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| The Barlow Road |
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Until 1845, fur trappers and emigrants traveling to the Willamette Valley were required to challenge fate and descend the Columbia River through the gorge. The Dalles was considered the western terminus of the Oregon Trail, and to complete their journey, travelers took to the river.
In October, 1845, Samuel Barlow acted on his belief that an alternative route through the Cascades could be found. His daughter later recalled Barlow’s words:
God never made a mountain that he had not made a place for some man to go over it or under it.
He led nineteen men and women and assorted children, sixteen yoke of oxen, seven horses, thirteen wagons and one dog, south from the Dalles, then west to climb the southern slopes of Mt. Hood and scratch out a trail through the wilderness which became known, appropriately, as the Barlow Road.
In 1846 the Provisional Legislature of Oregon authorized Barlow to develop his trail into a toll passage to the Willamette Valley. Forty men carved a trail and built bridges where necessary to make the 80-mile route passable. By the mid-1850’s many emigrants bypassed the Columbia Gorge altogether and walked into the Willamette Valley.
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| Canoe to Automobile |
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For hundreds of years the Columbia River Indians utilized the river as a highway for their canoes. The first emigrants traversed the river in Indian dugout boats rented from the Hudson’s Bay Company, but the evolving modes of transportation down the Columbia increased in sophistication. In 1847 more than forty flatboats were built from pine trees near The Dalles. The emigrants’ wagons were disassembled and with tools, clothing, and meager supplies, they committed themselves to the dangers of the river and its rapids.
In the early 1850’s, F.A. Chenoweth settled at the Cascades and built a portage road along an old Indian trail. It was a mule-operated car on wooden railway. In 1861 the road was rebuilt with iron rails and a steam locomotive puffed along the portage. Other portage railroads were developed at Celilo Falls near The Dalles.
Concurrent with the development of the portage railroads, steamboat travel was established between Portland and The Dalles, reducing the risks of river travel even further. By the 1860’s cargo, passengers and soldiers were traveling up and down the river in relative comfort.
Expansion of the railroad network across the country did not exclude this area. In the early 1880’s, the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company began developing a railroad route along the same general route as the Oregon Trail. This route later incorporated in the Union Pacific system followed the south shore of the Columbia. As automobile highway emerged in the 20th Century, asphalt and concrete also followed literally in the footsteps of many thousands of emigrants. I-84 today is but the most recent edition of, one of America's most significant travel routes.
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| The Final Test |
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Most emigrants were not overjoyed at the prospect of confronting the river, but they pushed forward. Until 1845 and the opening of the Barlow Road, there was no alternative but to challenge the fearsome Columbia in frail and primitive craft. Canoes and flatboats made from logs felled near the river were the main conveyances used by the early emigrants.
Probably the most moving and realistic account of the extreme danger found on a river voyage is in Jesse Applegate’s journal.
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| As we approached this bend I could hear the sound of rapids, and presently the boat began to rise and fall and rock from side to side. When we began to make the turn I could see breakers ahead extending in broken lines across the river, and the boat began to sweep along at a rapid rate…I began to think this was no ordinary rapid, but felt reassured when I noticed that the older people sat quietly in their places and betrayed no sign of fear. Rocked on the heaving bosom of the great river and lulled by the medley of sounds, the two babies had fallen asleep in their mother’s arms. Our boat now was about twenty yards from the right hand shore, when looking across the river I saw a smaller boat about opposite to us near the south bank. The persons in this boat were Alexander McClellan, a man about seventy years old, William Parker, probably twenty-one, and William Doke, about the same age, and three boys: Elisha Applegate, aged about eleven, and Warren and Edward Applegate, each about nine years old…there was little time to consider mistakes or to be troubled about what might be the consequences, for presently there was a wail of anguish, a shriek, and scene of confusion in our boat that no language can describe. The boat we were watching disappeared and we saw the men and boys struggling in the water. Father and Uncle Jesse, seeing their children drowning, were seized with frenzy, and dropping their oars sprang up from their seats and were about to leap from the boat to make a desperate attempt to swim to them, when mother and Aunt Cynthia, in voices that were distinctly heard above the roar of the rushing waters, by commands and entreaties, brought them to a realization of our own perilous situation, and the madness of an attempt to reach the other side of the river by swimming. |
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The old man and the two young Applegate boys drowned. Death by this time on the trail was a frequent, and almost expected occurrence. Yet the surviving emigrants at this point were close to their destination in the Willamette Valley and what they hoped would be a better and more prosperous future. |
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