Lewis and Clark buffs argue over the exact location of the “end of the trail.” Some say it is on the Washington side of the Columbia where the expedition first spotted the Pacific, since arriving at the Pacific was their goal. Others insist on Fort Astoria, where they spent the winter of 1805-06. Still others claim the Oregon coastal towns of Seaside, where the expedition set up a camp to make salt, or Cannon Beach, where they traveled to see a beached whale, for the honor. All of these sites and others will be featured at next year’s bicentennial signature event “Destination: The Pacific.”
Seaside, Oregon: the end of the trail?
Now is a good time to avoid the rush and visit these sites. Seaside’s main street ends right at the beach with a turn-around for vehicles that circles a bronze statue of Lewis and Clark and trusty Seaman. The statue was commissioned in 1990. Interestingly, on my travels back east, I found an old postcard in an antiques/old books store showing the Seaside turnaround circa 1920. It was at that time promoted as the end of the Lewis and Clark Trail, but had no statue.
The 1990 statue at the Seaside turn-around. The beach is directly behind me and stretches for miles in each direction.
The statue in context, showing the big beachfront hotels on each side.
Also in Seaside is the site of the “saltworks,” the camp where a subset of the expedition members spent the winter boiling seawater to extract salt. The site is located right in a neighborhood and was donated to the state in 1910 by Charlotte Cartwright. At first, I was surprised to see its location, because in many paintings and illustrations, it is depicted way out on the open beach closer to the water. But then I thought about where I would place such a camp in the middle of the rainy and blustery winter and realized it would make sense to move in closer to the shelter of the trees. I don’t think we can know for sure exactly where open beach and treeline were 200 years ago.
Apparently, a local woman named Jenny Michel was able to provide in 1900 a relatively precise location of the salt works. Eighty-four years old at the time, she was a daughter of a Clatsop man who had seen the men making salt and had shown her the site when she was a child.
The saltworks site in a Seaside neighborhood. There are several interpretive signs from different eras and a wrought iron fence around the replica of the rock oven.
Close-up of oven. The buckets on top contained seawater, which would boil away and leave salt behind. In this way, the men produced several bushels of salt for the return trip.
A few miles south of Seaside is Cannon Beach, now an upscale resort town. (Some promotional materials call it “Oregon's Carmel.”) A dead whale washed up onto the shore near the mouth of Ecola Creek, and members of the expedition hiked over from Fort Clatsop (a distance of about six miles) to see it and to obtain oil and blubber from the Indians who reached it first. Sacagawea was among the hikers, a story beloved by her admirers, for she had insisted to Clark that she be allowed to go and see “the big fish” with the others since she had come all that way.
Today there is a small city park along Ecola Creek with interpretive signs, and a couple of historic markers up on Highway 101 where it passes the town. There is also Ecola State Park up on the windy but spectacular ridges of Tillamook Head, which juts out into the Pacific just north of the creek and the town. On the day I was there, it was so cloudy and dark that my photographs do not do justice to the Ecola Creek area, so go to the website for the state park for some nice photos.
By the way, the area has established a shuttle bus route to take visitors to all the various L&C sites in the region. I think that is such a good idea, and wish there had been something like that at the signature event in Bismarck. Many more people would probably have gone to some of the outlying interpretive centers, which were somewhat empty when I was there.
[All photos by K. Dahl, copyright 2005.]
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