Beacon Rock

The rock stands across the river in Washington; this board is on the Oregon bank at the Bonneville Fish Hatchery. Lewis and Clark named it in 1805. Early in the twentieth century the Army Corps of Engineers began tunneling into it, meaning to break it up for jetty stone at the Columbia's mouth. Henry Biddle bought it in 1915 for a dollar and built the trail to the top. After his death his children offered it to Washington, which turned the gift down. Oregon's parks engineer, Sam Boardman, offered to accept it instead, and Washington took it in 1935.

What the plaque says

Oregon History Beacon Rock Beacon Rock is a monolith, the core of a young volcano that erupted around 57,000 years ago. It is claimed to be the second largest freestanding monolith in the world. Lewis and Clark named it Beacon Rock in 1805. Native peoples and Lewis and Clark recognized that Beacon Rock marked the last of the rapids on the Columbia River and the beginning of tidal influence from the Pacific Ocean, 150 miles away. Henry J. Biddle, a prominent botanist, geologist, and engineer, purchased Beacon Rock in 1915 for $1 and built a trail to the top in 1916-1918, an engineering marvel at the time with handrails, bridges, and 51 switchbacks. Washington State established Beacon Rock as a park in 1935.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bonneville Dam — 0.9 mi
  The first federal dam on the Columbia, where someone has counted the fish climbing its ladders every year since 1938, beside an island the Corps used as a dump for forty years.
• Multnomah Falls — 8.6 mi
  A 620-foot double waterfall whose 1925 stone lodge survived because firefighters kept it soaked while the forest burned around it in September 2017.
• Vista House at Crown Point — 15 mi
  A rest stop on a basalt point 733 feet above the Columbia, budgeted at $12,000, finished for about $100,000, and mocked for years as Oregon's most expensive outhouse.
• Timberline Lodge — 24 mi
  A lodge raised by hand by relief workers in 1936-38, from boulders off the mountain and iron forged from old railroad rails, and dark for an unpaid power bill less than twenty years later.

More markers nearby

• River Highway — 17 mi
• Sandy River Bridge — 21 mi
• Troutdale — 22 mi
• Oregon Nisei Veterans WWII Memorial Highway — 22 mi