The Historic Columbia River Highway is an approximately 75-mile-long (121 km) scenic highway in the U.S. state of Oregon between Troutdale and The Dalles, built through the Columbia River Gorge between 1913 and 1922. As the first planned scenic roadway in the United States, it has been recognized in numerous ways, including being listed on the National Register of Historic Places, being designated as a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, being designated as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers, and being considered a "destination unto itself" as an All-American Road by the U.S. Secretary of Transportation. The historic roadway was bypassed by the present Columbia River Highway No. 2 (now Interstate 84 [I-84]) from the 1930s to the 1950s, leaving behind the old two-lane road. The road is now mostly owned and maintained by the state through the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) as the Historic Columbia River Highway No. 100 (still partially marked as U.S. Route 30 (US 30); see Oregon highways and routes) or the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department as the Historic Columbia River Highway State Trail.
The original highway was promoted by lawyer and entrepreneur Sam Hill and engineer Samuel C. Lancaster, to be modeled after the great scenic roads of Europe. From the very beginning, the roadway was envisioned not just as means of traveling by the then popular Model T, but designed with an elegance that took full advantage of all the natural beauty along the route.
When the United States Numbered Highway System was officially established in 1926, the highway became the part of US 30. Since then, modern I-84 has been built parallel to the highway between Portland and The Dalles, replacing it as the main travel route and resulting in the loss of some of the original sections of road.
Contents
History
Planning and construction
The Columbia River Gorge is the lowest crossing of the Cascade Mountains, carved by the Columbia River during the Cascades' uplift. Rafting down the gorge from The Dalles was one of the most expensive and dangerous parts of the Oregon Trail, traveled by thousands of emigrants to the Oregon Territory, until the Barlow Road opened in 1846 around the south side of Mount Hood. A wagon road was finally built through the gorge in the 1870s, when The Dalles and Sandy Wagon Road was constructed along the south shore from The Dalles to the Sandy River east of Portland. However, this road had steep (20%) grades and a crooked and narrow alignment, and it was not until 1882 that the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company finally opened a water-level route, partially destroying the wagon road. With the onset of the automobile and the good roads movement of the early 20th century, a road was once again needed, and Multnomah County began constructing a 20-foot (6 m) roadway with 9% grades, but ran into difficulties relating to the railroad's location. At Shellrock Mountain to the east, long believed to be an impassable barrier, Governor Oswald West used prison labor in 1912 to prove that it was possible to build a road, at least temporarily.
The eventual highway was primarily designed by engineer and landscape architect Samuel C. Lancaster, a lifelong friend of good roads promoter Samuel Hill. His first contribution to the Pacific Northwest was as a consultant for Seattle's Olmsted boulevard system, part of its preparations for the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. In 1908, the two traveled to Europe for the First International Road Congress, where Hill represented the state of Washington. Hill was especially impressed by Switzerland's Axenstrasse, a road built along Lake Lucerne in 1865 that included a windowed tunnel, and wanted to build a similar scenic highway through the Columbia River Gorge. With Lancaster's help, Hill built the experimental Maryhill Loops Road from the river east of the gorge up the Columbia Hills to his planned Quaker utopian community at Maryhill. The road was the first asphalt road in the state, designed with gradual horseshoe curves to avoid steep grades. However, Washington's lawmakers denied his request for a cross-state trunk route on the river's north bank, and Hill crossed the river to Oregon, the last of the states in the far Western U.S. to create a highway department. With the help of his life-size model at Maryhill, he convinced the state legislature to create the State Highway Commission in 1913, which would work with the counties to build roads. The Multnomah County commissioners agreed later that year that the state should design the route to distance it from county politics, and set aside an initial $75,000.
Water-level bypass
Even as construction was ongoing on the east end of the Columbia River Highway, the design had become obsolete, as motorists wanting to get to their destination greatly outnumbered tourists taking a pleasure drive. There were also problems with rockfall, especially west of the Mosier Twin Tunnels. By 1932, Lancaster proposed a new water-level route, while keeping the old road as a scenic highway. The first such bypass was necessitated by the federal government's creation of Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. The dam would flood the railroad, and the highway would need to be moved so the railroad could take its place. The highway's new two-lane alignment, completed in 1937, crossed the old road several times between the community of Bonneville (just east of Tanner Creek) and Cascade Locks. The realignment had the effect of closing the old road to all but the most local of traffic, since the construction of the east portal of the new Toothrock Tunnel, just west of a new bridge over Eagle Creek, had destroyed a section of road on the hillside.
By the end of the 1940s, the original cross section of 18 feet (5.5 m) of pavement and two 3-foot (0.91 m) shoulders had been modified to 24 feet (7.3 m) of pavement. The Mosier Twin Tunnels were similarly widened from 8+2⁄3 to 10 feet (2.6 to 3.0 m) in each direction in 1938 to accommodate larger trucks, but this was not enough, and traffic signals were later installed at the tunnels to regulate one-way traffic. A 1948 bypass of the Oneonta Tunnel was made possible by moving the railroad slightly north on fill; the railroad benefited by removing the risk of the thin tunnel wall collapsing onto the track. Oneonta Tunnel was sealed in 1948 but revealed again fifty-five years later as part of the Historic Columbia River Highway restoration project.
More comprehensive bypass planning began by 1941, when the State Highway Commission adopted surveys for the new highway.
Restoration and current use
Starting in June 2006, the Oregon Department of Transportation, using about $1.5 million in state and federal money, began restoring the Oneonta Tunnel to its 1920s appearance. The tunnel officially reopened March 21, 2009 for pedestrian and bicycle traffic.
The Eagle Creek Fire swept through the Gorge in September 2017, causing rockslides that closed the historic highway for a year. The highway remained closed between Bridal Veil and Ainsworth State Park until November 23, 2018 for restoration and reconstruction work.
Route description and historic designations
Although the city of Troutdale has named the old highway "Columbia River Highway" west to 244th Avenue, where it is cut by I-84, signs for the scenic byway begin at exit 17 of I-84, and point south on Graham Road to the west end of downtown Troutdale. Modern milepoint zero of the Historic Columbia River Highway No. 100 is located at the west end of the Sandy River bridge, historic milepost 14.2.
Modern highways, including I-84, and other developments have resulted in the abandonment of major sections of the historic original highway. In the interest of tourism and historical preservation, 74 miles (119 km) of the original road—from Troutdale to The Dalles—have been established as the Historic Columbia River Highway (HCRH). Forty miles (64 km) of the route are open to motor vehicles:
The 24 westernmost miles (39 km) miles starting in Troutdale (at the eastern edge of urban Portland) provide access to dozens of hiking trails, Crown Point Vista House, and numerous waterfalls such as Multnomah Falls. This section forms a loop with the Mount Hood Scenic Byway.
The 16 easternmost miles (26 km) ending in The Dalles.
The remaining portions of the HCRH designated for non-motorized use are now known as the Historic Columbia River Highway State Trail. These are being developed as money becomes available. Roughly seven miles (11 km) between Hood River and Mosier have been open to non-motorized traffic since 2000, passing through the historic Mosier Tunnels.
Once restoration is complete, the highway will serve as a scenic and alternative bicycle route for I-84 and US 30 between The Dalles and Portland. Currently, cyclists wishing to travel between these two towns must ride on the shoulders of I-84 for much of the distance, or the much more dangerous and narrow State Route 14 on the Washington side of the river.
The Columbia River Highway is the nation's oldest scenic highway. In 1984 it was recognized as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers. In 2000 it was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service as "an outstanding example of modern highway development".