the river photo) and take the serpentine road down to the river and Multnomah Falls. Westbound, take Exit 35. If you want to travel the old road, don’t assume you can take the Multnomah Falls exit off the freeway!! It does not connect with the old road and leads you to a large parking lot instead.

 

Finally, the Columbia River Highway is now officially the Historic Columbia River Highway. It was also a part of US30 and before that, the Old Oregon Trail auto road (for auto trail fans).

 

Keep the Show on the Road!

Edited by Keep the Show on the Road!
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