PazTripReports: Northeast Coast

(This post covers Sept. 14-17)

"The object of your mission...the Pacific Ocean."

-Thomas Jefferson's charge to Lewis & Clark

There it is boys; you've arrived (thanks to those directions I gave you back in Boise).

Now that we have driven the entire length of the Oregon coast on the 101 I can report that my theory about it becoming more developed and touristy as we went north was pretty accurate.

It’s not all that crowded, and it’s still pretty and relatively pristine; but there are more people and the detritus that goes with them.

On Saturday (Sept. 14) we settled into Ft. Stevens State Park at the mouth of the Columbia River in the extreme northeast corner of Oregon, roughly 2,200 miles from San Antonio and about 10 miles from Ft. Clatsop where Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1805-1806.

Ft. Stevens is huge. With nearly 500 RV sites it is, by far, Oregon’s largest state park; and, reportedly, one of the largest in the western U.S. Beyond the massive campground complex, the park itself is huge. It’s a former Army base where artillery was installed in concrete bunkers to protect the mouth of the Columbia from an enemy invasion that never came. This type of coastal defense became obsolete after WWII and the base was closed and then leased to the state for a park.

The bunkers and a few of the cannon are still in place and there is a small museum that includes numerous copies of the front pages of The Oregonian detailing the Japanese shelling of Ft. Stevens and Astoria during WW II. No one was hurt and there was relatively little damage but it is the only time (they say) since the War of 1812 that a foreign nation has fired on the lower 48. About 22 shells landed, probably fired from a submarine that had surfaced offshore. There was also an incident along the southern coast where a Japanese plane, launched from a submarine, dropped an incendiary bomb in the forest hoping to start a fire. That didn’t work either; too wet.

We of course came out here via the Oregon Trail, not by Lewis and Clark’s route. However, attentive blog readers may recall that on only our second night out after leaving San Antonio – way back in July – we did stay at Lewis and Clark State Park on the banks of the Missouri River; so-named because the Corps of Discovery spent a night there on their way up the river in the spring of 1804. Also, the Oregon Trail and the Lewis and Clark routes do overlap in the Columbia River Gorge where we spent four days a few weeks back.

So we do feel some kinship with Meriwether, William and the rest of the Corps.

While they were wintering here a report came in that a whale had beached on the sand at what is now Ecola State Park (Ecola being an approximation of the Chinook Indian word for whale). Clark and a few men went to investigate and found that the Indians had left little but the skeleton. However, Clark was able to barter for about 300 pounds of blubber which he described in his journal as “palatable, tasting a bit like pork or dog”.

Also during the winter layover in 1806 four men were sent over to what is now the town of Seaside to boil seawater to replenish the Corps’s stores of salt for the return trip to St. Louis.

After settling into our slot with the 500 other RVers at FSSP (yes, the campground was full) we paid a visit to the Lewis and Clark National Historical Park, which includes a replica of Ft. Clatsop that is based on drawings in Lewis’s journal; drove to Ecola SP, which has no beached whales but does offer a good view of Oregon’s northernmost lighthouse, which is now a privately-owned columbarium that sits on a small rock a mile off the coast, and; went into Seaside, which is a busy resort town with a pleasant pedestrian promenade, a replica of the L&C salt works and a brewpub.

Oregon's northernmost lighthouse.

Whew, that was Saturday.

On Sunday the Texans beat the Titans in overtime while I walked up to look at the Ft. Stevens’ bunkers and museum.

It was a rainy, drizzly day but after the game we went into Astoria for their weekly market day where they close several downtown streets and vendors set up booths. It was nice.

Astoria claims to be the oldest U.S. city established by Euro-Americans west of the Mississippi, or something to that effect. The qualifiers are necessary because, obviously, Santa Fe, St. Louis and several places in California are older. It would probably be simpler and less specious if they would settle for a more modest claim, like being the first city in Oregon.

Astoria is named for John Jacob Astor. Although he never came here Astor’s American Fur Company chose this as a base for their operations in the area and established Ft. Astoria in 1811. Two years later it was sold to the British-owned North West Fur Company which later became part of the British-owned Hudson Bay Company. A long, convoluted dance between the two countries, with Fort Astoria more or less caught in the middle, began. Under British rule the fort was named Ft. George (in honor of their George, not ours) and it wasn’t until the Oregon Treaty of 1846 – which set the boundary between the two countries at the 49^th parallel where it remains today – that matters were finally settled and the name was changed back to Astoria.

The Columbia River at Astoria is huge – several miles wide – and we crossed into Washington on the long, long, 2-lane 101 bridge to look at several Lewis and Clark historic sites that are on the Washington side. They came down the river in late 1805 on the north side and encountered some fierce storms and some of the most difficult circumstances of the entire trip. They went all the way to Cape Disappointment which offers a great view of the mouth of the Columbia and the ocean waves crashing on the beach below. This was the westernmost point that L&C reached on their trip and it was pretty cool to stand at the same place they stood and see pretty much the same things they saw. (Note: The name of the cape probably pre-dated L&C; getting the name from a British trapper in 1792 “disappointed” at his inability to negotiate the sand bars blocking entry to the Columbia. It seems doubtful that L&C would have been disappointed at the great view of their goal, the Pacific Ocean.)

On Monday we drove about 150 miles north to Puyallup, Washington to attend the Washington State Fair and spent the night at a bed and breakfast that advertised itself as a “view with a room” because of the supposedly great views of Mt. Rainier which, of course, was completely encased in clouds.

This was our fifth (and last) state fair on this trip and we both ranked it a solid second behind Iowa. Oddly, even though there has been a fair at the same site for more than 100 years this was the first fair in Puyallup (pew-ALL-up) that had the official name of Washington State Fair.

The shows and entertainment were especially good and the grounds themselves were very nice and well designed. It rained off and on but, hey, what do you expect at the Washington State Fair?

We drove home the next day via the Ft. Vancouver National Historic Site and took a good interpretive tour of the reconstructed fort, which is just across the river from Portland. This was not a fort in the military sense but, like Ft. Astoria/George, it was a trading post for the Hudson Bay Company where for more than two decades Dr. John McLoughlan served as the “Chief Factor” of the fort and made the decision to assist and trade with the newly-arriving Oregon Trail emigrants that many credit with helping them gain a toehold in the area that eventually resulted in both Oregon and Washington becoming U.S. territory and gained McLoughlan the title “Father of Oregon”.

When we arrived back at Ft. Stevens we were greeted by a strange object in the sky the we had not seen for 10 days for so – the sun. We drove out the northeastern tip of Oregon, across the mouth of the Columbia from Cape Disappointment, and watched the sun set.