1925 - Part 1 Continued - Across the Continent by Motor Boat (with Evinrude Big Twins)

On up the Columbia from a few miles above Vancouver to Waushougal, Washington, the going was just a twenty mile battle against white water; up and around, or over, salmon wheels, or scooting through eddies in dangerous proximity with the shore.  

Nevertheless, we ended that days cruising at Waushougal, the first day out of Portland with a total of 42 miles put behind us - and of which 28 miles had been accomplished up the raging Columbia.

Leaving Waushougal early the next morning we began the ascent of the great canyon where the Columbia breaks through the Cascade Mountain range.  From  scenic viewpoint this portion of the river is one of the most exquisite things on the face of the earth, but for us, with the water now at the 38 foot flood stage, and confined between rock, precipitous walls, the word DEFEAT seemed to be written all over the landscape.  All along the Columbia from Astoria to the foot of the Cascade Range we'd been told of the terrors of Cape Horn.  

Everybody with whom we talked had told what a terrible place Cape Horn was - a high bluff on the Washington side of the stream at the edge of the Cascade Range, with the river boiling down around it, and where we could almost certainly anticipate disaster.  


We recalled that Cape Horn at the tip of South America was notorious as a graveyard for water craft - and we were assured by the crepe hangers that  Cape Horn on the Columbia was a befitting namesake for the one on the island of Tierra del Fuego.  

So we left Waushougal that morning with all manner of apprehensions over the fact that the dreaded Cape Horn was just ten miles upstream around a bend in the river.

We bucked several miles of terrific water after leaving Washougal, and the inaugurated a new principal in Columbia River Navigation.  Although the Columbia along this portion is confined between rock cliffs, there is a little bottom land on both sides of the stream during low water.  This bottom land, of course, had been obliterated by the high water.  Only a few tree tops sticking out here and there where the bottom lands really were. 

 They were bottom lands in the true sense of the term - being in the bottom of the river.  We began running through the lands, finding water which was  virtually an elongated swamp, but practically free of current.  In navigating through these areas and keeping on a general course upstream we got lost several times, hung up in a fish net once, and stalled on two barbed wire fences.  Another time we traveled for  about four miles up a lovely piece of swamp land expecting expecting to find a hole out into the river again, but only to find ourselves in a blind bay, from which we had to retrace the route we had followed in.  Cruising through the woods in an effort to find the river, we passed through a submerged farm, rescued a half starved tom cat from the protruding roof of a barn, and finally came out on the river at that foot of Cape Horn.

You can train your eyes to view stereo images without a viewer...

Had we contemplated Cape Horn for a thrill, we'd have been doomed to disappointment, for it was a tame place compared with the descriptions we'd heard of it.  All it really amounted to was a ragged promontory of almost perpendicular, reddish, volcanic rock, with the broad Columbia sweeping around it.  The current looked formidable, but with steering boldly into it, we were delighted to find we had nearly a quarter of a mile per hour of headway left against the current.  Thus, getting around Cape Horn proved a matter of merely cruising for an hour and a half.

There were moments when we scarcely moved at all, but inch by inch we gained ground until the infamous Capo de Hornos finally slid astern.  All this time Lewis and Clark had been doing their work at exactly one hundred percent efficiency.  Had one or both motors failed all the upstream gains made in one and a half hours would have been lost in about two minutes.

After battling up the river for a few miles we came to the foot of the Garrison Rapids, went ashore, and surveyed the entire torrent for the two and a half to three odd miles of its length.  Salmon wheels appeared to be the worst factor we had to attend with.  There was a fine line of eddies along the Oregon shore half way up the rapids.  If we followed that line of backwash to the top, it seemed we should be able to swing back to the Washington side without losing sufficient  ground to bring us in below an impassable wheel and weir that jutted out on that shore half way up.

If this plan worked out in practice as in theory, we'd be able to catch  another line of eddies that would be able to take us up the rapids, and to the foot of the more formidable Cascade Rapids above.  The only way to determine the success of the plan was to try it.  Forthwith, we shoved off and gave Lewis and Clark the full throttle and headed across the river at an angle of about 60 degrees.
  We were swept downstream by the current, but managed to drop into the tail of the eddies on the Oregon side.  Then we began going upstream.  Although we were tossed about, and dangerously near the rocky shore sometimes, by the swirling currents of the eddies;  we gained the top of the line.  Here the full force of the rapids shot  out from the end of a rocky point as a six foot wall of water resembling the jet from the nozzle of a monstrous fire hose.
We regarded this torrent cautiously, put on our life preservers, and then swung out of the eddies.

In spite of the fact we did not swing over into the main current until we dropped down the eddies to a point where the main force of the jet around the point was somewhat spent, it felt as if we had bumped into a stone wall when the current caught the bow of the Transcontinental.  We recovered from this first slap, got headed across the river at an angle of 45 degrees, and with the boat dancing like a cork in the seething white water, sped for the Washington shore.  We moved crawfish fashion at least a half mile down the river in making the crossing, but managed to squeak into the eddies on the Washington with a margin of ten feet downstream yet to spare.  Had we missed the eddies we'd have been in a fine kettle of fish - for immediately below was a semi-submerged salmon wheel and weir clogged with all manner of logs and debris, with the current going over and around it like a mill race.  Losing our power at that instant would have precipitated disaster for no power under heaven could have kept us out of the salmon wheel in event of such a mishap.  Moreover, going into the salmon wheel would have been the end of Transcontinental and probably her crew.

Running the eddies to the top of the rapid was then comparatively easy.  We gained the top aided by the backlash of the current along the shore, and then had about a mile of fairly easy going to the foot of the Cascade Rapids.  The Cascades are genuine Honest to Agnes rapids.  Here the Columbia drops down a rock-bound canyon 27 feet perpendicularly in a distance of three miles.  In Portland I had talked with several men who claimed to have shot the Cascades in canoes or other types of watercraft, but at Bonneville, Oregon, and several other points near the rapids, I also talked with old residents who emphatically assured me that no human ever went down the Cascades - and lived to tell about it.  Moreover, with 38 feet of flood water thundering down the canyon the rapids looked like a fine place for some dejected mortal contemplating suicide.

We arrived at the foot of the rapids opposite Bonneville, Oregon about five o'clock in the afternoon - too late in the day to attempt anything other than a survey of the torrent that day.  We therefore crossed the river and tied up in the backwater estuary of Bonneville Creek, and pitched camp on the property of the Oregon State Fish Hatchery - after obtaining permission of the hatchery superintendent.  The following day being Sunday, we decided to spend the day studying the rapids and endeavoring to outline some plan by which we might get the boat up the two and a half miles torrent to Cascade Locks.

Several years ago the Federal Government attempted to open the Columbia to commercial navigation by building locks at Celilo Falls.  Millions were spent on the project that was supposed to have been completed just prior to America's entry into the World War.  But, to the present day steamboats on the Columbia above Vancouver are as exactly as numerous as three-toed pterydactyls in the New York Zoo.  The present canals lack much of carrying shipping around the natural obstructions to navigation, and until the canals are extended to really accomplish the desired results shippers of the Columbia River Valley might as well cry for the moon as for steamboats to carry their commerce on the river. 

Cascade Rapids

We talked with the lock keeper at Cascade Locks, who has done little of anything but hold his job since the locks were built.  He told us he'd be on hand to lock us through if we could ever get up to the first lock but he didn't think there was burglars chance of our making it unless we were willing to wait for the spring freshet to pass.  He also assured us there was probably no boat on the river capable of ascending the lower rapids to enter the locks.  We would also encounter the same identical condition on up the river at Celilo.

Early next morning we decided to attempt the rapids - not under our own power, but in tow of the most powerful tug boat on that section of the river.  Attempting to ascend the rapids under our own power would not only have been useless, but utterly foolhardy.  In Bonneville we fell in with a young Finn by the name of Alfred Westlund, who was employed as a boatman by a local cannery company.  His job was to collect the fish from the various fish wheels along that section of the river, and he had a boat built and powered for that special duty in foaming white water.  He thought he could pull us up the rapids to the locks, and was willing to try it.

Cascade Rapids

Transcontinental was rigged with ropes to form almost a net around her, and then the cockpit cover was battened down after the boat had been stripped of motors and every ounce that was removable.  When everything was ready we shoved out of Bonneville Creek with Transcontinental in tow, and all hands aboard the tug attired in life preservers.  The way we started out looked mighty encouraging.  The tug was built to climb white water like a salmon.  She sailed off up the rapids almost like she'd been navigating in still water.  But, there was faster water ahead, and we soon got nice into it.  We encountered places where the river was merely a series of aquatic terraces of foaming spray.  The powerful tug began jumping and plunging until it was extremely difficult even to remain on her after deck.  There were times when she climbed green columns of water precisely as I have seen salmon and trout do in going up a waterfall.

Meanwhile Transcontinental was almost out of sight in the spray at times, and the tow line that held her was as tight as a fiddle string.  For one hour the tug thrashed the water - gaining upstream inch by inch.  She got to within a half mile of the locks.  We could see the lock gates, but by that time the scenery along the banks had ceased to move, then began slipping back.  Never in all my boating experience have I seen such masterly handling of a craft as that young Finn displayed.  He tried one side of the river and then the other, but could make no progress whatever.  Several times we made slight gains but only to be washed back again.  

Finally the boatman shook his head - "It can't be done." he exclaimed. With that he shoved the wheel hard over, and we spun around like a pin wheel. The current struck us a resounding smack to the starboard side.  Water rushed over the deck of the tug.  We got headed downstream, slid down a terrifying chute of white water, and plunged into an eddy with the pilot obviously having lost steering control of the craft.  In less time it takes to tell it the tug was lifted on a comber and crashed broadside against the perpendicular rock cliff of the Washington shore.  Rocks rained down upon our decks, and for a breathless split second the tug quivered like a winged bird.  Then she got back into the stream and we began going down the rapids like an express train making up a belated schedule.  

The young Finn stood at the wheel with his jaw set as if he were trying to bite a piece of sole leather in two.  He was about the color of a polar bear, and spoke not a word until we reached the foot of the rapid.  When we finally swung into a landing at Bonneville Creek, he said:
"Well boys, I'm sorry we couldn't make it, but I'm glad to be back here safely.  I can't swim a stroke."  "What would happen to you if you ever got overboard, or lost your boat?" asked Mr. Wilton.  
"I'd drown," laconically replied the boatman, - "Just the same as you'd do regardless of how good a swimmer you may be."

Cascade rapids had baffled us completely, and further progress up the Columbia was impossible.  The only alternative was to make a minor portage - a portage of three miles, which would bring us into the river above the rapids.  Forthwith, we went to the Bonneville Garage and recruited a couple men with a motor truck.  Then, bringing the truck alongside a low mud bank in Bonneville Creek we ran a line from the boat to the truck and hauled the craft out of the water with the power of the land vehicle.  An hour later we backed the truck to the water's edge above the rapids, skidded the boat off into the river, and began installing motors and stowing gear preparatory to getting under way again.  By the time we were ready to get under way the entire forenoon was gone.  Although we found fairly placid water above the rapids it still continued to exert a tremendous push downstream which left us very little headway after we had overcome the current.  

Nevertheless, we made twenty-five miles up the river that afternoon, through some of the most beautiful scenery of the entire Columbia River Valley, and arrived in front of Hood River, Oregon, a little before sundown.  Due to the tremendous stage of the river we had some difficulty in finding the celebrated apple town.  The city is built on a piece of slightly elevated ground back of a great flood plain along the south shore of the Columbia.  This flood plain was entirely submerged except for the treetops protruding out. No portion of the city is visible from the surface of the river. 

We fumbled around around over the treetops of the bottomland until we found an open water lagoon that appeared to be the estuary of the Hood River.  Ascending it, we found a boat load of Celilo Indian fishermen, who in broken English informed us that we were in Hood River alright, and all we had to do was to go on for a mile or so to the town.  But, to save our souls we couldn't tell Hood River from the rest of the flooded region.  We got lost twice, blundered around over the treetops for a mile or more, and finally drew up at the foot of a cinder path directly in front of the railroad station.

Do you believe I found this photo!?

It was our misfortune to arrive at Hood River at a time far removed from the apple harvest.  For, it should be mentioned here that the Hood River Valley, of which the town of Hood River is the business center; is to apples what Fresno is to raisins, Bethlehem to steel, or Akron to rubber.  Better apples never grew on trees.  If Adam and Eve had lived in the Hood River Valley instead of the Garden of Eden the story of their temptation would be easier to understand.  Hood River is also the home of Billy Sunday, the famous evangelist.  He gave the valley a lot of valuable publicity by settling down there to grow the infamous fruit which the Book of Genesis tells us is responsible for the downfall of mankind.

Although we got an early start out of Hood River next morning we encountered such a terrific current in the rock-walled canyon of the Columbia between there and The Dalles that our progress upstream was often a matter of inches per minute.  We worked the eddies along the shores as best we could, but this section of the river is quite tortuous.  Thus, the lines of eddies were usually short, and our crossings from one side of the river to the other in search of eddies - extremely numerous.  Every time we crossed the river we were swept downstream.  Then, to make things worse a strong wind began blowing up the river about nine o'clock in the morning which seemed bent upon rolling the current back to where it came from.  We pulled into The Dalles at noon, drenched to the skin by flying spray, cold and hungry.  Celilo Rapids, Celilo Falls, and the non-functioning Celilo Canal were just above us.

The newspaper reporters found us almost as soon as we got tied up at the local ferry landing.  The story of our arrival at The Dalles went on the press wires, and we learned later our families at home heard of us through the papers before our telegrams filed at the same time were delivered.  The newspaper men were greatly interested in seeing us go up Celilo Rapids and Celilo Falls - but, they were doomed to disappointment.  They furnished us an automobile to go out and study the rapids- to say nothing of the falls, which were completely obliterated by the high water, convinced us that our chances for getting up were about the same as those for the proverbial wax cat in Hades.  If we could ever reach the entrance of the Celilo Canal we could make it - but, there was the rub.  With a flood of water running for nearly two miles below the canal entrance at a speed of something like twenty-five miles per hour our little packet with a speed of about eight knots was a forlorn hope.  Moreover, in a river which was running like a mill race through the canyon with a perpendicular rock walls all thought of lining the boat up the shore was out of the question.

Just below the entrance to the Celilo Canal there was a salmon cannery in operation.  They had a tug, used for visiting the various fish wheels, which had a speed of about 22 knots.  I spoke with the cannery superintendent, and he assured us that if we could get our boat up above the second rapid he'd see that we got a tow into the canal.  he assured us, however, that if the tug were sent down the rapids to get us, it would be unable to return to that section of  river until the high water passed.  That, he declared,  would be the equivalent to closing the cannery for a period of six weeks.  It would throw a hundred people out of work. 

Above the Celilo Canal we faced the John Day Rapids, the Umatilla Rapids, and then a string of various and sundry rapids - so numerous that on the Government charts they ran short of names, and gave the rapids numbers.

In spite of the discouraging outlook we decided to make one desperate effort to get into the Celilo Canal.  We shoved off from The Dalles, and after a two hour battle succeeded in getting up through the first rapid.  In the second rapid we encountered precisely the the condition we'd anticipated  namely water that was flowing downstream at about three times our best speed in still water.  We were making fair progress upstream until we passed out of the last line of eddies. Then we began going downstream at something like 16 miles per hour
with Lewis and Clark doing all they had upstream.  There was no alternative but to swing around and go with the current.  In less time it takes to tell about it, we were wallowing over tremendous swells and going downstream at terrific speed.  I have no means of telling how fast we were traveling, but I do know we ran ahead of speeding motor cars that were traveling along the Columbia River Highway in the direction of The Dalles. 

While we might have portaged around the Celilo Rapids and Celilo Falls, such a portage would have brought us face to face with new difficulties a few miles further up the river.  If we waited six weeks for the flood to pass we might reasonably expect to get on up the remaining portion of the Columbia, into the Snake River, and on up to Lewiston, Idaho, which we had contemplated as the point from which to begin our portage over the continental divide.  

But, there are only a certain number of weeks in a temperate zone summer.  We still had more than 5000 miles of aquatic traveling to do east of the continental divide.  If we waited for the flood to pass we could expect to run into some disastrous fall wether in the Great Lakes, and even frozen waters before we could hope to reach New York.  The entire success of our attempt to cross the continent by water therefore seemed to hinge upon the advisability of lengthening our portage over the continental divide.  If we kept on battling up the Columbia we'd spend the major portion of the summer making pitiful mileage.  That would cause us to miss high water in the upper Mississippi River - a thing as disastrous as getting wrecked in the Columbia would have been.

The only logical thing to do seemed to lengthen the portage.  This we did by dropping back to The Dalles from Celilo in order to get a shipping point on a railroad division.  The arrangements for the portage were quickly made at The Dalles.  Officials of the Oregon-Washington Railroad were more than willing to cooperate with us.  They got us a special box car for the boat and equipment and agreed to spot it straight through to Fort Benton, Montana, as a manifest shipment. We then trucked the motors and all the equipment to Ernie Thompson's Garage were it was boxed for shipment.  The boat was dragged out of the water, trucked to the freight house, and stowed in the boxcar on specially built cradles turned out by the kindly garage man. 

Oregon-Washington Railroad freight house

That evening we crossed the Columbia on the ferry to Grand Dalles, Washington, and boarded a train to Fort Benton.  All the nightmares, scenic beauty, and battling up the Columbia were just memories of the past.  Our next boating would be a downhill slide of 2280 miles in the Missouri.

1910-ish?

June 13th found us in the little town of Fort Benton, Montana, with Transcontinental tied up on the shore of the swift Missouri.  It is doubtful if anything since the last buffalo stampede had stirred up more interest and excitement.

Looking east from Fort Benton.  Library of Congress image.

Missouri River - no date on LOC image.

(To be continued)

(To be continued)

1925 - Part 1 - Across the Continent by Motor Boat (with Evinrude Big Twins)

This first installment of the actual journey begins the reporting.  
This one was a heck of a lot more interesting to transcribe!

The story of the first crossing of the American Continent by boat. 

Transcontinental, an 18-foot craft driven by two, four horse power Evinrude outboard motors, was designed by the author, and built especially for the trip. Commanded by Mr. Hoag, who conceived and planned this the journey the boat left the Pacific Ocean at Astoria, Oregon, and set out up the Columbia River on May 20, 1925.

It arrived in New York October 4, after having made the trip from ocean to ocean entirely by water, except for one major portage over the continental divide, between the Columbia and Missouri Rivers.
The boat traveled 5,680 miles, and in that distance touched or traversed sixteen states of the American Union, and two provinces of Canada.

It accomplished the journey that for four hundred years defied the efforts of Columbus, Cabot, Hudson, Champlain, Cartier, and other explorers who sought to find a water route across America.

The cruise is without doubt the longest ever made in fresh water by any boat, and extraordinary in the fact that a record-breaking distance was covered in close contact with the land. -- Editor - Motor Boating

Following the discovery of America by Columbus on October 12, 1492, the objective of nearly all subsequent voyages of the American Continent for the next four hundred years consisted of an effort to find a water route across the Western Hemisphere which blocked European access to the Orient.  None of those efforts succeeded.  Yet the first white men who penetrated across the Continent from  the Atlantic to the Pacific traveled almost entirely by water.  

A brief reference to history is all that is needed to point out that the early French explorers who landed at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River journeyed up that stream, and through the Great Lakes to the present site of Chicago. 

The west is still wild and woolly. A hermit
cowman of the Montana bad lands before his cabin.

 After the discoveries of Champlain, Cartier, and others, had revealed that the Great Lakes were inland fresh water seas and not straits leading through to the East Indies - it remained for La Salle to establish the relationship between the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico by way of Des Plaines, Illinois, and the Mississippi Rivers.  

Later, came Lewis and Clark, who in 1804 to 1806 explored the Missouri River to its source, hiked over the continental divide, and went down the Columbia River to the pacific.

The combined routes of these various groups of explorers who worked over the American Continent from 1492 until 1808 revealed the fact that long before the first covered wagon got across from ocean to ocean - white men had piece by piece actually crossed America traveling entirely by water except for certain minor land portages.

While no one person ever made the ocean to ocean trip as a continuous journey until the year 1925, enough was known of the route by 1807 to induce President Thomas Jefferson to recommend the establishment of a transcontinental commercial waterway.

In those days when waterways were the chief avenues of commerce, Jefferson guided by the light shed upon our national geography by the discoveries of Lewis and Clark visualized the possibilities of an ocean to ocean waterway with a post road establishing communication between the headwaters of the Columbia and Missouri Rivers where no navigable waterways exist.  

Jefferson's dream was never realized, and was apparently forgotten between 1807 and 1925, until the Transcontinental's attempt to cross the continent was accomplished by its arrival in New York City from the Pacific Ocean on October 4, 1925.

The Columbia River looking downstream from the Dalles, Oregon. Taken from a height near the city.

Transcontinental, built in Los Angeles by Emil Aarup, veteran boat builder, had been launched at Los Angeles Harbor, and thoroughly tried out and tested in the Pacific Ocean several weeks before she was shipped to Astoria to begin her attack upon the American Continent up the Columbia River.

In the trial runs she had performed even beyond the expectations of her designer and owner, and even Mr. Aarup, her builder.

California Yacht Club was built in 1922.

On May13, she was driven from the California Yacht Club at Wilmington, California, to the Pacific Steamship Company's dock at Los Angeles Harbor.  There, with all the equipment to be used on the transcontinental cruise, she was delivered in the water alongside the Steamer Admiral Farragut, hoisted aboard, and started on the way to her transcontinental starting point - Astoria, Oregon.

The writer, with Frank Wilton, motion picture cameraman, and Val Woodbury, Southern California businessman, comprised skipper and crew were booked as passengers on the same ship.   A fourth member of Transcontinental's personnel, was Spy, a wire-haired brindle Scotch Terrier, the pet and property of Mr. Wilton riding on a dog ticket in the steamer's baggage room.

Upon the arrival of the Admiral Farragut at Astoria Transcontinental was hoisted off onto the dock, while the three adventurers who had announced their intention of attempting to cross America by water were promptly taken in tow by Claude I. Barr, Secretary of the Astoria Chamber of Commerce, and a delegation of citizens who were attempting to give us a befitting send-off.  All of them freely predicted that we would go through to a history making success, or would sink into oblivion that would probably inscribe our tombstones with some epitaph as _ "Fools who attempted to cross America by motor boat in the year A.D. 1925."

While we received every hospitality and encouragement from the city of Astoria. the town was not without its coterie of crepe hangers.  Across the bow of our boat was the name TRANSCONTINENTAL, with her port of registry as Astoria, Oregon.  Below this was inscribed: "Headed for Heaven, Hell, or Hoboken." 
Predictions were freely made that we would arrive in one or the other of the first two ports long before we could hope to tie up in Hoboken - or even before we got well under way up the mighty Columbia.  Pools and bets were taken, and the odds were about nine to one that we could not hope to succeed.  

Experienced old Columbia River boatmen predicted we were never get out of the Columbia alive - and that if we survived the Columbia, disaster was almost certain to overtake us before we could hope to run the more than 5,000 miles of treacherous rivers and great lakes that stretched out before us between the top of the continental divide and New York City.  However, the best, and most thinking citizens - those who have built Astoria to the beautiful modern little city that it is today from
the ashes of the disaster that left only tide-swept and blackened embers two years ago seemed to give us credit for getting under way.

The town was virtually turned over to us while the preliminary preparations were made for getting under way.  Everybody seemed ready to lend a hand toward helping us in every possible way.  Only the crepe hangers were annoying.  They's come around one after another telling us horrible tales of tragedy on the Columbia - tales of the terrors of the rapids, the spring freshet upon which we were ascending, debris coming down the river which had ground to pieces bigger and stronger boats than ours, of boat-swallowing whirlpools, dangerous eddies - and what not.  No doubt these persons meant well - intending only to warn us against dangers they knew we faced, but they added nothing to our piece of mind.

On the morning of May 20, very early, and with most of Astoria down at the waterfront, Transcontinental was befittingly christened by Miss Vada Morfitt, one of the belles of the town who smashed a bottle of ginger ale over the bow as the boat was lifted off the dock by a powerful crane, and set down in the waters of the Columbia.  Meanwhile the motion picture camera clicked, and a squad of newspaper cameramen laid down a barrage of photographic artillery.  

Not Spy, but obviously a spiritual brother!

Almost one of the last incidents in Astoria was the presentation to Spy of a handsomely engraved collar with the compliments of The Astoria Business and Professional Women's Association.  Likewise, the ladies insisted the name Spy was too drab and prosaic for so distinguished a dog embarking on such a dangerous journey.  

He was accordingly re-christened Spy-Wapato,  the latter appellation being the name of a Pacific-Northwestern water tuber upon which Lewis and Clark and the members of their party virtually subsisted while exploring the region.  Inasmuch we were to travel essentially the same route as Lewis and Clark traveled from Astoria to st. Louis, Missouri, it seemed appropriate that our expedition should at least honor our dog to the extent of naming him after the tuber they so largely subsisted.  


Also, just as Lewis and Clark were the moving spirits behind the original exploring party, the two outboard motors that supplied the power to our boat were the propelling medium of our expedition over the very route those distinguished explorers so painfully and laboriously traveled.  Accordingly the two motors were named - one LEWIS and the other CLARK, and the names painted in gold letters upon the side of each motor.

For those who have never seen the Columbia River it should be mentioned here that is the greatest river on the North American Continent flowing into the Pacific.  In front of Astoria where it roars over the Columbia River bar into the ocean it is approximately 12 miles wide, and some fifteen or twenty miles up-stream from salt water it is 14 miles wide.  Above the point where the river widens out preparatory to losing itself in the Pacific it is about the same sort of a river as the St. Lawrence immediately below Montreal, or the Hudson at Albany.

Map from The Columbia River by Lyman.  Check it out for great photos  - Project Gutenberg.

During stages of low water the Columbia is a tidal stream.  The spring freshet was coming down off the high divide.  The official water gauge at Astoria showed the river pouring into the ocean at a 20-foot flood stage, and going higher hour by hour.  Any ride that might have ever have flowed up the bed of the river was obliterated by the water coming down. The current was flowing six miles per hour in front of Astoria when Transcontinental was launched.  Thus with a boat with a top speed of about ten miles per hour, there wasn't a great deal of headway left after more than half of our power and speed was consumed in overcoming the current.

Notwithstanding that the wind was blowing a howling gale right up the Columbia from the Pacific Ocean on the morning of May 20, we shoved off up the river with most of Astoria waving us on our way.  A furious sea was running, and the problem of navigating was made all the more difficult by the roughness of the water, and the fact that every manner of driftwood and debris was coming down the river.  The two principal industries of the lower Columbia Valley are salmon fishing and lumbering.  Thus we found the river literally strewn with everything from pulp-log bark to huge deadheads and floaters containing almost enough lumber to build a small house.  

Although we had Lewis and Clark turning up every possible revolution that could be coaxed out of them, our progress up the river seemed pitifully slow. There were times when we scarcely seemed to be moving.  We had a lot of speed over the water, but our progress over the land seemed little more than a snail's pace.  Added to this was the  necessity of constantly zig-zagging along our course to avoid logs and debris causing us to lose ground against the current with every turn of the steering wheel.  We battled wind, waves, current and drift, from 8 o'clock - the hour of our departure from Astoria, until noon, when we arrived in front of the town of Cathlamet, Washington and decided to stop for a brief rest and lunch.

Adding this image to show width of the river here.  The bridge was built in 1938.

Cathlamet, Washington

Cathlamet is essentially a lumbering and fishing community, and largely peopled by persons who don't speak English at all, or whose English is tinged with a decided Scandinavian accent.  During the first four hours we had eaten off just 24 miles of the more than 5,000 mile water route to the Atlantic Ocean.

Leaving Cathlamet, we passed out of the Columbia River Bay section of the Columbia River.  The river began to narrow down between high, rocky, forested shores, which increased both the current and the congestion of the drift.  If dodging logs and driftwood had been a severe nerve strain below Cathlamet, it became a nightmare above that point.  A few miles above the town the current became so terrific we could not make an inch of progress against it in the middle of the stream.  

We then began what the Columbian River boatmen call "working the eddies".  In any swift flowing stream, particularly where the shores are high and rocky as they are on the lower Columbia, there is usually a line of back-eddies along the bank.  These lines of eddies  may continue for great distances, or end very abruptly, depending on the manner in which the current may swing from bank to bank as the river follows the deviations of its channel.  In the eddies we could make fair progress, although we often ran dangerously close to the shore.  Often a line of eddies would end at some curve in the river, and we would find ourselves plunging boldly into a surging current where we could hope to travel in one direction - and that downstream.  When this happened we'd cross the river dodging drift, and losing ground, but usually find another line of eddies along the opposite shore.

Between one o'clock and five o"clock of the afternoon of the first day on the Columbia, we put ten gallons of gasoline through the motors, crossed the river from Oregon to Washington, and Washington to Oregon, no less than thirty times; and moved exactly ten miles upstream.  Many times we seemed to stand absolutely still for five minutes at a stretch, and then gain ground almost imperceptibly  around some swift river bend from one line of eddies to the other - often with scarcely a place on the entire river sufficiently free from drift logs and debris to put the boat without striking at least the smaller pieces of it.



The first disaster of the entire trip, and which proved to be the worst one of the ocean to ocean water journey overtook us just about five o'clock on the afternoon of our very first day's traveling.  We had passed above the small cannery settlement of eagle cliff, in Wahkiakum County, Washington; ran out of a line of eddies, and plunged boldly into a roaring rapid that swept around a point on the Washington shore when Transcontinental struck some submerged object that virtually lifted her bodily, completely out of the water.  There was a sickening crunching of lumber as the little craft settled back into the water with her starboard gunwale awash, and the boat all but turning turtle.  

The motors were shut down almost at the instant of impact, and in another second we were drifting downstream on a current that was running like the mill tails of Hades.  All hands grabbed life preservers expecting to feel the boat settling down under us.  But a hasty inspection of the hull showed  that no water seemed to be coming in anywhere.  Realizing then that we were in no immediate danger of sinking, we began looking about for the cause of the disaster - and there it was racing down the river alongside of us.  It was a deadhead of Douglas fir, a stick of wood sixty feet long and four feet in diameter if it was an inch in size by either dimension.  The thing was bobbing along half sinking, half floating, but neither sinking nor floating.  It had come right under the boat.  Apparently it struck us squarely on the keel, then slid back, and wiped out the stern of the boat as if the two inch layer of dowelled and screwed oak planking had been so much wet paper.

The two motors were hanging to the shattered remnants of the stern, and in grave danger of going overboard.  I loosened the motors and pulled them aboard while Wilton and Woodbury each grabbed a pair of oars and began pulling in the direction of Eagle Cliff.  The stern of the boat was shattered beyond hope of redemption to within two inches of the water line. Some water had come aboard, but it was merely impounded behind the safety bulkhead built into the hull three feet forward of the damaged stern.  Simultaneously the sullen, leaden sky which had been threatening rain all day opened up, and down came the rain in torrents.

Pulling over toward the Washington shore we ran downstream on the mill race current, swung into the back eddy, and landed in a tiny harbor strewn with pulp logs beside the Eagle Cliff Cannery.

Eagle Cliff Cannery. This photo from a great interactive page by the Oregon History Wayfinder.  Go check out the river map.

This postcard was found on eBay.  "Eagle Cliff - Site of the first fish cannery on Columbia River."

Eagle Cliff isn't much of a town.  In fact, the salmon cannery and its employees comprise the entire community.  Nevertheless, we found hospitality and kindness there.  The cannery superintendent invited us into his home where we dried our clothing before a roaring wood fire, and had dinner.  There being no hotel in the village the superintendent turned the cannery office over to us in order to give us a place where we could camp out of the rain.  The most appreciated feature of the office was a big air tight stove with an abundant supply of firewood.  But for the power of the press the hospitality of Eagle Cliff we received  at Eagle Cliff probably would not have been so readily forthcoming.  It seemed that every man, woman and child, in the community knew who we were, and what we were attempting to do the moment we landed.  Certainly our landing there in distress on the very first day of our cruise bore no promise that our venture would ever succeed.

The following morning the rain was coming down as if someone might have been working overhead with a hose.  It was not a very good day for open boat cruising.  Furthermore, we were in no condition for cruising until at least temporary repairs could be made to the stern of the Transcontinental.  The Eagle Cliff Cannery, however, had a well equipped machine shop, including all manner of carpenter tools, and a very promising pile of dressed oak lumber.  Transcontinental  was brought around under the shelter of one of the cannery sheds, and with help of most of the shop force we went to work to repair the damaged stern.  The job could not be done properly short of a major boatbuilding operation, but by noon we had temporary repairs made that bore promise of at least getting us to a boat shop in Portland.  

Although we got the stern cobbled into shape so as to hold the motors, we received a most discouraging shock when we went to operate the motors themselves.  The drive shafts and almost all the underwater mechanism of both engines had been damaged by our contact with the log.  The motors sounded like a couple of rock crushers.  The propellers would turn but it was evident that the engines were due for a major overhauling, and a renewal of parts not included in our stock of spares.

We got under way again up the Columbia at one o'clock that afternoon, bucking the current, dodging driftwood and debris, with the dilapidated motors creaking, groaning, vibrating and grinding.  In spite of the handicap under which we were cruising we reached Kalam before sundown, and stopped for the night,  camping on the  river bank at the edge of the town on the Washington shore.

This was 15 years before our heroes arrived in Kalama.

In the entire run from Astoria to Kalama we had been so busy with the problems of navigating the Columbia in flood season that our interest in scenery, places of interest, and the like, had to be gratified somewhat on the fly.  This portion of the Columbia is beautiful beyond description.  Most of the river bank is rocky with great hills stretching away to the backgrounds of towering mountains.  There are mountains everywhere, and the entire country is a solid carpet of forested landscape of the most vivid emerald green. 

There is much virgin timber left standing, but in places where logging operations have been carried on the second and even third and fourth timber can scarcely be told from the original forest.  In this region of deep rich soil and abundant rainfall, a piece of land is no sooner cleared before the forest immediately begins to encroach upon it.  If left alone it quickly returns to the temperate zone jungle.  The process of natural reforestation is so rapid that in only a few years a piece of land that has been logged off can scarcely be told from one that has never heard the sound of the woodman's axe.

The second growth trees, of course, may be smaller than the virgin timber with which the Columbia River Valley was clothed when Lewis and Clark explored it, but the fact is imperceptible from one's point of view on the river.  The Columbia River Motor Highway which parallels the Oregon shore of the river from the Dalles to Astoria is famed throughout the world for its scenic beauty. But, if the Columbia is beautiful from the motor road, it is ten times more beautiful when viewed from the surface of the river itself. The country is especially beautiful on the springtime when the Scotch Broom is in blossom sprinkling the entire landscape with patches of color that for all the world resemble patches of pure gold.  It is the flowering of this plant which has given the Columbia River Highway the name - "The Road of Gold."

Above Kalama  the close-up river scenery is much the same as along the lower river, but with huge snow clad mountains looming up in the backgrounds.  Mount St. Helens, Mount adams, and Mount Hood, come into view like tremendous piles of granulated sugar rising into the very skies.  If natural scenic beauty has anything to do with making people happy and contented it is easy to understand why the web-footed natives of the Pacific Northwest are as inseparable from it as Damion was from Pythias.  (web-footed?  I looked it up and a book from 1890 mentioned that "From 40 to 80 inches of rain fall from North-Western California to Middle Alaska. The inhabitants of Western Washington are sometimes called “web-footed.".)

Artist - Albert Bierstadt.  Mount Hood, Oregon.     
Chinookan people and canoes sail the Columbia River and wait on shore.
Source: The Confluence Project

Leaving Kalama early on the third day of our aquatic onslaught against the American Continent, we found ourselves with crippled, wheezy motors battling a 26 foot flood stage of water instead of the 20 foot stage we had had when leaving Astoria.  Notwithstanding that fact we made that day the longest day's run accomplished on the transcontinental route in waters flowing into the Pacific.  We made 30 miles up the Columbia, swung into the Willamette River, covered 18 miles up that stream and the Willamette Slough, and arrived in Portland that evening.  The Willamette River was in flood, but the current was much less than in the Columbia, evidently due to back water from the Columbia.

Landing at the Portland Canoe Club's great houseboat at the foot of Morrison Street we found a delegation of newspaper photographers, reporters, and motion picture newsreel men who had been keeping the wires hot between Portland and Astoria in an effort to locate us.  There was no such thing as concealing the damaged stern of the boat, so the best we could do was to tell the reporters about the accident, and pose for pictures.  The log hitting incident made big copy - first page stuff on the Los Angeles papers the following day and in nearly every newspaper in the United States having wire service, as we learned some days later.

The following day the Transcontinental was delivered to Von de Werth Brothers boat shop, hauled into dry dock and permanent repairs begun upon the shattered stern.

eBay comes through again with this W. H. & E. Von der Werth, Boat Builders photo!  date not known

The motors went to Evinrude Motor Company's Portland Branch, where Frank G. Epton, the manager, nearly turned the place upside down to see we got the best service that could be rendered. The repairs to the boat and motors, however, held us in Portland for a week.  All this time the Columbia and the Willamette continued to rise.  Merchants in downtown Portland began pumping water out of their basements.  Gasoline and electric pumping outfits began to appear along the lowland streets of the city, and our friend Epton was doing a brisk business in the sale of Evinrude centrifugal pumps.

1925 - Portland, Oregon: The Spokane Street Ferry, also called the Sellwood Ferry, shuttled passengers across the Willamette between Sellwood and west Portland.

In spite of the fact the basement of the Evinrude Motor Company's Portland Branch was flooded, and the demand for centrifugal pumps exceeded the supply, Mr. Epton found time to drive us over the Columbia River Highway from Portland to Hood river, Oregon in order we might study the river and the rapids from the shore.  There seemed little doubt we could run the Garrison Rapids, but the Cascade Rapids did not look encouraging.  In those rapids the Columbia drops 27 feet perpendicularly in a distance of 3 miles, with the water thundering down this declivity now at a 38 foot flood stage, our chances of getting up appeared forlorn indeed.  

During our sojourn in Portland I also called upon my friend and fellow member of the Adventurer's Club of Los Angeles, Lieutenant Oakley G. Kelly, at Vancouver Barracks, Washington.  Lieutenant Kelly, as most people will remember, made a little transcontinental fame for himself a couple years ago when he and Lieutenant John Macready made a non-stop airplane flight from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  Lieut. Kelly suggested that some first-hand knowledge of the rapids might be gained by flying up the Columbia and Snake Rivers to Lewiston, Idaho - our contemplated destination in waters of the Pacific watershed.  We wired the commandant of the Army Air Service wasn't interested in constructive publicity, or in whether or not we got across the continent by the water route or not.  At least, no reply to our wire was ever received, the same apparently being ignored at Washington.

During the first nonstop transcontinental flight, Oakley Kelly (left) handled the takeoff and John Macready the landing, and the pilots exchanged positions at the controls five times during the flight.  Source

When we were finally ready to leave Portland with our engines and outboards in good order the flood had risen to the point where it was necessary to open one of the drawbridges across the Willamette River to let Transcontinental pass under.  In a normal stage of water we would have gone under this bridge with 30 feet of clearance.  Running down the Willamette on a brisk current, and among a generous sprinkling of pulp logs, we got back to the Columbia in just an hour and a half.  Then came a lively battle up the Columbia to Vancouver , Washington, where we desired to stop to see Lieutenant Kelly.  

Arriving at Vancouver Barracks, which is located right on the bank of the Columbia, we found that Kelly's aviation field was a huge lake - a dandy place for a fleet of seaplanes, but hardly suitable for land airplanes.  With no word received from Washington, we decided to shove on up the river.  We were to keep in touch with Lieutenant Kelly by telephone, and if the authorization for the use of an airplane was received he would meet us with the aircraft at Grand Dalles, Washington.  My last phone call to Kelly was from the Dalles, but no word had been received from Washington, and he had been ordered on a flight to San Diego, California.

With no further opportunity to study the river beyond what we already accomplished we shoved off from our mooring alongside Lieut. Kelly's airplane hangar - put-putted across the submerged aviation field, under a railroad culvert, and back into the surging, and still rising Columbia.  The current was so swift we could make little or no progress against it in the middle of the stream.  Wilton, who had been at the steering wheel most of the time because extraordinarily adept at avoiding logs and debris, but in running it startlingly close to the shore without actually hitting it. 

A few miles up the river above Vancouver we encountered a stretch of water where the current was so swift we could not move against it.  Forthwith, we maneuvered to the Washington shore, entered a submerged peach orchard, and navigated between the tree tops for several miles.  When the submarine orchard finally gave way to higher ground protruding out of the flood we cruised back into the river where we found navigable water above the swift portion we had detoured via the peach orchard.

On this portion of the Columbia we began encountering a new obstacle to our ascent of the flooded river, and which remained with us until we portaged out of the stream to the waters east of the continental divide.  This was the many salmon wheels along both banks of the stream.  If there ever was a contraption that is a synonym for Yankee ingenuity and a lazy man's method of catching fish, a salmon wheel is precisely that.

It is merely a great dip net constructed constructed in the form of a wheel, and set in the swiftest part of the river. The current turns it, and the salmon swimming up stream following the fastest water, encounter the rear dip nets of the moving wheel to be lifted out of the water.  As the wheel continues to turn the fish are dropped into a trough built around the axle of the wheel.  They then slide down a chute into a bin where the fisherman desists from smoking his pipe long enough to tap them on the head with a baseball bat.  The fish  wheels are usually built on piling a hundred feet or more from the shore, and in order toget swift water past the wheel, weirs are built between the shore and the wheel.  Thus a boat coming up the river cannot pass a fish wheel except to go out around it, and that means going out into the swiftest water the stream has to show. 

Fortunately, however, we found many fish wheels that were temporarily out of business because of the high water - being wholly, or partially, submerged.  When the wheels were submerged the advantage was all ours because we could climb over them with the boat without going out into the swifter water.  Although the water over a flooded fish weir was sometimes a minor waterfall we managed to get past a number of them by passing over.  The weirs were especially troublesome, particularly those that were not flooded to our satisfaction.

We squeaked over one weir on the Washington side of the river where the water was coming over as it as if over a dam.  There was a two foot wall of water spilling over the top, in it seemed impossible that we might drive up over it.  We attempted to go around the end of the wheel, but in spite of the fact I had Lewis and Clark doing their stuff for the last rpm that could be gotten out of their screws, we got washed back.    Mr. Woodbury, who is a powerful oarsman, got an idea he might help the boat up with the oars, but only to discover that the water was going past us so fast that he couldn't get the oars in the water and out again fast enough to let him exert the slightest pull.  We  then decided to attempt going over the weir, but with no assurance we could make it, with less assurance that we would not hang up, and possibly have our boat capsized.  If we failed to get over the weir with our power, there was still a possibility of being able to line the boat up the watery slope working from the shore.

After getting washed back from the end of the weir for the third time, we dropped in below the weir, tuned the motors for the last possible turn, and with the determination to get over or get wrecked - slammed into the torrent of white water below the miniature cataract.  The current and the white topped waves tossed us this way and that, but we finally worked the bow of the boat up to the column of solid green water that was pouring over the top of the weir.  The boat hesitated as the engines raced in the bubble-perforated white water that offered no solid hold for the propellers.  For about two minutes we never moved, either upstream or down.  Then the bow began to rise.  It gained the top of the green wall of water pouring down threatening to  engulf us if we ever lost our power or got turned sideways. It kept right on going until the forward end of our keel was all but three feet out of the water. The stern was dangerously low as the engines thrashed the bubbles out of the water behind us.  We came to a dead stop, slid back a few inches, and then stood still again.  

For the next ten minutes we played a game of heads or tails with the water on top of the weir - gaining a few inches, slipping back, and then gaining again.  Finally we eased ahead until the propellers got clear of the foaming water that caused the motors to race.  They dug into the solid column that poured over the top, and we went ahead a few inches.  We held our own, and then inch by inch began to creep ahead.  It seemed an eternity before we began to really go somewhere then we gained distance at little over a snail's pace, realizing every second that the slightest failure of the motors might dump us into disaster over the weir.  But the motors did not fail.  Inch by inch we crept upstream, until we caught a back eddy along the shore and went shooting upstream at a prodigious rate of speed.

To be continued...This is not the end of Part 1,  just the end of what I can do in a week...