Starting & Ending Points

"So, feller, a lot of those old upper highway pictures say Oregon Trail Highway, not Columbia River Highway, can't you read!?! And what are those Seaside to Astoria pages about?!? Everyone knows that's all 101 out there!"

Well, yes I can read (quite well, thank you!), and where the Columbia River Highway begins and ends is really a question of what year we are talking about much more than what city we are talking about.

So, yes. When a lot of those photos were shot, that part of the highway had been redesignated as the start of Route 6, The Old Oregon Trail.

For this project, I am using the earliest configuration of Route 2 per 1914's First Annual Report of the Highway Engineer, which considered the Columbia Highway as the road being built from Seaside to Pendleton.

By 1918, the Seaside to Astoria highway was no longer considered to be part of Route 2, but Route 3, the Coast Highway, and by the Fifth Biennial Report of the Oregon State Highway Commission in 1922, the highway between The Dalles and Pendleton was considered to be part of Route 6, The Old Oregon Trail.

There's even another way of looking at it entirely, if we are truly just looking at Samuel C. Lancaster's road. As Robert W. Hadlow points out in the Historic Landmark Nomination:

Lancaster's Road can truly be said to begin at the junction of the CRH and the Larch Mountain Road, just east of Chanticleer Point (Portland Women's Forum Viewpoint). West of this point, between Milepost Zero in Portland and Milepost 23, located at this junction, the highway was largely built over existing county roads. (60)

And, since Lancaster was only the Multnomah County Engineer, it could even be said that "his road" ended just past Eagle Creek.

So, pick your time and your arguments are valid, but in the beginning the Columbia River Highway was to run from Seaside to Pendleton. It stretched, as Clarence E. Mershon titled his excellent book, "from the sea to the wheat fields of eastern Oregon."

1914: First Annual Report of the Highway Engineer

Samuel C. Lancaster, First Annual Report

The Columbia Highway in Oregon will soon be known as one of the world's great thoroughfares.

It is being constructed along the most modern lines, and from Biggs, in Eastern Oregon, to the Pacific Ocean, it will follow the Columbia River down through the Cascade Mountain range, by graceful curves and easy grades, a distance of 215 miles, linking Eastern Oregon with Western Oregon for the first time by wagon road, and ultimately the State with the Lincoln Highway across the continent.

This road traverses a country rich in all that men need to supply their daily wants and make life worth the living.

1918: Third Biennial Report of the Oregon State Highway Commission

Astoria to Pendleton

No. 2. Columbia River Highway—

From Astoria east via Rainier, Portland, Hood River, The Dalles, Arlington and Umatilla, to Pendleton.

1987: Historic Columbia River Highway No. 100

The Historic Columbia River Highway No. 100 begins in Troutdale and ends at Chenoweth Creek near The Dalles.

Robert W. Hadlow, Columbia River Highway Historic District, National Historic Landmark Nomination

The Columbia River Highway (CRH) National Historic Landmark District is located in the state of Oregon, along the south side of the Columbia River between the cities of Troutdale (14.2 miles east of Portland) and The Dalles (88 miles east of Portland).

...

In 1987, the Oregon lawmakers approved Senate Bill 766, which defined those portions of the original Columbia River Highway constructed in Multnomah, Hood River, and Wasco counties from 1913 to 1922 as the “Historic Columbia River Highway.” On 21 July 1993, the Oregon Transportation Commission renamed the entire route as “Historic Columbia River Highway No. 100.”

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