Because of its location, the Columbia River played a vital role in the United States’s expansion into the Pacific Northwest. Rising in southeast British Columbia, this river of southwestern Canada and the northwestern United States flows approximately 1,200 miles before emptying into the Pacific Ocean west of Portland, Oregon. After 465 miles, it enters the state of Washington, and thereafter forms the boundary between Washington and Oregon.
The Columbia pours the largest volume of water into the Pacific Ocean of any river in North America, and long before the Europeans arrived, the Native Americans fished it for salmon. The earliest archaeological evidence of human habitation in the Columbia River basin dates to 10,000 years ago. The earliest groups lived by fishing, hunting large mammals, and gathering plants for food. Cultures in the protohistoric and historic periods varied greatly along the river. On the lower Columbia, groups lived in large multifamily longhouses, while on the middle - and upper-river sections, people moved seasonally and lived in smaller groups. Native fishers took salmon at Willamette Falls on the Willamette River and at Kettle Falls on the upper Columbia. Celilo Falls on the middle river was the most important Native fishery. Thousands gathered there during the spring and summer fish runs to harvest chinook salmon and trade. In the early 19th century, Pacific Fur Company trader Alexander Ross called Celilo “the great emporium or mart of the Columbia.”
The Columbia River first appeared on European maps in the early 17th century as “River of the West,” when the Spanish maritime explorer Martin de Aguilar located a major river near the 42nd parallel. Cartographers often labeled the “River of the West” as an estuary to the mythical Straits of Anian, or the Northwest Passage, and located it anywhere from the 42nd to the 50th parallel. In 1765, British major Robert Rogers called the river “Ouragon”—later spelled “Oregon” by Jonathan Carver in 1778—as a derivative name referring to the “ouisconsink” river in present-day Wisconsin. The first confirmation of its location came in 1775, when Bruno de Hezeta described a river estuary at the Columbia’s correct latitude. In May 1792, American trader Captain Robert Gray sailed across the bar in the first documented visit to the river and named it after his ship, the Columbia. In October that same year, British explorer George Vancouver sent Lt. William Broughton up the river more than 100 miles, and Broughton produced the first detailed map of the lower river. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark explored the river in 1805-06 for the United States. North West Company fur trader David Thompson made the first map of the full river in 1811-12. After the War of 1812, England and the United States jointly occupied the Columbia River Basin territory.
In 1811 John Jacob Astor established the first fur trading post, known as Fort Astoria, on the mouth of the Columbia River. Britain’s Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) established a fur-trading hegemony in the region and built a headquarters post at Fort Vancouver in 1825. HBC trappers and traders spread throughout the Columbia River basin and beyond, bringing furs back to Fort Vancouver for shipment to England. Americans returned to the region as settlers during the 1840s, when overland migrants came to the Columbia and Willamette River valleys on the Oregon Trail. In 1846, the Oregon Country south of the 49th parallel became U. S. territory by treaty with Great Britain. Oregon achieved statehood in 1859, Washington and Montana in 1889, and Idaho in 1890.
Further reading: William Dietrich, Northwest Passage: The Great Columbia River (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).
World History
