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.
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.
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.
The Philippine flag whips in the wind atop Mount Samat with an urn representing eternal light at the entrance to the Colonnade at the Shrine of Valor.
The last post described the Dambana ng Kagitingan – Shrine of Valor – standing atop Mount Samat on the eastern side of the Bataan Peninsula. While most monuments tend to reward victory, sometimes more can be learned in defeat. Most of the defenders here on Bataan were Filipino. Most of those who died here, on the Death March and in the initial stages of the Japanese prison camps were Filipinos. With the surrender on 9 April 1942, the Army of the Philippine Commonwealth ended. It would not be resurrected again until the nation gained independence in 1946. At that time, it transformed into the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Many of the leaders of the new Forces saw prior service in the army of the Commonwealth.
An old 155 mm US howitzer sits beneath the Shrine on Mount Samat.
MOUNT SAMAT REMEMBERING AMERICAN SACRIFICE
Visitors to the Philippines enjoy a day’s outing, boating across Manila Bay to see the old guns of Corregidor. Off the regular path lies an even more important monument atop a mountain in the southern region of the Bataan Peninsula – the National Shrine of Mount Samat – Dambana ng Katingnan (Shrine of Valor).
Bataan, the sight of the worst defeat suffered by American forces in history. 78,000 men – the vast majority Filipinos new to soldiering – surrendered after a campaign of just over four months. As bad as the long battle against the enemy, the harsh jungle environment, malnutrition and disease was, another type of battle would fall upon the men afterwards, the battle to survive.
A two-part post with the first dealing mostly with the Shrine, the campaign and US Army units remembered here at Mount Samat. The second post will cover the Philippine Army divisions honored here. It is important to remember as hard as it was for American units to suffer on Bataan, Corregidor and throughout the islands, the Filipinos were forced to take the suffering to another level, both with the Commonwealth Army and the civilian population, as a whole.
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.
On a recent visit to a cemetery, I visited several family ancestors buried in the very small community of Bellfountain, Oregon. Bellfountain lies in the southern part of the Willamette Valley. Amongst the graves, I found one particular headstone near the family ancestors mentioning the man’s service in World War 1 as part of the 361st Infantry Regiment.
The American Army mushroomed almost overnight with the country’s entrance into World War 1 in April 1917. Selective Service – conscription – was brought back for the first time since the American Civil War. One of the units raised, mostly from draftees from Washington and Oregon was the 361st Infantry Regiment, 181st Infantry Brigade, 91st Division.
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.
