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November 18, 1805 |
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The 18th of November proved a very busy day for the party. Accompanied by 11 men, Clark left for Cape Disappointment. They proceeded downriver about a mile and climbed up and over “a point of rock about 40 feet high.” This is the present site of Fort Columbia, referred to as “Point Open-slope” by Sgt. Gass and often thought of as Scarborough Head, which is really in the area of Fort Columbia but not the Fort area proper (described in greater detail in the discussion under November 15.)
By the 1860s, a fort was being built by the US Government at Scarborough Hill (referred to on some maps as ‘Chinook Point’) to provide defensive works as a bulwark against possible foreign invasion. And, in the late 1890s, battlements were provided at the Fort, with the first regular garrison in place by June, 1903.
Here the men encountered another beautiful sand beach and walked up it past what is now the town of Chinook, arriving in what Clark estimated as 7 miles – which actually turned out to be four – at the present Chinook River. At the river, they found several Indian women who were each paid with a fishhook to ferry them across the River in a canoe. Once on the other side, they continued three more miles to the Wallacut River and were able to cross it in a canoe which they found lying on the shore. Their maps show that their route closely followed what is today known as “Stringtown Road". This Road can be reached off US 101 at the Chinook River Bridge. From there, it meanders through the community now known as Vandalia and rejoins US 101 further to the west. During the course of walking this portion of the trial, Clark states that they found “the remains of a whale” and that “R. Fields killed a large bird which measured as having a wingspan of 9 feet.” Gass described it as “a remarkably large buzzard, of a species different than any I had seen.” Of course, the ‘large buzzard’ is identified today as a California Condor, relatively common to the Pacific Coast in 1805 and a bird which feeds on carrion. The Condor, now a rare species, is bred in captivity in zoological environments. For more information regarding this species, see www.endangeredspecie.com.
It is most likely that the whale carcass Clark’s men found was a gray whale. Grays feed in the Bering and Chukchi Seas from late spring to midfall and then migrate south from early December, quite close to shore, heading to the Baja California, Mexico, area in order to breed and give birth in warmer waters. Proceeding, the men came, within a mile, to a “bluff of yellow clay and soft stone” and, rounding that, came “to a little bay or harbor,” location of today’s Ilwaco, Washington. The original sand beach, while preserved in photos, has long since been covered by fill from a more recent boat basin. Continuing on toward the Cape, the party walked along the shoreline, climbing up over several low headlands. “A mile beyond (Yellow Bluff) came to a small rocky island in a deep bend, which seems to afford a very good harbor, where the natives inform us European vessels anchor for the purpose of trading.” Although the island is still there, the anchorage is silted in and covered with grass and the ‘island’ is no longer actually so. Clark wrote “Here I found Capt. Lewis’s name on a tree. I also engraved my name.”
The party then crossed over a low timbered headland and arrived at Cape Disappointment just to the west of the present boat launch. They reported another small island of rocks and crossed a small stream that “rises in a pond near the seacoast [present day O'Neil Lake located within Fort Canby State Park]. We descended the low isthmus and reached the ocean at the foot of a high hill projecting into the sea. We crossed this hill and camped on the north side of it.” The hill referred to here is McKenzie Head. The campsite was, in 1805, 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 the Expedition on the Washington Coast. Today, two homes on the Fort Columbia property are available for vacation rental. The Steward’s House and Scarborough House, both refurnished with modern amenities, sit in what is now a 600-acre park with lookout points, a period house museum, interpretive center, original fort buildings and hiking trails. For reservation information, visitors may contact: 1-360-642-3078. |
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