Cowlitz County

Driving down towards Oregon the weather has been cloudy.

First pic is around Longview Washington where you look across the Columbia river into Oregon.
Next picture is crossing the Columbia river on HWY 205, to bypass Portland. You can see a lot of silt from all the dams further upstream..... and maybe some of the sand from the tidal bar at Astoria where the Columbia empties into the Pacific. This tidal bar had made it virtually impossible for the Early European explorers to find this river. I'm thinking George Vancouver 1792. In fact David Thompson's task was to map the Columbia river overland from the Rockies because it had been so hard for the Sea Fairing navigators to chart it. Unfortunatley Thompson took a bit too long, he was travelling with his wife and 9 kids and a large first nations entourage, he also took lots of notes, and had some difficulties with some unfriendly Peigan natives. 1810. Because of his lateness the Americans beat the Brits to the delta and this lead to Astoria being in possession of the John Jacob Astor Fur Company.. at least for a bit, they actually ended up selling it to the North West Company, but then the war of 1812 broke out and through one thing or another it ended up back in American possession. The Oregon territory was disputed territory between the American, Brits, a bit of the Spanish and Russians too early on. Eventually in 1846 it was settled that territory above the 49th parallel was British and below was American, but there was a time when The Columbia river was possibly going to be the border between the 2 countries. The settlers at Champoeg Oregon, a lot of former HBC employes had a slogan "54 40 or fight" this was for the establishment of the 54th Parallel to be part of America.

Last pic is of the lookout on the gorge - Vista House-. We have yet to visit this. We did a road trip through the gorge in 2016 in the spring, but we went along the Washington side of the river at that point. You can barely see the roof line of Vista House. It was built in 1917. Lots of history here: ( http://www.vistahouse.com/history/ ). Samual Lancaster was the engineer of Multnomoth county in 1913 when this vision was first thought of.

When we did the Oregon coast a few years ago with Keegan there was lots of information about the difficulties of the highways and the dreams of those engineers who built it and how they were inspired by the Italian Rivera. The many bridges along the Oregon coast are 1920's art deco, inspired by Conde B McCulough 1919-1935 engineer of bridges in Oregon. see here for more info: ( https://visittheoregoncoast.com/2016/02/the-lit… )
Right now they are revamping the old Gorge Highway and make it a bike route. Lots and lots of biking in Oregon!Read more