the Pacific Ocean. The drop of two feet per mile is four times as steep as the Mississippi which falls about 600 feet in some 1,200 miles. Within the U.S. the Columbia drops 1,284 feet from the Canada border for the 748 miles to the Ocean. Most of the precipitation in the mountainous eastern part of the region falls in the form of snow during the long winters. Some of the snow packs down as glaciers forming the large ice fields in Canada. Summer heat melts the snow and ice to create the annual Columbia River flood in May and June. The low natural flow in winter can be as small as three percent of the summer flood peak. Despite the extreme vagaries in flow, the Columbia is the outstanding water power resource of North America.

Man. Humans have existed in this area at least 15,000 years. A half dozen archaeological sites in the Pacific Northwest date back to 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. Many

Indians had inhabited the region, especially along the Major tributaries of the Columbia. lower Columbia River. Epidemics in 1780 and 1829-1830, particularly the latter, wiped out about 90 percent of those in the lower Columbia River tribes. The decimation of the Indian population made easier the later entry of white settlers.

Captain Robert Gray of Boston entered the Columbia River on May 11, 1792, after he and others narrowly missed the Columbia many times. His feat came 300 years after Columbus reached America. It came in large part because of the long search for the Northwest Passage as a better route from Europe to India.

When the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453, cutting off the caravan overland route between Europe and the Orient, the search began for an alternate route. Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), son of King John I of Portugal, launched the age of exploration by sending ships southward down the west coast of Africa. His ships found and Portugal colonized the Azores and Madeiras, and in 1445 he reached Cape Verde. His work in navigation stimulated others. Bartholomeu Diaz reached the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. Then six years after Columbus landed in the West Indies, Vasco da Gama of Portugal rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached India in 1498.

The Portuguese and the English surmised that America was a barrier to a westward approach to India. As early as 1497 John and Sebastian Cabot sailed from England to look for the Northwest Passage. Portugal sent Corterreal, and he failed to return. In 1513 the Spaniard Balboa saw the Pacific and claimed for Spain all the lands bordering the Pacific Ocean. Ferdinand Magellan of Portugal sailed around the world 1519-1522. The Spaniards and English

redoubled their efforts. In 1543 the Spaniards Cabrillo and Ferrelo saw the coast of Oregon. Searching for the Northwest Passage in 1577 Sir Frances Drake saw the coast of Oregon and Vancouver Island. Juan de Fuca allegedly sailed the Strait of Juan de Fuca in 1592. Aquilar of Spain tried to enter the Columbia in 1602, and named it Rio de Aquilar. Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift and others wrote about the River of the West or Rio de Aquilar. Soon navigators of several nations joined the search. History interfered as European kingdoms plunged into a series of wars that lasted more than 150 years, beginning with the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648).

Sailing for Russia in 1741, Vitus Bering discovered Alaska and laid the basis for Russia's fur trade with China. In 1745 the British Government offered 20,000 pounds for discovery of the Northwest Passage. The first Russian shipload of fur reached China in 1771. The Spaniard Heceta tried to enter the Columbia in 1772, and Perez, another Spaniard, reached Queen Charlotte Island and Nootka harbor on Vancouver Island in 1774. Other Spanish navigators notably Malaspina in 1791 touched the coast as far north as Mount St. Elias on the Alaska-Canada border. Captain Cook missed the Columbia River and the Strait of Juan de Fuca in 1778-79 but his ships took furs from Nootka to China. His voyage triggered the dramatic upsurge in fur trade and exploration of the 1780s.

Flying a Portuguese flag, the Englishman Meares lay off the Columbia on July 5, 1788, but wisely feared the breakers at the bar. He erroneously concluded no river existed there. The same year, John Kendrick and Robert Gray sailed to Nootka to trade for furs to exchange for spices and silks in China to sell back in Boston, a 3-year round-theworld trip. On their next trip in 1791-1793, with Gray commanding the Columbia and Kendrick the Lady Washington, they reached and tried for 9 days to enter the Columbia River. Continuing northward they met Captain Vancouver, who had sighted the Columbia River on April 27, 1792, but, based on the earlier report by Meares, concluded it was not a river. After this meeting, Gray returned south. On a favorable sea May 11, 1792 he sailed the Columbia over the bar and some 35 miles up the broad channel of the river and took on furs. He named the river Columbia after his ship and on May 20, 1792 put to sea northward. His exploration in time became part of the basis for the United States claim to the entire Pacific Northwest.

Again Gray met Captain Vancouver and reported his discovery. The disappointed Vancouver later sent Captain

Broughton in the Chatham to enter the Columbia River, which he did October 21, 1792. He explored the river as far as Washougal until November 10, 1792, and then rejoined Captain Vancouver at Monterey, California. Vancouver thereupon claimed the Columbia River for Great Britain. However, the British claim on the area came mainly by land and not by sea.

Lewis and Clark. Thirteen years after Robert Gray crossed the dangerous Columbia River bar, the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805-6 wintered at Astoria, Oregon. As early as 1783 Thomas Jefferson had advocated sending an exploration party to the Pacific Ocean. As President in 1803, while negotiations continued on the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson obtained approval of Congress for sending an expedition, and selected his personal secretary Meriwether Lewis, then 29, as leader. Lewis in turn, with the President's approval, selected his friend and fellow Virginian, William Clark as coequal leader. Clark had had more experience with Indians and wilderness conditions. He was four years older and had commanded the rifle company with which Lewis had served. The expedition left the Wood River in Illinois on May 14, 1804, and returned from the 8,000 mile journey September 23, 1806.

Jefferson's June 20, 1803 letter instructed Lewis, in effect, to find a route most like the long sought Northwest Passage:

"The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it, as, by its course & communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean, may offer the most direct and practical water communication across this continent, for the purpose of commerce."

Lewis and Clark in August 1805 crossed the Bitterroot Range of the Rocky Mountains at Lolo Pass, built dugout canoes, and descended the Clearwater, Snake, and Columbia rivers reaching the Pacific Ocean late in November. They identified 39 Indian tribes totaling 80,000 people, and observed their use of the Columbia River for navigation, trade, and as a source of fish. Particularly they noted the rapids and falls which hindered navigation. They made laborious portages around Celilo Falls and the Cascades. Located in the Columbia River Gorge at the city of Cascade Locks, Oregon, the Cascades presented a formidable challenge. Returning April 12, 1806 the party lost to the churning waters its largest dugout canoe and towrope.

The Lewis and Clark Journals began the record which led to building Bonneville Dam to drown the dangerous Cascades, The Dalles Dam to permit river traffic over

Celilo Falls, and six more dams to extend barge navigation to Lewiston, Idaho. The Cascade Mountains were named after the Cascades after the Columbia River Gorge rapids which no longer exist.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition showed the way. The mountain men and trappers followed and located the Oregon Trail to The Dalles, but this still required going through the Columbia River Gorge. Thousands of settlers came to claim the Pacific Northwest for the United States. Meanwhile the Hudson's Bay Company in 1825 established Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River, now Vancouver, Washington, but the Company's stand was shortlived. The 1846 treaty made the Pacific Northwest part of the United States.

The geopolitics of the Lousiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition had significance for the Pacific Northwest. The Purchase extended the United States to the Rocky Mountains. The Expedition together with Gray's entry of the Columbia River helped establish U.S. claims to the Pacific Northwest on ground of discovery. More importantly Lewis and Clark paved the way for settlement of Oregon.

Oregon was first used as a name to identify the Columbia River by the American traveler Jonathan Carver in his book Travels in Interior Parts of America, published in 1778. The name Oregon was popularized by the American poet William Cullen Bryant in 1817 in his poem "Thanatopsis:"

"Or lose thyself in the continuous woods

Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save its own dashings."

Popular references to the Oregon country led in 1848 to designation of the Pacific Northwest as The Oregon Territory. The Territory of Washingon was established in 1853. The revised Oregon Territory became the State of Oregon in 1859 as the 33rd state, Montana and Washington became the 41st and 42nd states in 1889 and Idaho the 43rd in 1890.

Meanwhile, the fur trade had declined. Pioneers had surged over the Oregon Trail in the 1840s to settle the Pacific Northwest. This helped provide the groundswell for the 1846 Oregon Treaty between the United States and Great Britain establishing the 49th parallel as the boundary between the United States and Canada from the Great Lakes to Puget Sound. The Treaty twice referred to the great river of the west as the Columbia. 坐出

Great Rapids of the Columbia

William Clark's map of the Cascades in the Columbia River Gorge is an example of his highly accurate maps. This was redrawn for greater clarity.

The Economy. The Pacific Northwest economy developed along four lines of extractive industries- fishing, mining, forestry, and agriculture. All were characterized by seasonal employment, boom and bust, and sensitivity to economic depressions.

More recent history of the Columbia River Basin includes installation of railroads from 1870 to 1914, cattle and sheep raising attempts, and many efforts to overcome Columbia River Gorge rapids by portage trams, roads, railroads, river boats, and the Cascade Locks. Attempts in the 1880's to farm semiarid and arid areas of eastern Washington, eastern Oregon and southern Idaho led to a strong desire for irrigation. Many farming efforts were aborted because of lack of water.

Navigation was the initial motivation for planning Columbia River development. In time the narrow interest in the Columbia River for navigation broadened to include use of its water for irrigation of arid lands. The navigation motive led to the building of Bonneville Dam, and the raising of the 48-mile long reservoir on February 20, 1938 to drown out the Cascades. The irrigation motive brought the construction of Grand Coulee Dam. Meanwhile, even before John Wesley Powell's pioneering Arid Lands Report of 1878, there occurred an event presaging a new technology and the Age of Electricity.

Electricity. It was the birth of the Electric Age. With the dimming of the gas lights the vast crowd stood in near darkness that first night at Philadelphia's 1876 Centennial Exposition. Suddenly from high overhead, like a continuous flash of lightning, came a brilliant white light, turning night into day. The electric arc light was the showpiece of the world's fair.

In the next quarter century succeeding world fairs featured the progress of electricity. Edison patented the light bulb in 1879 and energized the Pearl Street Station in New York City in 1882, selling electricity at 25 cents per kilowatt hour for luxury lighting.

By 1885 the famous French writer Emile Zola caught the vision of electricity and expressed his prophecy that:

"The day will come when electricity will be for everyone as the waters of the rivers and the winds of heaven. It should not merely be supplied, but lavished, that men may use it at their will as the air they breathe."

In Chicago in 1893, the Columbian Exposition's imitation white marble buildings and reflecting lagoons provided a dazzling impression, glittering and shining with the brilliance of thousands of electric lights.