Travelers to the Spit

  One does not create a basin larger than the fifteen smallest US states combine over night. While dinosaurs roamed, the Pacific Northwest was just being born. Millions of years later, while the dinosaurs where dying off, most of the area we are familiar with now was still in it's infancy and under an inland sea. Further millions of years of volcanic activity routinely modified the fledgling river's course. After the ice ages, things began to settle, and the Columbia lay down some roots.

  It is believed that shortly before this time (geologically speaking) the first humans began traveling into this area of the world. The ice age, with it's ice caps and glaciers, had locked up much of the Earth's water supply and lowered the oceans enough to allow the Bering Strait to become a land bridge from Asia. So the first humans to visit the Pacific Northwest may have been witness to the Columbia emptying directly into the Astoria Canyon.

  Once the the ice ages came to an end, bringing a stop to catastrophic floods (the subject of a future post) and a rising in sea levels, the Columbia began depositing more of it's sediments at the modern mouth of the river. This resulted in the sandy beaches we are familiar with today, including the Clatsop Spit. In this area, the Chinook and Tillamook nations had settled, descendants of those migrants from another continent. On the other side of the world, the cities of Western Civilization grew and flourished. But the natives of the Columbia and the population of Western society were completely unaware of each other.

  What comes next, we citizens of the United States know the stories. So, here is an ultra fast refresher course. Peoples fleeing oppressive homelands, looking for a chance at freedom, or profit, settled the eastern lands of North America. They break their ties with the old world and create a new nation. The old world, once more in a fit of war, needs money. These new United States are looking for room to grow. The old and new worlds make a trade and thus the Louisiana Territory was purchased by President Thomas Jefferson. While the eastern parts of this territory are relatively well know, the west is largely a mystery. Those involved in the trade didn't even know what they were gaining/loosing. Jefferson then commissioned the Corps of Discovery, to explore the western reaches of the Louisiana Purchase, and from there find a way to the Pacific.

  The Louisiana Territory was, for the most part, the basin of the Mississippi river. By defining it thus, the Purchase abutted the eastern border of the Columbia basin. Once Lewis and Clark had accomplished the first phase of their mission by reaching the head waters of the Missouri , the second phase was about exploring my area of interest.

  After traveling down the Snake and then the Columbia, the travelers reached the mouth of the river, and thus the end of their expedition at the Pacific. Here, on the Clatsop Spit, they established Fort Clatsop to weather the winter storms before returning home.

  A couple hundred years latter, the US army would build fortifications to guard the mouth of the river. One of these was Fort Stevens. Now declared surplus, it is a National Park to occasionally holds World War II recreations.

  At various times, we will return to the subject of Lewis and Clark. For now, I present some of my own photographs of this region of the Columbia river: Clatsop Spit. Next, we will start moving up river to the first major city, Astoria.

Happy hunting,
Brett