Due to Oregon’s inimitable volcanic past, there are a number of incredible geological sights in the state. This includes an impressive formation called Saddle Mountain, appropriately named due to its shape by Lieutinent Charles Wilkes, who led an expedition to the Oregon Coast in 1841. Saddle Mountain, part of the Oregon Coastal Range, is the largest peak in Clatsop County. It rests seven miles off US Route 26, about 65 miles west of Portland. A hike to the peak, which rises to 3,283 feet, begins at the Saddle Mountain State Natural Area. The access road, built by Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps in the 30’s along with the trail itself, takes you up 1,680 feet, leaving a 1,603 foot rise in elevation over two and a half miles for your hike. At the base of the trail one finds a parking lot, camp sites, picnicking areas, and bathrooms. The trail leads through a beautiful forest of spruce and hemlock, past rocky outcroppings, and beautiful wild flowers in the spring to an incredible 360 degree panoramic view from the peak.
When you first arrives at the park, you can see very little of the mountain you are about to climb because of the trees surrounding the circumference of the parking lot, but through this keyhole, one glimpses a bit of the towering peaks to be conquered along the trail. And if you look very closely, people, barely discernible, can be seen meandering along the trail, which gives you perspective on the journey you are about to embark upon. This steep rise in elevation along with some of the challenging terrain is the reason why the trail isn’t recommended for smaller children and inexperienced hikers without proper gear.
As one begins up the trail, one is immediately struck by the lush growth of the forest. Large trees and fat rocks are covered with moss and vines. Early on the trail forks off to the right. The path leads to the diminutive, leisurely, .16 mile side trail that ends up at the Humbug Mountain viewpoint. As one moves along, the trail opens up in spots to give impressive glimpses of the surrounding terrain, rolling hills and deep green trees interspersed with patches of bald ground left over from logging operations. Gradually the trail begins its steep ascents. The first great rise in elevation is followed by a very inviting picnic table, offering a well-deserved rest. These are interspersed along the trail, giving opportunities for mid-hike picnics with incredible views. As one begins to reach the upper portion of the mountain, the trail opens up into large rock outcroppings and walkable, rocky expanses, proof of the mountain’s volcanic history. During the Mid- Miocene period, twelve to six million years ago, lava spilled down the channel created by the Columbia River from Eastern Oregon and reached the coast, ranking these flows among the longest on Earth. These ancient lava flows spilled into the ocean where one now finds Clatsop County. Saddle Mountain, Humbug Mountain, and Onion Peak are said to be made of these sub marine lava flows. When hot lava meets cold, salty ocean water it results in interesting formations called pillow lava and breccia. These formations once filled Clatsop County and were 2,000 feet thick in some places. These mountains are what is left of this outpouring. This history accounts for the number of interesting formations you come into contact with along the peaks of Saddle Mountain. One section in particular has tall, thin rows of rock that resemble spines along the back of a dragon jutting out of the ground. They flow down the side of the mountain like waves, a truly incredible sight.
I imagine the first person to appreciate these ancient volcanic attributes fully was James Dwight Dana, the first person of European descent to make the summit. Dana was a zoologist, geologist, and mineralogist, part of that early group of Americans who pursued science with a religious fervor and helped establish America’s scientific identity. At the age of 28, Dana made a ground trip from Vancouver to San Francisco as a member of the United States Exploring Expedition, a publicly funded, government mandated circumnavigation of the globe. It was an idea first suggested by John Quincy Adams but actually executed by Andrew Jackson in order to visit and survey the Pacific Ocean and surrounding lands with commercial, exploratory, and scientific intentions. Members of the crew explored and surveyed the frontiers of the Western United States before heading southwest to the Pacific islands. Dana was a member of the expedition’s Scientific Corps, a group of twelve civilian scientists taken along to help fulfill the exploratory hopes of this venture. Standing atop Saddle Mountain was likely an incredible experience for the young mineralogist. Turning to the west, Dana could see a large stretch of the Pacific Ocean as well as the mouth of the Columbia River. Astoria pokes out into the midst of this and the meandering Young’s River empties into the Columbia on its southern side. This likely represented to him the promise of the westward expansion of America that was occurring under the auspices of manifest destiny. Dana would later help develop this expansion further besides his work with the expedition when he gave his professional opinion on the likelihood of gold in the hills of California and Oregon during the gold rush. As he scanned along the horizon towards the east, he would behold the fertile Willamette Valley and several of the large volcanic cones of the Cascade Mountains, which are visible from the top of Saddle Mountains on clear days, which he likely experienced because in his notes on the expedition he states that they traveled through the area during October and experienced almost non-stop clear skies. I am inclined to believe this was a very important experience in Dana’s life. Even though before this trip he had studied volcanics in Madeira, Cape Verde, Tahiti, Wales, and had even made an ascent of Vesuvius, he wrote that the peaks of the Cascade cones were, “The most impressive views of mountain grandeur that he had ever seen” even though he had only experienced “instructive though distant views” of them because the expedition mainly hugged the coast and didn’t go much farther west than modern-day Portland.
Mountains have always impressed themselves deeply on human imaginations. The Chinook and Clatsop Indians once peopled the lands that surround Saddle Mountain, and the mountain figured heavily into their mythology. In her preface to her anthology of the myths and legends of the Pacific Northwest, Katharine B. Judson points out how, like the Greeks, for the peoples indigenous to the Pacific Northwest, “Mountains were the homes of supernatural beings.” Saddle Mountain, in particular, is believed by some to be described in the creation myth of the Chinooks as the home of Thunderbird, the dreaded god of the skies whose mighty wings made thunder and flashing eyes created lightening. According to the legend, Thunderbird rose from the back of a whale whose back, against the wishes of the gods, was cut down the middle instead of from top to bottom. Afterwards, it perched on Saddle Mountain and laid a nest full of eggs. A giantess opened one of the eggs and tossed it down the mountain because it was bad, and that became the first Indian. The giantess continued on with this and the Indians that were created from those eggs were the first of the Chinooks. Judson tells us in her text, “There is no beneficent deity among these Indians of the Northwest.” They were helpless against the might of their indifferent gods, and they took from the example of the animals in the forest who were at the mercy of their predators the importance of cunning as their only defense against the gods’ wrath. It is not surprising that they associated Thunderbird’s wrath with the pestilence brought over by European ships. Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown inform us in their history of the Chinook peoples, “It was, they said, from the first ship riding at anchor in the river that they saw a flash of lightening, the angry flash of the eyes of the great spirit bird, and heard thunder, the loud flapping of his wings, among the clouds as smoke carried seeds of pestilence and death to strike people from the face of the earth.
By 1841 when James Dwight Dana came to explore the area, the Chinooks were in decline. They had lost their prestige as traders at the mouth of the mighty Columbia a few decades earlier because the main trading outpost moved farther down the hinterland of the Columbia River from Fort George in Astoria to Fort Vancouver. This, mixed with their thinning numbers due to the introduction of disease and liquor by the Europeans, was quite devastating.
Almost exactly a decade later in August of 1851, the remaining members of the Chinook tribe signed a treaty for their lands from the United States Government. In 1906, James Dwight Dana had a bust of himself unveiled at the American Museum of Natural History. He was honored along with other great American men of science like Benjamin Franklin and James Audubon. According to the speaker, “His creative brain never rested content with the description of facts. He had the more distinctively modern impulse to reconstruct the process by which these facts were brought to pass.” The geological history of Saddle Mountain is independent of stories of great Americans and Native American tribes. The Earth extruded its innards onto its surface in great showers of molten rock and ash and had no idea of the stories that would be told about the rocky remnants. I definitely recommend standing upon this nexus of history and gaining its 360 degree perspective.
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