Erosion continually reshapes the landscape at Cape Kiwanda.
The Oregon Coast spans some fantastically beautiful scenery. Driving along US 101 in the summer can be a bit frustrating at times stuck behind the travel trailers and RVs making their way north or south along the highway, but there is a reason so many are there. People ask me what the favorite spot I have along the long coastline. That is a lot like the question what your favorite travel place in the world is. There are simply too many. One recent spot I discovered was the mystical charms to be discovered atop the Great Dune of Cape Kiwanda.
As a child, road maps drew me in. The lines on the map fascinated me, linking places I had never been to or heard of together. Numbers linked with the lines created journeys for discovery. In 1926, the federal government came up with a plan to number highways to replace names – in this case, the Pacific Highway – in order to establish an integrated system of roads throughout the country. The so-called “Federal system” did not mean the federal government built or maintained the roads. That process remained the responsibility of local and state governments. Highways simply gained numbers and signs so auto drivers could determine their location.
Steel Bridge carries trains and pedestrians on the lower deck; light rail and auto traffic use the upper deck.
There are many articles – blog posts or otherwise – and even books about the bridges of Portland, Oregon. Of the twelve bridges along the Willamette River – four more on the Columbia – little space usually covers the Burlington Northern Railroad Bridge 5.1 or the rail portion of the Steel Bridge. If you exclude the new Tilikum Crossing Bridge, which carries light rail tracks and buses, the other rail bridges lack the grace of the St Johns or Fremont Bridges and the traffic of all of the other bridges – maybe the Steel excluded.
A recent post about the rail ferry at Kalama, Washington, some forty-five minutes north of the city, got me thinking about railroads and history. While at first glance, both are reasonably complicated, in the case of the main rail bridges in Portland, like the ferry at Kalama, it all comes down to James J. Hill.
Model of the rail-car ferry Tacoma of the Northern Pacific Railroad at the Port of Kalama Interpretive Center.
For years, Kalama meant the Northern Pacific. Kalama was the beginning of the Northern Pacific push from the west to create a third transcontinental rail line. Northern Pacific also used Kalama as a port for a rail ferry to cross over the Columbia River from.
A recent celebration with friends took us to the large McMenamins Kalama Harbor Lodge. The hotel-brewpub-restaurant complex is a brand-new development made in the appearance of a large Maui plantation. Maybe a bit incongruous along the banks of the Columbia River, the complex always appears popular driving past along I-5 judging from the number of cars in the parking lot.
And while, like with most McMenamins establishments, the Lodge is full of history and art laid out in the McMenamins way, right next door is another large building housing the Port of Kalama. The Port building features a large Interpretive Center on its east side housing several interesting exhibits dealing with issues the Port of Kalama has and does deal with. One of the Kalama themes deals with railroad history – Northern Pacific – and the port.
Former site of the Coast Guard Lifeboat station on the end of the Tokeland Spit.
Tokeland is a small spit sticking into the northern entrance of Willapa Bay. The estuary is an amazing body of water. Some write the bay as the second largest estuary on the Pacific Coast. That depends upon one’s definition of an estuary. Some include the Puget Sound in the estuary category. While parts of the Sound are estuarine, the Sound is an inland sea.
Definition of an estuary reads a partially enclosed body of brackish water with one or more rivers flowing into and an open connection to the sea. The freshwater-saltwater intermix provides high levels of nutrients in both water columns and sediment making an estuary a wildly productive natural habitat. West Coast Estuary Explorer also includes the Columbia River as an estuary. They have split the river reaches into eight separate interconnected sections, from the river mouth to the furthest point of tidal influence, Bonneville Dam. The enormous amounts of freshwater flowing through make the Columbia a special case.
2000 Census report on ancestry majority by county – trends similar in recent years.
Television is replete with advertisements for Ancestry.com, “Every family has a story” is their moto. The truth rings through attracting a wide base of customers to its cause, the rediscovery of family. Ancestry.com is not the only genealogical online player, but they are the elephant in the room with over three million subscribers and access to billions of historical records. Genealogy making history personal.
Boat in permanent drydock in front of the Pillar Rock Cannery.
A recent trip took us downriver to the one of the only remaining salmon canneries along the lower Columbia River. Pillar Rock is literally at the end of the road. To go further east, you have to get in your boat. The cannery dates to 1877 when it was built over the previous spot where Hudson’s Bay employees used to have an operation which salted salmon. The salmon were then transported to the Sandwich Islands – Hawaii – for sale there, with so-so success. Lewis & Clark also camped here both coming and going along the river. Local Native Americans had long used the site as a place of encampment for years before.
Adrian Brewer’s front page illustration for the Monthly Bulletin of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen for November 1918.
Men from many parts of the country and with many backgrounds having nothing to do with logging or lumber ended up during World War 1 at Vancouver Barracks. Two such men of the Spruce Production Division were artists who already enjoyed some recognition for their work before coming to Vancouver.
Brigadier General Brice P. Disque founder and leader of the Spruce Production Division.
A recent visit to the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site took me to the museum inside the former airplane hangar at Pearson Airfield. This, one of the early hubs of military aviation in the Pacific Northwest. Besides the airplanes on display, there is a magnificent model of what was the world’s largest sawmill in 1918. On the wall surrounding the model are panels explaining the unique story of the Spruce Production Division. This unit encompassed over 100,000 men by the end of WW1 in one of the lesser remembered episodes of the war. Hanging on the wall is the haunting portrait of the commander of the Division – one Brice Disque.
Brice Disque was one of the many officers seeing rapid advancements in rank during WW1. He moved from captain to brigadier general in a under a year. After spending fourteen years as a captain, the rise dizzying. His energy and ability to accomplish extremely difficult tasks were equal to the meteoric journey.
The sawmill portion of the Cut-up Plant at Vancouver Barracks.
SPRUCE FOR THE AIR, FIR FOR THE SEA
So went one of the mottos of the Spruce Production Division during World War 1 – “Bill” being Kaiser William. The huge Cut-up Plant was erected on the Polo Grounds at Vancouver Barracks to better provide the needed correct lumber for American and Allied airplane production. “Spruce for the air”. “Fir for the sea” was for shipbuilding, a secondary purpose of the huge plant.
