April 4, 2021 - North Head Light

 

Cape Disappointment, on the southernmost point of the Washington coast, near the mouth of the Columbia River, is home to two light houses - North Head Lighthouse and Cape Disappointment Lighthouse.  The meeting of the Columbia River with the Pacific Ocean creates conditions that can prove challenging for vessels crossing the Columbia Bar.  

The Columbia Bar is the point at which the 4-7 knot Columbia River, the fourth largest US as measured by volume of water, runs headlong into the westerly currents and winds of the Pacific resulting in 40 foot wave and unpredictable currents.  The conditions have resulted in 2000 wrecked ships over the decades.  

The number of shipwrecks that have occurred along the rugged coast of the Pacific Northwest has rightly earned the title 'The Graveyard of the Pacific'.  It runs from the coast of Vancouver Island in the north to halfway down the Oregon Coast.  The weather conditions - Cape Disappointment averages 107 inches of rain and 100 days of fog annually- the currents and changing sand bars at the mouth of the Columbia make it an especially treacherous area.  

The Columbia River is navigable to large ships even further upstream than Portland.  As the economy of this region increased so did the number of ships of crossings of the Bar.  Currently the shipping channel at the bar is about a half mile wide and is kept at 55 feet deep with regular dredging required.  (Debris from the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 reduced the depth of the channel to 14 feet in depth and temporarily halted maritime traffic in the river.)  

The first documented crossing of the Columbia River bar by Europeans occurred in 1792.  The end of the era of sails, the creation of a navigation channel, constructions of jetties and technology have significantly reduced the frequency at which vessels join previous victims.  Navigation aids such as the North Head Light and other area lighthouses were key early attempts to make the area more safe.  Currently more advanced navigational aids and other technology have made the area safer.  

The North Head Light has been in continuous operation since 1898 and was automated in 1961.  The nearby Cape Disappointment light was built in 1856, but wasn't as effective for ships coming from the north, so this second light was added.  The North Head Light was designed by Carl Leick, the architect of 25 structures in the northwest, including several regional lighthouses.

The tower is 85 feet high and is perched on the edge of a rocky cliff 130 feet. The current light can be visible 30 miles out to sea.  

 

April 3, 2021 - Rialto Beach

 

Rialto Beach on Washington's northern coast is easily accessed.  (It just takes a ferry ride and a three hour  drive across the Olympic Peninsula!)  

The pounding surf, has tossed huge trees onto the beach, smoothed rocks and stone formations and created sea stacks and a sea arch ("Hole in the Wall").  

March 22, 2021 - Trailer Boneyard

 

Intermodal container trailers stacked four high fill a lot in an industrial area of Seattle. 

March 21, 2021 - Super(fund) View

The urban Duwamish Waterway, south of downtown Seattle, is considered to be the most polluted river in the US.  The Duwamish River used to be a wide, meandering river with large areas of mudflats and marshes.  By the 1940s it had been channeled into the 7 mile industrial waterway we see today.  Today it is a Superfund site.

Looking north, one gets a sense of the working nature of this West Coast port.  From the pilings and moored barges, to the dockside gantry cranes located on the man made Harbor Island beyond the closed West Seattle Freeway is the downtown Seattle skyline.  

The dredging of the Duwamish River began in 1913.  The waterway was straightened and dredged as deep as 50' to allow ocean going vessels up the channel.  The 20 million cubic feet of mud and sand from the Duwamish helped form Harbor Island.  (Harbor Island was initially formed from some of the 58 regrades of the areas around downtown Seattle in which the tops of hills were removed.  It was the largest man made island in the world from 1909 to 1938.  In 1967 it regained that title following an expansion.)  By the 1930s the Duwamish Waterway and surrounding area was Seattle's industrial and commercial core.

Industrial plants, including Boeing, and commercial facilities still line the waterway.  Polluted by decades of industrial waste and sewage it is slowly being cleaned up.  The paths to the river have numerous signs that warn against eating any of the resident fish, crab and shellfish (Dungeness Crab, mussels, clams, flounder and sole).  It's hard to imagine that any warnings are necessary given the surroundings.  

While the salmon that transit the Duwamish aren't considered a resident fish, the explicit warnings and the diagrams demonstrating cleaning and cooking techniques to minimize exposure to the PCBs found in salmon might give one pause to fish here.

Herring House Park and adjacent Terminal 107 Park are located on the busy arterial of West Marginal Way and have some short trails to the shoreline with nicely placed benches.  However, no matter the placement there's not much that can be done with the views of oil spill booms, barges, cranes, tower silos, warehouses and tugboats.

The Duwamish has seen a lot of changes in the last 120 years.  It was once fed by three rivers - the Green, White and Black rivers.  A flood by the White River in 1906 changed that river's course so that it empties into the Puyallup River.  The Black River flowed from Lake Washington but dried up with the opening of the Ship Canal in 1916 which lowered Lake Washington nine feet.  Now it is just the Green River that feeds the Duwamish.  Reference as the Duwamish begins just 7 miles upstream from where the waterway empties into Elliott Bay.  Before that it is the Green River.

The Duwamish Cultural Center is located across West Marginal Way from Herring House and Terminal 107 parks.  One of the Duwamish tribe's largest villages was burned down by settlers in 1895 on the land in which those parks now stand.  

The Duwamish people are the indigenous tribe that lived in what is now the greater Seattle area - Seattle's first people.  The city is named after the Duwamish Chief Sealth.  They were one of the first area tribes to sign the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott.  In return for $150,000 they were to receive land for a reservation as well as hunting and fishing rights.  

The 600 members are still awaiting the land and fishing rights.  In fact the tribe has never been recognized by the Department of the Interior.  Without the recognition there is no funding for housing, education or health care.

The skeleton of the boat is a 5/8 scale replica of a North Pacific halibut schooler built using traditional methods by boat building students at Tacoma's Bates Technical College .  Almost 150 fishing similar boats were built at Seattle area boatyards from 1911-1929.  As of 2002, fourteen of these vessels were still operating in Alaska!