Glacial Erratics

Where the rock started is still argued. Some accounts bring it from Canada; the National Park Service traces its banded argillite to the Belt Supergroup in northern Idaho, the bedrock under the ice dam that held back Lake Missoula, some four hundred miles away. Erratics like it lie no higher than about four hundred feet across the valley, which is how geologists measured how deep the floods ran. The state bought the hilltop from the Duerst and Ramsby families in 1956 as a wayside, and in 1996 put it on a list of parks to close.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Champoeg — 21 mi
  The river-bend meadow where settlers voted for a government in 1843, and where the Willamette took the entire town but one warehouse eighteen years later.

More markers nearby

• Abigail Scott Duniway — 12 mi
• Joel Perkins — 12 mi
• Dayton Blockhouse — 12 mi
• Willamette Post — 19 mi