Lewis and Clark's 1805 encounter with Beacon Rock, where they first measured the ocean's tide in the Columbia and knew the Pacific was near.
This rock has a place in the story of the whole country, because it was a landmark for the Corps of Discovery — Lewis and Clark — on the last leg of their journey to the sea. On the last day of October, eighteen-oh-five, paddling down the Columbia and scouting the roar of the Cascade Rapids just upstream, William Clark noted this great rock in his journal. He called it 'Beaten Rock' — partly, historians think, for its weathered look, and partly because Clark's spelling was famously his own invention. Later it settled into 'Beacon Rock.'
But here's the detail that gives me chills. It was right about here that the expedition first noticed something in the river they'd been dreaming of for a year and a half: the tide. The water level rose and fell with the far-off ocean. For men who had walked and paddled all the way across a continent, that gentle rise of tidewater was the first solid proof that the Pacific — the whole point of the journey — was finally, truly near. They weren't there yet. But at this rock, the sea reached up the river to touch them.
And there's a nice thread of history here: the man who first edited and published Lewis and Clark's journals was named Nicholas Biddle. Keep that name in mind — because it was his relative, Henry Biddle, who would come to this very rock a hundred years later and change its fate entirely. Boone's got that story.
Photo: Carleton Watkins · Public domain
