Geological Survey Bulletin 614 Guidebook of the Western United States: Part D. The Shasta Route and Coast Line

SHEET No. 3 (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

At Ostrander (see sheet 3, p. 32) logs floated down the Cowlitz are chained into flat or cigar-shaped rafts for further transportation to the mills on the Columbia and elsewhere. This place is noted for the size of the timber that it can supply. A sawn stick 215 feet long can be seen by the station, and one 44 inches square and 100 feet long was prepared for the Chicago exposition.

A few miles beyond Ostrander the railway enters a 1,200-foot tunnel through a spur of basalt, from which it emerges into a broader part of the valley. Small stern-wheel steamers ascend the Cowlitz for 17 miles beyond Kelso. The smelt fisheries (Pl. VI, A) in the Cowlitz yield about $50,000 annually. Canned smelts sell here at a cent a pound, and they are shipped as far east as New York.

PLATE VI.—A. SMELT FISHERY ON COWLITZ RIVER NEAR KELSO, WASH. B, SEINING SALMON ON COLUMBIA RIVER.

The Cowlitz Valley contains lignite coal, and some of the seams have been worked, but the decreasing demand for coal due to the competition of California oil has put a stop to mining for the present.

Mount Coffin, on the right, a few miles down the Columbia from the mouth of the Cowlitz, was an Indian burying ground and received its name from the large number of coffins exposed on it. On this mountain Commander Wilkes, in 1841, made astronomical observations to determine its position.

Ahead, to the right, over the flats at the mouth of the Cowlitz and beyond the Columbia, may be seen some even-crested hills about 1,000 feet in height. These continue on the southern horizon from this point to Portland Heights. Similar flat-topped hills stand also on the north side of the Columbia. If an observer so situated as to be able to overlook the whole valley of the Columbia in this region should imagine all the ravines and valleys which now separate these hills to be filled to the general level of the flat hilltops he would then see spread out before him a very broad, shallow, flat-bottomed valley and would realize that the present hills are all that is left of such a valley after its floor has been deeply furrowed and carved by streams. The hilltops are flat because they are parts of what was once such a continuous valley surface. This old broad valley was worn in basalt by Columbia River in early Pleistocene or glacial time, when the land stood 1,000 feet lower than now. When the land started to rise the streams began to cut into the old valley floor and fashioned it into the flat-topped hills of the present landscape.

At Carrolls may first be seen the cliffs of basalt which form the banks of the Columbia for hundreds of miles and attain imposing heights along the stretch of river between Portland and The Dalles.

The Northern Pacific once ferried across Columbia River from Kalama to Gobel, Oreg., and the old boat, which could carry 24 cars and an engine, can still be seen at its wharf. The railway now continues up the east side of the river to Vancouver. Seines set for salmon fishing (Pl. VI, B) may usually be seen near Kalama.

The dark bluffs on the left, which the railroad now skirts for several miles, with the river on the right, are in part solid flows of basaltic lava, but are mainly beds made up of fragments of volcanic rock associated with some sandstone and shale. At milepost 111 a deposit of sand and gravel overlies lava and shales.

As Woodland is approached a fine view opens on the left, up Lewis Valley. Mount Adams is in sight, and a little farther on, to the left of it, appears the white cap of Mount St. Helens. Finally Mount Hood comes into view to the right of Mount Adams. Near milepost 115, scattered over an alluvial bottom, are some large oaks, the forerunners of those to be seen later in Oregon and California.

At 157 miles from Seattle Lewis River is crossed. The bluffs of basalt on the left here give place to slopes of gravel, sand, and clay. These deposits were laid down by Columbia River in early Pleistocene time and now form hills of pleasing rounded contours.

Two miles beyond the crossing of Lewis River are well-stratified sands and clays like those near Tacoma, and just beyond is a horizontal sheet of lava (basalt) showing the peculiar feature called columnar jointing. The columns are due to cracks produced in the lava by contraction on cooling and may be compared with the polygonal cakes into which a layer of mud breaks on drying. The mud cakes are thin in comparison with the long, regular columns found in some bodies of basalt, but the modes of formation are analogous.

Gravels deposited by the Columbia when its bed was higher than it is now occur between Ridgefleld and Knapps, where they form an extensive terrace 50 feet above sea level. On the left, near Felida, is a bluff of gravel and sand, which are older than the Pleistocene gravel of Columbia River.

At Vancouver Junction the rounded hills are covered with prune orchards. From this place a branch line runs northeastward 28 miles to Yacolt.

Vancouver is the military headquarters of the Department of the Columbia. Here Dr. John McLoughlin, the factor of the Hudson's Bay Co., who in 1824-25 ruled the region with iron hand but benevolent purpose, built Fort Vancouver, which soon became not only a thriving port for ocean vessels engaged in the western fur trade but also an outfitting point for exploring parties. In 1841 the Wilkes exploring expedition ascended the Columbia and camped at Fort Vancouver for some months, exploring the great river and its tributaries. An overland party under Lieut. Emmons, including the geologist J. D. Dana, was dispatched by way of the Willamette Valley, Mount Shasta, and Sacramento to San Francisco. In 1843 John C. Frémont visited Fort Vancouver, having floated down the Columbia from The Dalles, a route then in favor by emigrants who came into the country over the Oregon Trail. On arklike rafts loaded with farm and household belongings these emigrants glided down the river, those bound for the Puget Sound country turning northward from the Columbia at the mouth of the Cowlitz, and those for the Willamette Valley turning southward opposite Vancouver. Later, in 1853-1855, came the exploring parties of the Pacific railroad surveys in search of the best transcontinental and coast routes. They traversed the country from Puget Sound to the Gulf of California along the routes since followed by the Southern Pacific Co.

The Columbia¹ is the great waterway from the interior of the continent through the Cascade Range to the coast. In 1805 it bore the canoes of the first transcontinental explorers, Lewis and Clark, from the slopes of the Rocky Mountains to the sea. Their party spent the winter on the Pacific coast and returned by the same route in 1806.

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¹Columbia River from the lower cascades to its mouth, a distance of 140 miles, is, like the Hudson, a good example of what geographers term a " drowned river." The earth's surface is not absolutely stable but is subject to upward and downward movements. As a rule these are so slow as to escape notice except in so far as their effects can be seen and interpreted by those who make a study of land forms. When a broad section of coast land traversed by a river moves downward, the sea water advances into the depressed and thereby deepened river channel, the river water is backed up, perhaps for many miles, and the lower part of the river so affected becomes a narrow inlet whose waters, instead of gliding steadily to the sea, ebb and flow with the tides.

As was explained on page 24, the Columbia in early Pleistocene time, many thousands of years ago, flowed in a broad valley whose floor is now represented by the flat tops of the hills seen near Kalama. The land, which probably had been stationary for a long period, then began to rise. The slope of the river channel was increased, the water flowed faster, and, with the sand and bowlders of its channel as abrasives, the river began to wear down its bed. This went on until the land stood higher than at present and the river had cut its bed to a very gentle grade. Then the earth movement was reversed. The land very gradually sank and the ocean water backed up into the Columbia. It was this sinking that transformed the lower Columbia into a navigable stream, deep enough for ocean-going steamers, and made possible the commercial development of Portland and Vancouver. This is merely one of many illustrations of the direct bearing of past geologic events and processes on modern life. The influence of some of these processes, such as the formation of coal, is plain enough to all. The influence of others, though equally real, is not so obvious.

The mean range of the tide at Lower Cascades is only 0.2 foot, at Vancouver 0.8 foot, at Portland 1 foot, and at Astoria 6.4 feet. The fluctuation in the height of the river due to changes in meteorologic conditions is more than 20 feet at Portland and Vancouver, so that the tidal oscillations there are of very slight practical importance.

Rivers are the sculptors of their own valleys. The wild gorge through which the Columbia traverses the Cascade Range (Pl. VII, p. 23) is the noblest of its kind on this continent. Its history has not been fully made out, but it appears that the Cascade Range was slowly uplifted as in the form of a series of broad arches or uptilted blocks of the earth's crust along a north-south axis, and that the river, which is thought to have had nearly its present course before the range was formed, maintained its channel by wearing down its bed as rapidly on the whole as the mountains rose. The larger tributaries cut down their channels also and carved deep ravines which open on the river (Pl. VIII). The smaller streams, however, have been unable to keep pace with the main stream in lowering their channels, and reach the river by plunging over the cliffs as falls (Pl. IX). Tributary valleys perched on the sides of a main stream valley in this way are called "hanging valleys."

PLATE VII.—VIEW UP COLUMBIA RIVER FROM COLUMBIA HIGHWAY AT CHANTICLEER INN, ABOUT 20 MILES EAST OF PORTLAND, OREG. On the left across the river is Cape Horn, against which the flat-topped terrace ends. This terrace, as explained on page 26, is part of the floor of a former higher valley of the Columbia. The canyon of the Columbia is comparable to the valley of Hudson River, in New York. Photograph copyrighted by Weister Co., Portland. (See also Pls. VIII and IX.)

PLATE VIII.—ONEONTA GORGE, COLUMBIA RIVER, NEAR ONEONTA, OREG. The tributary stream is strong enough to cut down its bed about as rapidly as the male Columbia, making a gorge. (Compare Pl. IX.)

PLATE IX.—LATOURELLE FALLS, COLUMBIA RIVER, NEAR LATOURELLE, OREG. The small tributary stream here, unable to cut down its bed as rapidly as the main Columbia, enters the river by a fall. (Compare Pl. VIII.) The lava adjoining the lower part af the falls illustrates columnar structure. Photograph copyrighted by Weister.

At Cascade Locks, in the very axis of the Cascade Range, the river has been unable to maintain a uniform grade and falls 50 feet in a series of rapids to the tidal portion of the stream. Above the cascades the river is ponded, as if the obstruction over which it falls were acting as a dam. At one time the ponding was more extensive than at present, as shown by the occurrence, some miles above the cascades, of trees belonging to species now living that have been killed by the water and partly buried in silts (Pl. X, A, p. 28) containing their fossilized leaves.

PLATE X.—A. TRUNKS OF TREES OF A SUBMERGED FOREST, COLUMBIA RIVER ABOVE CASCADE LOCKS, OREG. Opposite Wind Mountain, Wash. It is possible that a landslide into the river from tbe north side dammed back the water an us to drown the trees and cover them partly with mud. B. CIGAR-SHAPED RAFT OF LOGS FOR OCEAN TRAVEL. On the right is the cradle in which the raft was made.

Three explanations have been suggested for the occurrence of the obstruction at the cascades and the consequent damming of the river above them. One is that it represents a hump that has been produced across the river channel by the continued slow uplift of the Cascade Range. It is supposed, in accordance with this view, that the uplift of the range at this place has proceeded a little faster than the river could cut down its bed. Another and more probable explanation, in view of the localized character of the obstruction, is that it is due to faulting—that is, to movement along a crack in the rocks that runs approximately at right angles with the course of the river, the formation of the crack being followed by a slipping of the rocks along it in such a way that the country east of it has sunk a little or the country west of it has risen a little. A third and still more probable suggestion is that a large mass of rock has slid into the river from the cliffs and thus made a dam which has not yet been wholly washed away. Not enough geologic work has been done in the vicinity to determine which explanation is the true one.

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Columbia River, including its tributaries, has a drainage area of about 259,000 square miles and a total navigable length of 2,136 miles. The system as a whole is capable of furnishing an estimated maximum of about 19,740,000 horsepower, of which only 351,249 horsepower, less than 2 per cent, was developed in 1909, the latest year for which complete statistics are available. In five States, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and Washington, 1,072 power wheels were turned by waters of streams in the Columbia River basin during that year.

The most valuable fisheries in the world, except only the oyster and herring fisheries, are those supported by the salmon. Of the salmon fisheries by far the largest are those of the Pacific coast of North America. Columbia River is justly celebrated as having afforded more salmon than any other river in the world, and Astoria is the chief center of the industry.

In early days the salmon were merely dried by the Indians. About 1833 they were first salted in old rum kegs. In 1864 the canning of salmon was begun on Sacramento River, in California, and two years later on the Columbia, where it has flourished ever since. The fish are caught in nets of various kinds, but also, and most effectively, in the salmon wheel, which may be seen at many points along the shores of the Columbia. By this device, which is kept in motion by the stream, the fish are automatically scooped up and thrown into a tank.

From Vancouver the Columbia is crossed by a new bridge more than a mile in length. The depth of the river here is 29 feet. The character and the natural sorting of the material of the river bed are well illustrated by the deposits of fine-grained sand dredged opposite Vancouver, of coarse sand opposite Russell Landing, and of gravel opposite Fishers, 9 miles above Vancouver. Halfway across the Columbia River bridge the traveler passes into the State of Oregon.