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QuickTake:
The best way to see the site of an ancient landslide that dammed the Columbia River is to start at a hot springs resort and take a 3.6-mile trail to a viewpoint.
One of Oregon’s most famous Native legends describes a “Bridge of the Gods” across the Columbia River in the Gorge. The tale was long discounted by scientists as fiction. But the river really was spanned here by a natural walkway.
In fact, hikers have been using the remains of the ancient crossing for years. I’m going to recommend that you see for yourself with a hike from an upscale hot springs resort.
The setting for the legend is a vanished Columbia River rapids called the Cascades. Before the waters of Bonneville Dam covered it in 1937, this whitewater narrows had been an important fishing site for the Multnomah tribe. It had also been a hazardous bottleneck for Oregon Trail immigrants.
John Fremont, a U.S. Army explorer who accompanied the first of the large wagon trains to Oregon, wrote in 1843, “The river forms a great cascade, with a series of rapids, in breaking through the range of mountains.” The cataract, he added, “gives the idea of Cascades to the whole range; and hence the name.”
Fremont hired Multnomah villagers to portage his equipment around the narrows. Other immigrants tried running the rapids with their wagons perched on makeshift rafts. Some drowned, and many lost their supplies.
Travel remained difficult until 1851, when a settler built a primitive wooden railroad around the rapids. An odd little steam locomotive — the Northwest’s first — was put to work on the portage track in 1862.
Early travelers had time at the portage to embellish the Multnomah legends they heard: “The Indians have a tradition,” one tourist commented in 1872, “that formerly there was a long, natural tunnel, through which the Columbia passed under a mountain. They assert that a great earthquake broke down this tunnel, the site of which they still point out, and that the debris formed the present obstructions at the Cascades.”
A librarian named Katharine Berry Judson set out to piece together an “authentic” version of the Bridge of the Gods tale in 1910. The central character, she decided, was Tyee Sahalie, the spirit chief of the Multnomahs’ creation legends. The plot line that emerged from her research was colored in part by her era’s romantic conception of the Indian world, but it has formed the basis for retellings ever since — including the version here:
In the time before tribes lived along the Columbia River, Tyee Sahalie came downstream to choose places for his two sons to settle. He decided to shoot one arrow far to the west and another far to the east. He told his sons to found their tribes where the arrows landed. So one son went west and started the Multnomah tribe, while the other went east, founding the Klickitats. To keep the two tribes from arguing, Tyee Sahalie built the Cascade Range in between. But he also wanted a place where they could meet in peace. So he built a sacred walkway across the river in the middle.
The tribes would have been content, but they were constantly cold. The only fire in the world was hoarded by an old spirit-woman named Loowit. The people of the tribes complained about the problem to Tyee Sahalie. He went to discuss the matter with Loowit on the bridge.
“I know what you want,” the spirit-woman said right away, “and I’m not giving you any fire.”
“Not even if I offer a trade?” Tyee Sahalie asked.
“A trade? What have you got?”
“If you give the people fire, I’ll give you eternal youth.”
“You can do that?”
Tyee Sahalie nodded.
Loowit eyed him cautiously. “And beauty, too. I’d have to be the most beautiful girl anywhere.”
It was more than Tyee Sahalie had wanted to offer, but they struck the deal. Soon, the people of the tribes had fires to cook their food and to warm themselves in winter. Meanwhile, Loowit became a beautiful young girl.
The people’s troubles, however, were just beginning. Loowit had enjoyed taunting them with her fire. Now she found she could tease them even more with her beauty. Smitten worst of all were the two tribal chiefs, Wy’east of the Multnomahs and Klickitat from the eastern tribe.
The two lovestruck chiefs waged such a bloody war that Tyee Sahalie shook the ground, destroying the sacred walkway across the river. Then he turned all the principal characters into mountains. Chief Wy’east became Mount Hood. Chief Klickitat became Mount Adams. And Loowit became the beautiful Mount St. Helens.
Of course, the legend could not predict the fate of the heartless Loowit. Her contract for youthful beauty obviously expired with the destruction of Mount St. Helens’ elegant cone in 1980.
Since then, geologists have discovered that the Columbia River was not bridged, but rather dammed. About 560 years ago, a massive landslide sheared away half of Table Mountain. The landslide covered 14 square miles with debris and left a natural dam 270 feet tall, making it possible to walk across the Columbia for several months.
When the dam washed out, it left a new riverbend where the Columbia squeezes hard against the Oregon shore. Bonneville Dam took advantage of that natural narrows. So did the modern Bridge of the Gods, a steel span built at Cascade Locks in 1926.
Today, the Pacific Crest Trail crosses this modern version of the Bridge of the Gods. But the PCT isn’t the prettiest way to see the site of this legend. It’s more fun to start at a hot springs and take a 3.6-mile trail to a viewpoint.
To start, drive east from Portland on Interstate 84. After 44 miles, take Exit 44 to Cascade Locks, pay $3 to cross the Bridge of the Gods, and turn left on Highway 14 for 3.2 miles. Then turn right at a sign for Hot Spring Way, duck to the north under the railroad tracks, turn right on paved East Cascade Drive for 0.8 mile, and turn right through the resort’s stone entrance gate at a “Bonneville” sign.
First drive to the right around the big white resort building to find the hotel entrance. Consider spending the night. Rooms here are not impossibly expensive and include access to a variety of hot swimming pools (which otherwise cost $20). If you’re here just for a day hike, stop at the reception desk to pay $10 for a parking pass. Then drive back around the hotel to a gravel lot on the far side.
The trail begins as an old gravel road up a slope of blackberry bushes. After 400 feet, go straight on a single-plank bridge. The trail soon enters big Douglas fir woods with the native plants of the Columbia Gorge — vine maple, wild hazel, sword fern and Oregon grape.
After 1.1 miles you’ll reach a T-shaped junction beside Carpenters Meadow. Turn right along an old road for 200 feet. Then keep left at junctions, climbing on an old road 0.7 mile to Aldrich Butte, with sweeping views of the ancient landslide.
Here, it’s not all that hard to imagine the sacred walkway that Tyee Sahalie built across the river, hoping in vain to bring peace to the Oregon country.
Parts of this column originally appeared in William Sullivan’s book, “Hiking Oregon’s History,” published in 2014.
