Fort Stevens National Cemetery is one of the smaller units under the jurisdiction of the Veterans Administration. One of the newest units, the cemetery transferred over from the Army in 2020. Although one of the smallest cemeteries within the National Cemetery system, there still are openings for new burials.
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A short trail winds through the forest and down the hill from the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center. It connects to the road ascending from the Cape Disappointment Coast Guard Station on the Baker Bay (east) side of the headland on which the lighthouse sits.
Earlier posts included information about the lighthouse, the old artillery fort – Fort Canby – on which the Coast Guard station sits today, and a little about the evolution of the Coast Guard mission at the mouth of the Columbia River.
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Lighthouses were one thing to keep mariners safe as they traveled along the Pacific Coast, in and out of harbors and river bars. When they were not enough, a newer organization in Oregon appeared, the Life-Saving Service.
The official US Life-Saving Service got its start in 1878, though an ad-hoc arrangement went back further to 1848 when a series of unmanned stations, run by volunteers – similar to volunteer fire departments – existed along the coasts of New Jersey and Massachusetts. Without full-time employees, no organization or standardization of equipment or men, the results were middling at best.
Continue readingHaving written last of Fort Stevens on the south side of the mouth of the Columbia River, the lynchpin of the triad of forts arranged to guard the entrance from the sea from 1865 until 1947, it is time to turn our attention to the north side of the river. First, Fort Canby set up on the headland on the north side of the entrance to the mouth. Even today, a visit by car to the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center – literally erected upon the aprons of one of Fort Canby’s former battery aprons – takes you winding along a narrow densely forested lane giving you just a taste of the primeval nature of the site.
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