Beacon Rock

Remarkable Rock

On 31 October 1805, a “cloudy rainey disagreeable morning,” Clark took Joe Field and Pierre Cruzatte, the Corps’ principal waterman, and walked several miles down the north bank of the Columbia “to view with more attention the rapids we had to pass. “Below the “Great Shute” he could see “a long distance down the river, which from the last rapids widened and had every appearance of being effected by the tide.” Moreover, he noted “a remarkable high detached rock Stands in a bottom on the Stard [starboard, the navigator’s right] Side & about 800 feet high and 400 paces around.” He called it “the Beaten rock,” underlining it for emphasis.

Tidal Waters

Two days later, camped about five miles downstream from this rock, Clark observed, “the ebb tide rose here about 9 Inches, the flood tide must rise here much higher.” He misspoke, of course; by definition, an ebb tide doesn’t rise, it falls. Meriwether Lewis added on 6 April 1806, that “it is only in the fall of the year when the river is low that the tides are persceptable as high as the beacon rock.” That is still true today, although the tide there, nearly 140 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, is considered too small to be worth measuring. Even at Portland, a hundred miles from the sea, it does not rise or fall enough to be factored into docking procedures.^[6]Information of David Pearson, Columbia River Maritime Museum, Astoria, Oregon. 5 June 2003. Back east, before leaving Washington City, Lewis had made a tracing of the map by the British explorer George Vancouver, whose lieutenant, William Broughton, had explored the Columbia River in 1792 to within sight of Vancouver Point, about opposite Rooster Rock at Crown Point, where the Corps of Discovery camped on 1 November 1805. It was perhaps that map, as sketchy as it was, plus the knowledge that they had just gone through the last rapid, which produced the expectation they would see tidal fluctuations.

Height

As to its height, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, its summit is 845 feet above sea level, its base 40 to 45 feet above sea level, so Clark’s estimate was closer to the mark than Lewis’s, which was only 700 feet. Lewis noted, on their way back up the river in 1806, that it had “some pine or reather fir timber on it’s nothern side, the southern is a precipice of it’s whole hight.” His estimate that the rock could be seen “for 20 miles below on the river” was long by at least 5 miles. The Columbia flows more or less directly west-by-south for 13-14 miles, but then turns due west before reaching Corbett, Oregon opposite Reed Island, where it is obscured by trees on the north side of the river.

Naming the Rock

The name “Beacon Rock” was partly celebratory and symbolic. From the time of Homer, who told of the beacon fires that were kindled on seaside hilltops to guide Odysseus home, beacons had been waypoints to landfall, warning mariners away from hazardous rocks and shoals. To Lewis and Clark this place signified the approaching end of the Expedition’s cross-continental odyssey, and upon their return would mark the beginning of the long stretch of rocky river that had seriously challenged their passage to their long-sought port of call. “Beacon Rock” might also fall into the category termed “shift names,” which commemorate places back home, and of which Donald Jackson claimed there were none in the Lewis and Clark journals.^[7]“Lewis and Clark Place-Names in Montana,” in Donald Jackson, Among the Sleeping Giants: Occasional Pieces on Lewis and Clark (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 82-83.

However, Lewis would have known that one of the ongoing issues Congress had to deal with during the early years of the federation was the maintainance of the new country’s coastline, and it may be that he thought of the towering promontory as the kind of place that would be ideal for a lighthouse—if only it weren’t so far from the ocean. At the end of the eighteenth century, technology and construction materials limited the heights of lighthouses. The Cape Henry Light at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay, and the Cape Fear Light in North Carolina, built in 1782 and 1795, respectively, were just under 100 feet tall. Similarly, the Cape Hatteras light, completed in 1803, stood only 95 feet high.^[8]Francis Ross Holland, Jr., America’s Lighthouses: Their Illustrated History Since 1716 (New York: Dover, 1988), p. 43. James Dearborn, Jefferson’s Secretary of War, held the contract for … Continue reading Thus they had to be built on the highest rock, or “stump,” in proximity to the marine hazard, though that was not always high enough to make much difference. Even the third successive, improved and celebrated Eddystone Light of 1759, standing only seventy-two feet high to mark the ship-eating cluster of rocks forty miles off Plymouth, England, rested on a stump that reached only thirty feet above low tide.^[9]The Eddystone Lighthouse,” at http://www.qsl.net/eddystone/lighthouse.html/ (accessed 07/03). Those beacons could be seen about 13.5 statute miles (12 nautical miles) at sea, but a light built atop an 800-foot rock could be seen about 38 statute miles (33 nautical miles) away.

“Beaten” Rock

There are no journal entries by Meriwether Lewis for these days that might help explain Clark’s use of the word “Beaten.”^[10]In fact, there are no entries by Lewis between 22 September 1805, in which he expressed his pleasure in having “tryumphed over the rocky Mountains,” and 1 December 1805, when he made some … Continue reading The photograph above, however, suggests that Lewis may have seen it first from upriver, pointed it out to Clark, and given it the name. Clark’s word, then, may have represented not a spelling error, but a misunderstanding of what Lewis said, for the following spring Lewis himself wrote of the rock, calling it “the beacon rock.” Seven years later, while editing the captains’ journals for publication, Nicholas Biddle seemed puzzled by the inconsistency, and it may be that Clark corroborated Lewis’s correction, for Biddle inserted the word Beacon in Clark’s manuscript, and used it in his paraphrase.^[11]Nicholas Biddle, ed., History of the Expedition Under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark . . . (2 vols., Philadelphia: Bradford and Inskeep, 1814).

Patrick Gass, whose journal appeared in 1807, didn’t mention the place, and Clark’s map, published with the first edition of the captains’ journals in 1814, didn’t show it. Those omissions, plus the rush of commercial fur trading, doomed the explorers’ name for the landmark to a short life. Alexander Ross, a member of the Astor fur-trading expedition, who camped near its base on 27 July 1811, evidently was reminded of a familiar landmark back in Scotland, for he dubbed it Inshoach Castle.^[12]Alexander Ross, Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River . . . (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1849), p. 107.

In mid-October of 1835 the Presbyterian missionary Samuel Parker passed through the neighborhood, and evidently heard it called Pillar Rock, since he didn’t take credit for originating the name. Incidentally, Parker recognized it as a basaltic formation, and one of the astonishing wonders of volcanic operations, reflecting advances that the science of geology had made by that date.^[13]Samuel Parker, Journal of an Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains . . . in the Years 1835, ’36, and ’37 (2nd ed., Ithaca, NY: Published by the Author, 1840), p. 143.

Castle Rock

Six years after Parker, the Wilkes Expedition to the Northwest led by Charles Wilkes, passed through this area late in June of 1841. In the map of the lower Columbia River that accompanied his published report, the landmark was labeled “Castle Rock.” It may be that he had heard about the rock from oral reports of Alexander Ross’s name for it, or he may have considered it his own, for Wilkes wrote, “The country bordering on the river is low until the Cascades [Cascades of the Columbia] are approached, with the exception of several high basaltic bluffs. Some of them are . . . pointed like turreted castles.”^[14]Charles Wilkes (1798-1877), Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition during the years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842 (5 vols. and atlas, Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1845), 4:379.

When Olin D. Wheeler passed by it a few years before the centennial anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, it was still known as Castle Rock.

The rock and the property surrounding it were privately owned from the 1850s, for a time by Jay Cooke, the Philadelphia financier. The first climbers ascended the rock in 1901, leaving anchors and ropes that encouraged more climbers. In 1915 Henry J. Biddle, a descendant of Nicholas Biddle, the first editor of the Lewis and Clark journals, purchased the rock, and to preserve it from further defacement, built a 4,500-foot-long, four-foot wide trail to the top. He also persuaded the Board of Geographic Names to restore Lewis and Clark’s name.^[15]Henry J. Biddle, “Beacon Rock on the Columbia: Legends and Traditions of a Famous Landmark,” Reprint, Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, Inc., WPO Publication No. 3, July 1978, p. … Continue reading

In 1916 the U.S. Board on Geographic Names officially restored Lewis and Clark’s name, Beacon Rock. In 1935 the heirs to the Biddle estate deeded to the State of Washington 260 acres of land on which the landmark stands as the centerpiece to a state park.