The Volcanoes of
Lewis and Clark
Lewis and Clark
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November 18, 1805 At the Pacific - Station Camp to Fort Canby |
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The Volcanoes of Lewis and Clark Map of the Journey Volcanoes, Basalt Plateaus, Major Rivers, etc. The Volcanoes Mount Adams, Mount Hood, Mount Jefferson, Mount Rainier, and Mount St. Helens CALENDAR of the Journey October 1805 to June 1806 Along the Journey Pacific Northwest Maps - Columbia River, Volcanoes, Flood Basalts, Missoula Floods, Geology, etc. The Corps of Discovery The Journey of Lewis and Clark About the Reference Materials The Journals, Biddle/Allen, DeVoto, Gass, Moulton, Topo Maps, and others USGS Lewis and Clark Links Links to USGS Websites highlighting the Lewis and Clark Journey Resources Publications Referenced and Websites Visited |
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November 16-17 Reaching the Pacific, Station Camp and Cape Disappointment |
November 18
At the Pacific, Station Camp to Fort Canby Station Camp, Chinook Point, Chinook River, Wallacut River, Baker Bay, Small Rocky Island, Cape Disappointment, North Head, McKenzie Head, Fort Canby, and the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, Tillamook Head, Point Adams, Fort Stevens and Fort Stevens State Park, and Clatsop Spit |
CONTINUE
November 19-24 At the Pacific, Station Camp, Fort Canby, Long Beach |
On October 7, 1805, Lewis and Clark and the
"Corps of Discovery" began their journey
down the Clearwater River and into the volcanics
of the Pacific Northwest. The Corps travelled from the
Clearwater to the Snake and down the
"Great Columbia", finally reaching the
Pacific Ocean on November 15, 1805.
Along the journey they encountered the
lava flows of the Columbia Plateau,
river channels carved by the great "Missoula Floods",
and the awesome beauty of five Cascade Range volcanoes.
[Click map for brief summary about the area] |
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To the Pacific - November 1805
At the Pacific - Station Camp to Fort Canby |
| Lewis and Clark's camp between November 15 through November 24, 1805 - "Station Camp" - was located near today's McGowan, Washington, today the site of Lewis & Clark Campsite State Park. Captain Lewis had just returned from the coast, and on November 18, 1805, Captain Clark and 11 men left for their exploration to the coast. |
| Monday, November 18, 1805 |
| at daylight, accompanied by eleven men. He [Captain Clark] proceeded along the beach one mile to a point of rocks about forty feet high [Chinook Point], where the hills retire, leaving a wide beach, and a number of ponds covered with water-fowl, between which and the mountain is a narrow bottom of alder and small balsam trees. |
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Chinook Point: Chinook Point is the site of the present Fort Columbia, and is often thought of as Scarborough Head. -- Pacific County Friends of Lewis and Clark Website, 2002 
Fort Columbia: Fort Columbia is one of the few intact coastal defense sites in the United States. Fort Columbia was built from 1896 to 1904 to support the defenses of the Columbia River. The fort was constructed on the Chinook Point promontory because of the unobstructed view. The fort was fully manned and operational through three wars, until it was declared surplus at the end of World War II. In 1950 the area was transferred to the custody of the state of Washington to become Fort Columbia State Park. Twelve historic wood-frame buildings still stand on the premises, and the 593-acre day-use park has 6,400 feet of freshwater shoreline on the Columbia River. -- Washington State Parks and Recreation Website, 2002 |
| Seven miles from the rocks is the entrance of a creek, or rather drain from the ponds and hills, where is a cabin of Chinnooks. [Chinook River] ...... |
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Chinook River: There is an inconsistency between the maps and journals when trying to determine the names Lewis and Clark applied to two rivers that drained into "Haley's Bay." "White Brant Creek" and "Chinook River" are labeled differently on Clark's maps of the Columbia's mouth. He also misidentified the rivers when he went on a sojourn to the coast with 11 men. He probably intended the "Chinook River" to be applied to the drainage close to the village of that native nation. -- Washington State Historical Society Website, 2002
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| We were taken across in a canoe by two squaws, to each of whom we gave a fishhook, and then coasting along the bay, passed at two miles the low bluff of a small hill, below which are the ruins of some old huts, and close to it the remains of a whale. The country is low, open and marshy; interspersed with some high pine and a thick undergrowth. Five miles from the creek, we came to a stream forty yards wide at low water, which we called Chinnook river. [Wallacut River] |
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Wallacut River: Errors created in transferring information from the journals to maps become apparent when studying the names the captains applied to this drainage. "White Brant Creek" was intended to be applied to the most westerly drainage into "Haley's Bay." "Chinook River" is charted for the watershed on one of Clark's maps, and he called the river by the same name when he camped near it while returning from the coast. Conjecture and second-hand information may have confused the captains. This drainage was used by the Chinook Indians to reach their winter village, but Clark intended the drainage near the Indians' summer village to be named after its inhabitants. "Knights River" was used by HBC employees to identify the drainage. The present place name for the river came from the Chinook Indian word, "Walihut," meaning "place of stones." Near the mouth of the river, the north bank has many small, smooth boulders. -- Washington State Historical Society Website, 2002
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| The hills up this river [Wallacut River] and towards the bay [Baker Bay] are not high, but very thickly covered with large pine of several species: in many places pine trees, three or four feet in thickness, are seen growing on the bodies of large trees, which though fallen and covered with moss, were in part sound. Here we dined on some brant and plover, killed as we came along, and after crossing in a boat lying in the sand near some old houses, proceeded along a bluff of yellow clay and soft stone to a little bay or harbour, into which a drain from some ponds empties [location of today's Ilwaco, Washington]: at this harbour the land is low, but as we went on it rose to hills of eighty or ninety feet above the water. |
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Baker Bay: In 1792, William Broughton named the bay, "Baker's Bay," to give credit to a British merchant, Captain James Baker, whose ship was anchored inside the Columbia's mouth when Broughton crossed the bar to explore the river for Vancouver. Lewis and Clark named the bay "Haley's Bay", for the Indians' favorite trader, as reported to the captains. -- Washington State Historical Society Website, 2002 
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| At the distance of one mile is a second bay, and a mile beyond it, a small rocky island in a deep bend, which seems to afford a very good harbour, and where the natives inform us European vessels anchor for the purpose of trading. |
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Small Rocky Island: Although the island is still there, the anchorage is silt in and covered with grass and the 'island' is no longer actually so. -- Pacific County Friends of Lewis & Clark Website, 2002 
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| We went on round another bay, in which is a second small island of rocks, and crossed a small stream [???], which rises in a pond near the sea coast [O'Neil Lake], and after running through a low isthmus empties into the bay. [today this area is Fort Canby State Park] This narrow low ground, about two or three hundred yards wide, separates from the main hills a kind of peninsula [Cape Disappointment], the extremity of which is two miles from the anchoring place; and this spot, which was called cape Disappointment, is an elevated, circular knob [McKenzie Head], rising with a steep ascent one hundred and fifty or one hundred and sixty feet above the water, formed like the whole shore of the bay, as well as of the seacoast, and covered with thick timber on the inner side, but open and grassy in the exposure next the sea. |
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Cape Disappointment: Cape Disappointment, the rugged north point at the Columbia River entrance, is the first major headland along the 20 miles of sand beach north from Tillamook Head. It comprises a group of rounding hills covering an area 2.5 miles long and one mile wide, divided by a narrow valley extending north-northwest. The seaward faces of these hills are precipitous cliffs with jagged, rocky points and small strips of sand beach. Lewis and Clark used the British geographical place names given by Captain John Meares, a British trading merchant, to describe the headlands at the mouth of the Columbia. In 1788 Meares was disappointed at not finding "The River of the West". When he saw the mouth of the Columbia River, he thought it was only an entrance to a bay -- thus the name Cape Disappointment. Cape Disappointment is one of the oldest British geographical place names in Washington. -- NOAA Office of Coast Survey Website, 2003, and Washington State Historical Society Website, 2002 
North Head: North Head, the extreme western point of Cape Disappointment, is 170 feet high, with a very jagged, precipitous cliff, backed by a narrow grassy strip. The higher ground behind it is covered with trees. The North Head Lighthouse was built in 1898, and affords a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean, with Benson Beach and the mouth of the Columbia River to the south and the Long Beach Peninsula stretching northward, a panoramic vista unparalleled on a clear day. -- NOAA Office of Coastal Survey website, 2003, Washington State Parks and Recreation Website, 2003, and Long Beach Area State Parks, 2002
McKenzie Head: McKenzie Head is located 0.8 miles northwest of Cape Disappointment Light. It is 190 feet high and nearly round. On its seaward face it is covered with grass and fern, bare of trees. On its eastern face it is heavily wooded with spruce. -- NOAA Office of Coast Survey Website, 2003
Fort Canby: In 1862, Cape Disappointment was armed with smoothbore cannons to protect the mouth of the Columbia River from enemies. The installation was expanded to become Fort Canby in 1875. The fort was named after General Edward Canby, who was killed in the Modoc Indian War. The fort continued to be improved until the end of World War II. Gun batteries still sit uptop the park. Today Cape Disappointment State Park (formerly Fort Canby State Park) is a 1,882-acre camping park which offers 27 miles of ocean beach, two lighthouses, an interpretive center and hiking trails. Visitors enjoy beachcombing and exploring the area's rich natural and cultural history. The nearby coastal towns of Ilwaco and Long Beach feature special events and festivals spring through fall. -- Washington State Parks and Recreation Website, 2002
Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center: In November of 1805, the U.S. Corps of Volunteers for Northwest Discovery, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, reached the mouth of the mighty Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean at last. "Great joy in camp," Clark wrote in his journal, "we are in View of the Ocian, this great Pacific Ocian which we been So long anxious to See." Today the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center stands high on the cliffs of Fort Canby State Park, 200 feet above the pounding Pacific surf. A series of mural-sized "timeline" panels guide visitors through the westward journey of the Lewis and Clark Expedition using sketches, paintings, photographs and the words of Corps members themselves. The center also features short film presentations, a gift shop and a glassed-in observation deck with fabulous views of the river, headlands and sea. -- Washington State Parks and Recreation Website, 2003
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| From this cape a high point of land bears south 20o west [Tillamook Head], about twenty-five miles distant. |
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Tillamook Head: Lewis named the large promontory that projects into the ocean "Clark's Point of View", after Clark, who first saw the "high point of a Mountn" from Cape Disappointment. Later, Clark climbed the mountain when he took a contingent of the corps to view a beached whale south of the headlands. While on Tillamook Head he hiked out on a point (Bird Point) and described the view; hence the name "Clark's Point of View" was first applied to the mountain. The present name is derived from the Tillamook Indians who lived along the coast on both sides of the headland. The name is from the Chinook language but has been anglicized for modern convenience. Once spelled "Killamuck," the spelling was changed to Tillamook about the time Tillamook County was created by Oregon's territorial legislature in 1853. -- Washington State Historical Society Website, 2002
Geology of Tillamook Head: The spectacular promontories, capes and sea stacks along the northern Oregon coast are composed of basalt, which is more resistant to erosion than the intervening areas of softer sedimentary rocks. Several years ago, geochemical analyses of the elements in the coastal lavas by the U.S. Geological Survey showed that they were identical in composition to the Yakima Basalt (part of the Columbia River Basalt group) of Eastern Oregon and Washington. The Yakima Basalt formed as tremendous outpourings of lava, mostly occurring between 13 million and 17 million years ago, spread out from a series of vertical fissures in easternmost Oregon and Washington and in Idaho. The lava covered nearly 75,000 square miles of these states to depths of several thousands of feet. Many of these flows found their way down a broad ancestral Columbia River valley, which came through the Cascade Range many miles south of the present gorge, and spread out in the area of the present Willamette Valley between Salem and Portland. The oldest lavas filled the ancestral channel of the Columbia River valley directly westward to the sea, since at that time the Coast Range consisted of only a few hills, now seen in the core of the range. The lavas spread out over the coastal plain, and out onto the continental shelf. When each valley filled to overflowing with lava, a new valley formed at the northern edge of the lava field, thus moving the ancestral Columbia River northward after each outpouring of lava. The lava was thickest in the main channel of the river, which eventually became a headland. The individual flows in some of the headlands are so thick (several hundreds of feet) that they must have ponded and formed deep pools of lava in bays or estuaries. -- Allen, 1985, Time Travel in Oregon |
| In the range between these two eminences, is the opposite point of the bay, a very low ground, which has been variously called cape Rond by Lapeyrouse, and point Adams by Vancouver [Point Adams]. |
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Point Adams: Point Adams, just inside Clatsop Spit, is a low sandy point covered with spruce and undergrowth to the edge of the sand beach and low dunes. The point usually shows well from seaward, particularly if it is hazy inside. Lewis and Clark used Robert Gray's name for this low, sandy southern peninsula at the mouth of the Columbia River. "Point Adams" and "Columbia River" are names given by Gray which have continued in use to the present time. In 1792 Gray named the north cape on the mouth of the river "Cape Hancock" and the southern peninsula after John Adams, in an attempt to identify his "Columbia's River" with the United States. The Spanish had charted and named the peninsula "Cape Frondosa" (leafy cape), for its numerous trees. In 1890, a lifeboat station at Point Adams was established. -- NOAA Office of Coast Survey Website, 2003, Washington State Historical Society Website, 2002, and Clatsop Historical Society Website, 2004
Fort Stevens and Fort Stevens State Park: Fort Stevens State Park is located just inland on Point Adams. Fort Stevens was the primary military defense installation in the three fort Harbor Defense System at the mouth of the Columbia River (Forts Canby and Columbia in Washington were the other two). Construction of Fort Stevens began in 1863. The fort served for 84 years, beginning with the Civil War and closing at the end of World War II. Today, Fort Stevens has grown into a 3,700 acre park offering exploration of history, nature, and recreational opportunities. Fort Stevens was named for Isaac Ingalls Stevens, who was governor of Washington Territory, 1853-57, and delegate to Congress, 1857-61. He was killed while leading the Seventy-ninth Regiment New York Volunteers, at Chantilly, Virginia, against the Confederates, September 1, 1862. He was major-general, and had seized the colors of the regiment after the color-sergeant had fallen. In 1955 Clatsop County gave a large parcel of land immediately south of Fort Stevens ot the state for inclusion in the State Parks system. In 1968 the parks system obtained control of the military reservation via long term lease from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and most of the area is now Fort Stevens State Park. -- Oregon Parks and Recreation Website, 2004, Oregon State Archives Website, 2004, and Clatsop Historical Society Website, 2004 |
| The water for a great distance off the mouth of the river, appears very shallow, and within the mouth nearest to point Adams [still Point Adams today], is a large sandbar [today Clatsop Spit extends into the mouth of the Columbia], almost covered at high tide. |
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Clatsop Spit Clatsop Spit, on the south side of the Columbia River entrance, is a low sand beach, extending about 2.5 miles northwest from Point Adams. This spit was formed after the Coast Range was uplifted. Sediments carried by the Columbia River were deposited by wind and wave action, building the spit over time. The jetty constructed (1885-1895) at the mouth of the Columbia River, caused additional accretion of the sand spit. -- NOAA Office of Coast Survey Website, 2003, U.S. National Park Service, Fort Clatsop National Memorial Website, 2002, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Website, 2002
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| We could not ascertain the direction of the deepest channel, for the waves break with tremendous force the whole distance across the bay, but the Indians point nearer to the opposite side as the best passage. After remaining for some time on this elevation, we descended across the low isthmus, and reached the ocean at the foot of a high hill [McKenzie Head, see above], about a mile in circumference, and projecting into the sea. We crossed this hill [McKenzie Head], which is open and has a growth of high coarse grass, and encamped on the north side of it, having made nineteen miles. Besides the pounded fish and brant, we had for supper a flounder, which we picked up on the beach. |
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The Main Camp - November 15 through November 24, 1805:
"Station Camp", near today's McGowan, Washington. Clark's Camp - November 18, 1805 On the beach, north side of McKenzie Head. The campsite was a log-strewn beach, as evidenced by photographs taken in 1890, prior to construction of the North Jetty after which the resultant accretion and forestation obliterated the site. The area of McKenzie Head is now the location of a monument marker placed by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) on November 1, 2000. The granite marker commemorates the only known campsite of Lewis and Clark on the Washington Coast. -- Pacific County Friends of Lewis & Clark Website, 2002 |
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June/July 2004, Lyn Topinka
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