Captain Robert Gray

The board follows Gray from Tillamook Bay to the Columbia and skips what he did on the way. Wintering in Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island in 1791-92, he came to believe the Tla-o-qui-aht meant to attack his ship. Before sailing in March 1792 he sent his fifth mate, John Boit, with three armed boats to destroy their village of Opitsat, deserted at the time: more than two hundred houses across half a mile, doorways carved as human and animal heads. Boit called it the work of ages, destroyed in a short time. Two months later Gray entered the Columbia.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tillamook Creamery — 6.6 mi
  A farmer-owned cheese plant that exists because Tillamook Bay had no good way out, and whose logo is the schooner the settlers built to make one.
• Haystack Rock — 23 mi
  A 235-foot sea stack made of lava that ran down the Columbia from the far side of the state, now a nesting rock for tufted puffins.

More markers nearby

• Cannons on the Beach — 18 mi
• Ecola — 24 mi