For generations the Chinook knew this field on the north shore of the Columbia's mouth as the site of a village, one of a string of Lower Chinook towns between Cape Disappointment and Grays Bay. In 2004 the state began digging here ahead of building a park and moving the highway, and what came up changed the picture of the place. Archaeologists found five houses, lived in seasonally from about 1790 to 1820, and in them a density of trade goods: glass beads, copper bracelets, pendants and rolled sheet, Chinese coins, English creamware and Chinese export porcelain. The ordinary tools of a Chinook village were sparse. They read it as a high-status trading town at the height of the maritime fur trade, when, in the decade before Lewis and Clark came overland, close to ninety European and New England ships crossed the Columbia bar to trade. The Chinook, who controlled that trade, drove hard bargains.
When the expedition arrived in November 1805 the houses were empty; the people had moved to their winter village. Clark used the shore as his survey station for mapping the river mouth, and the party camped here for ten days. Later the cannery town of McGowan grew on the same ground, and its St. Mary's Church still stands.
Chinook tribal members watched over the excavation even though the federal government does not recognize the nation. The park, part of Lewis and Clark National Historical Park, was dedicated in August 2012, and it tells all three stories in that order: the Chinook town first, then the expedition, then McGowan.
The closest stops worth working into your route
Roadside plaques and monuments within a short detour