Columbia River Gorge

July 16, 2020

Glancing through this quickly, there needs to be a lot more organization and indexing of pages that already exist along the course of the CRH. That will happen over time, it is not something I want to do right now as a part of this repair job. Especially in areas where it all becomes a tangled mess!

Page Index

• There is a ton of this US 30 content up on the site, and getting it organized was not a priority on the recent site rebuild, and is a pretty decent project all of its own... I will get to that as time allows, but for the moment, I am focusing on the backlog of information and photos that acumilated during my five year hiatus from this project. If you have questions about specific sections of this generation of the highway, utilize the search function or go to that specific location on the website for now.

"By the early 1950s, most of Sam Lancaster’s original highway had been bypassed or obliterated by the modernized, widened US 30. Much of the new route was built on fill pushed into the Columbia River, in order to avoid the steep slopes that Lancaster’s design was built on."

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

During the early 1950s, a new, two-lane water level route, founded on fill material dredged from the river, replaced much of the highway from Troutdale to The Dalles. By the 1960s, this route became a four-lane, limited-access highway, Interstate 80N, later renumbered Interstate 84.

In 1937, the US Bureau of Public Roads completed a realignment of the portion from Tanner Creek to Cascade Locks as part of the Bonneville Dam construction project. Because projected pool levels behind the dam would flood the nearby Union Pacific Railroad mainline near Eagle Creek, the track was rerouted to the south, bisecting a portion of the CRH’s right-of way. This created the need to realign the highway from Tanner Creek (near the current Bonneville Dam interchange) to the western end of Cascade Locks.

The new highway alignment was a water-level route with broad, sweeping curves. It was extended eastward and westward in the 1950s as a new water-level route. It was upgraded in the 1960s to a four-lane highway (Interstate 84). The new roadway cut long arcs through the CRH alignment from Cascade Locks to the Hood River (east of the city of Hood River). It left many discontinuous, but very visible and accessible highway traces, including the portion from Tanner Creek to the Cascade Locks.

CLICK HERE to continue exploring the highway