Skamania County Company History Timeline
1805

The first Americans to visit the future Skamania County were the explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who mapped the river in 1805 and made note of the Cascades Rapids, which Clark called Athe grand schute. This obstacle to navigation along the Columbia became the main engine of economy in Skamania County. Travelers and shippers had to leave their canoes, rafts, and steamboats, and portage themselves and their goods several miles around the rapids to embark at the other end. On his way upstream in 1811, North West Company explorer David Thompson looked at the road and found it to be 1,450 yards long, with a deep descent near the Indian villages, at the far end, with up and down hills, and side hills most of the way, besides a confusion of rucks, gullies, and thick woods from end to end. "To say that there is not a worse path under the sun would be going a step too far, but to say that for difficulty and danger few could equal it, would be saying but the truth" (Attwell, 26).
1843

Strategically located just above the rapids known as the Upper Cascades, the Stevenson area has been home to Native American settlements for thousands of years. Their villages were focal points for commerce and social gatherings as they came to trade and fish along the river banks. Later the first explorers and missionaries used the Columbia River to penetrate the Cascade Mountains on their way to the Pacific Ocean. In 1843 the Oregon Trail brought the first of a great wave of settlers past our shores. Pioneers portaged around the Cascade Rapids on their way to the Willamette Valley.
1844

Fur traders lugged their goods, furs, and themselves around the Cascades over the trail that Thompson described. The Chilluckittequw charged tolls and rented their labor to the trappers and, beginning in the 1830s, to nearly exhausted Oregon Trail migrants from the United States. In 1844, settlers cut a wagon road along the north side of the rapids. Four years later, Joel Palmer cut the pack trail along the south side for cattle and horses. This gradually became a wagon road, as traffic increased.
1850

Before 1850, the names and dates of arrival of the earliest settlers around the Cascades are obscure. Incoming settlers squatted where they liked without any legal title. Beginning in 1850 with the Donation Land Claim Act, settlers could file a claim to 640 acres if married, 320 acres if single. Residents claimed the land where they lived and these records are the first documentation of Skamania Couny's early settlers.

Before 1850, the names and dates of arrival of the earliest settlers around the Cascades are obscure. Incoming settlers squatted where they liked without any legal title. Beginning in 1850 with the Donation Land Claim Act, settlers could file a claim to 640 acres if married, 320 acres if single. Residents claimed the land where they lived and these records are the first documentation of Skamania Couny's early settlers.
1851

In July 1851, Francis Chenoweth (variously called Hardin or Justin, with surname sometimes as Chenowith) built a railroad consisting of one wagon on wood rails pulled by a single mule. Chenoweth charged 75 cents for every hundred pounds of freight. He added more mules and cars (the first railroad in the future Washington state) and sold it to the Bradford family, which expanded it further and built a hotel. By 1854, Upper Cascades included a store, a hotel, a blacksmith forge, and corrals for stock.

With gold strikes and military operations, traffic up and down the river increased, requiring wharves and warehouses. In 1851, rivermen put lines on the steamboat James P. Flint and hauled her up through roiling waters of the rapids to establish her as the first steamer on the middle river. But pulling boats through the rapids had limitations. In 1854, Putnam Bradford and L. W. Coe built the Mary above the Cacades and gave birth to a shipbuilding industry on the middle and upper river. With additional bottoms operating on the middle river, freight rates dropped, but never enough to satisfy the shippers.
1854

Skamania County was formed in 1854 and the county government functioned in the former quartermaster residence of Fort Cascades. The government offices were subsequently moved to the port hospital within the compound itself. This building then served as the courthouse until 1893. Three wooden benches, one drop-leaf table and a few chairs completed the list of furniture. The reason for the move from the Lower Cascades to Stevenson in 1893 is not clear.

With gold strikes and military operations, traffic up and down the river increased, requiring wharves and warehouses. In 1851, rivermen put lines on the steamboat James P. Flint and hauled her up through roiling waters of the rapids to establish her as the first steamer on the middle river. But pulling boats through the rapids had limitations. In 1854, Putnam Bradford and L. W. Coe built the Mary above the Cacades and gave birth to a shipbuilding industry on the middle and upper river. With additional bottoms operating on the middle river, freight rates dropped, but never enough to satisfy the shippers.
1856

In 1855, Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens (1818-1862) secured treaties with many of the Indian tribes in Washington, who ceded their lands to the United States in exchange for reservations, some payments, and the right to fish. The imbalance in the treaties was quickly realized by the Native Americans some of whom lashed out at the white settlers flooding into the territory. The Yakimas, Klickitats, and perhaps local Indians targeted the settlements at the Cascades, which they knew to be of strategic importance to upriver settlements. In March 1856, Indians attacked Fort Rains, a blockhouse built at the Middle Cascades to protect the portage railway. Ten settlers and three soldiers died; in retaliation, the U.S. Army hanged nine Indians.
1860

Captain John C. Ainsworth, Simeon G. Reed, and Robert R. Thompson founded the Oregon Steam Navigation Company in 1860 and bought up all the steamboats on the Columbia and the portage railway at the Cascades. This became the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Co. (ORN) which consolidated all the steamboat lines and portage railroads on the Columbia and Snake rivers. Steam locomotives replaced the mules. By 1885, the amount of wheat shipped from Eastern Washington through Portland was triple that of the Willamette Valley.
1861

Americans who crossed the Oregon Trail settled around the rapids, some out of design, but many because that was where their wagons, their stock, or their morale gave out. Isaac Bush established a small hospital to care for sick travelers. Native American Sam Anders (or Andres) opened a store. The three settlements along the rapids -- Upper, Middle, and Lower Cascades -- included some 3,000 people making the community the largest in Washington Territory in 1861.
1867

Cape Horn on the Columbia River, Skamania County, 1867
1878

During low water, cargo on the 401 miles of the Columbia and Snake between Portland and Lewiston had to be handled 14 times, 10 times just as far as The Dalles. ORN's monopoly grated on Eastern Washington farmers. With the rise of the Patrons of Husbandry -- the Grange -- in the 1870s came pressure on Congress to fund improvements to navigation. Work on a 3,000-foot canal at the Cascades on the Oregon side began in 1878 and dragged on for 18 years. On November 6, 1896, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened a system of locks at the Cascades and steamboats could navigate from Portland as far as The Dalles. In 1905, 1,417 boats carried 133,070 passengers through the canal.
1891

As transportation down the river improved with the canal and locks, logging and milling became profitable and dominated economic activity in the county. The steep gradients of the watersheds led to the construction of log flumes, trough systems that carried logs downhill. The Broughton Flume near Underwood operated from 1922 until 1986. The U.S. government established the first forest reserves in 1891. These became national forests in 1907, with 80 percent of the northern part of Skamania County becoming the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Loggers harvested trees from private lands and paid the U.S. Forest Service for trees from the National Forest.
1893

Some of these pioneers chose to stay. The Stevenson family, who settled in the Gorge in the 1800s from Missouri, founded the town of Stevenson on the old Shepard donation land claim. Under the auspices of the Stevenson Land Company, George Stevenson purchased the original town site for $24,000 in 1893, building the town along the lower flat near the river. Settlers expanded the original dock to serve the daily arrivals of sternwheelers unloading passengers, cargo and loading logs.
1894

Late one night in 1893, in a dispute over rental fees, a suspect crew transported the county records from the town of Cascades to Stevenson. Stevenson became the county seat overnight. As it turned out, this move saved the county records because in 1894 the greatest recorded flood on the Columbia River destroyed every remaining building at the Fort. The town of Cascades was never rebuilt.

A community grew up on the donation claim of John W. Shepard called Shepard's Point, but not much developed around the legal county seat at Lower Cascades. In April 1890, a group of young men spontaneously undertook to move the county seat one night in April 1890. They loaded saddlebags and wheelbarrows with the county records and by morning, the seat was gone. According to pioneer Henry Metzger there was, "not too much objection" (Skamania Pioneer, Sec. 3, p. 3), but some did object and took legal action. The matter was settled out of court in 1894 when disastrous floods washed away the old court house and most of Lower Cascades.
1896

Locks at the Lower Cascades, 1896
1900

By 1900, many merchants established businesses. Locals could wet their whistles at the Iman or the Charles Thayer saloons. Travelers stayed at the Valley Hotel and Stevenson Hotel, and dined at the Hickey and Key Restaurant. Settlers shopped for staples at Totton’s General Store and Mitchell’s Drug Store that also housed the post office, courthouse, print shop and local jail.