Recent posts have dealt with history for the most part – military history, mostly – World War 1 and the American Civil War. There are several more to come dealing with the later, so I thought to break it up a bit.
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Lincoln County is home to the Central Oregon Coast. If you can get away from the beach, magnificent Drift Creek Falls awaits deep in the woods. A couple other waterfalls are better visited on the way to the central Oregon Coast or on the way home. By no means a conclusive list of waterfalls, but here are three worth your time.
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Tillamook County, well-known for beaches, wild headlands, sand dunes,
fishing and dairies. Hidden away in the rugged mountains are several waterfall
gems. There are others, so keep looking.
Waterfalls abound throughout the State of Oregon, especially in the western hills. Abundant rains fall throughout the forests filling streams cascading over lava cliffs. To catch these falls at their height means an off-season journey. Summer season can mean little or no rain for a month or more at a time making the falls seem much tamer than when they are at their fullest. Here, a small collection of waterfalls taken from the area around the Lower Columbia. This area gets pelted with rains out of summer. Astoria averages 86 inches of rain a year – Portland, by contrast, averages a mere 36 inches.
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Oregon City is packed full of history. The first city of Oregon features two fine museums – Oregon Trail Museum and the Museum of the Oregon Territory – besides being home to the houses of two pioneers of the Hudson’s Bay Company, John McLoughlin and Forbes Barclay. Beyond that, the dramatic power of the Willamette is on display from roadside vista points off Oregon Highway 99E and Interstate 205. While the views are dramatic enough, that will change in the near future as the plans of the Grand Ronde Tribe come to fruition as the former industrial area reinvents itself to take advantage of the sheer magnificence of Willamette Falls. Two other nearby sights are not as well known to those outside of Oregon City – Singer Falls and the McLoughlin Promenade.
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Waterpower attracted the attention of the earliest Europeans to the site of Willamette Falls. John McLoughlin laid a claim to land at base of the Falls as early as 1829. Listed as the second largest waterfall in North America based on water volume, in the Northwest, the falls only outdone by those at Celilo and Kettle on the Columbia. Both of those waterfalls now drowned by reservoirs backed up behind dams – The Dalles Dam and Grand Coulee Dam. Willamette Falls is also the site of the first hydroelectric plant built in the Northwest – 1888. From here, transmission lines stretched north to Portland fourteen miles to the north. These lines represented the first transmission of electricity in the United States. At the time, about the only thing using the generated power consisted of streetlights in the city, but trolley systems quickly came into use.
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Waterfalls in Oregon means the Columbia River Gorge to most people. That in spite of the beautiful falls found in the Coast Range and other parts of the western slope of the Cascades – then there is Mt Hood, as well. The obvious second choice for the newcomer would be Silver Falls State Park.
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The area around Starvation Creek along I-84 has undergone some changes with the recent restoration of the Historic Columbia River Highway here in 2019. For a long time, the site has been a rest area with a short trail leading to the drama of Starvation Creek Falls. It is also the beginning of a couple of the hardest trails found in the Gorge, Starvation Ridge and Mount Defiance trails. These trails entail a gain of 5,000 feet, with the latter trail doing it in under five miles. But before going high there is a lot to discover down below.
In the short stretch between the rest area and Shellrock Mountain about two miles to the west, five waterfalls easily come into view; one other notable if it has rained hard recently and two or three others a bit harder to access – especially if you have to carry a 38-pound cogi.
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In Scott Cook’s wonderful round-up gem of places lesser known in the Columbia River Gorge, Curious Gorge, Mist Falls is uncovered and revealed. This waterfall moods changes dramatically with the seasons, from a solid waterfall after a rain to one with mists dancing in the wind. Mists never seeming to be in any hurry to settle back on the ground as they enjoy their brief moment of freedom. It sits as a nearby neighbor to the king, Multnomah Falls. The waterfall is most visible to the motorists ripping along Interstate 84. Those motorists – the drivers, anyway – only get a fleeting glance. Their attentions quickly focus on cars using the left-hand exit for the nearby huge parking lot at Multnomah. Mist Falls is a true overlooked gem in the midst of Waterfall Alley.
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After posts on Samuel Hill, Samuel Lancaster, and Henry Bowlby it was time for me to revisit some of the projects they inspired and oversaw. The Columbia River Highway remains the magic the three men. That magic best shared along the Upper Columbia River Highway, known today as the Historic Columbia River Highway. A couple fine books have been written on this road. And while in the future, I may hit upon some of the highlights (Shepperd’s Dell is one such case), today it is the Lower Columbia River Highway.
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