History

Lewis and Clark wrote, “this great chute of falls is about a half-mile with the water of this great river compressed within the space of 150 paces… great numbers of both large and small rocks, water passing with great velocity forming & boiling in a horrible manner, with a fall of about 20 feet.” Later, pioneers traveling the Oregon Trail’s water route were forced to choose between taking the high, dangerous route over Mt. Hood’s steep Barlow Road, an overland toll road, or rafting down the Columbia, risking their life and property on the treacherous river.

Because of the dangerous rapids, pioneers moving west on the Oregon Trail had to stop here. A small settlement grew up on the river banks in the early 1850s to help travelers portage around the rapids, first by foot, then by mule-drawn rail cars, steam engines, and riverboats. Cascade Locks was home to the first steam engine west of the Mississippi, the Oregon Pony, was built in 1862 to carry passengers and freight past the rapids (now on display in the Marine Park next to the Cascade Locks Historical Museum).

This was the dawn of the sternwheeler era. In the early years, daring captains tried to shoot the rapids in their large, flat-bottomed boats, often with disastrous results. By 1875 the U.S. Government approved the plans to build a set of locks to improve the navigation through the Cascade Rapids. Construction began in 1878 and the locks were completed on November 5, 1896 — and, modern-day Cascade Locks was born. The locks were an amazing achievement, with a lift chamber carved in solid rock 460 feet long, and 90 feet wide, with 8 feet of draft, deep enough for any vessel then on the river, and large enough to accommodate several at once. For the next 40 years, riverboat whistles echoed in the Gorge every day. Boats made their way up the river to ports in eastern Oregon and Idaho and down the river to the Pacific Ocean.