Beaver Valley

Oregon State Archives: A 1940 Journey Across Oregon

Descending, the highway crosses ubiquitous BEAVER CREEK... Within the next 15 miles westward the road spans the stream a dozen times. The country now presents wide expanses of logged off land.

Michael C. Taylor, Road of Difficulties: Building the Lower Columbia River Highway

When the State Highway Engineer chose the route of the highway through the Beaver Valley, he characterized it as "a great experiment promising to yield great rewards." An area which had been almost completely isolated before the advent of logging camps, Beaver Valley was described by Henry Bowlby as "very fertile and capable of supporting a large population, if provided with transportation facilities."

Other officials agreed. "It opens some more of God's own country for settlement," Julius Meier said in 1915.

...

During grading and while waiting for the construction of the permanent bridges, wooden-trestle spans were thrown up to accommodate the builders. Obstacles included vertical rock cliffs, thick stands of virgin timber, and the operations of the Oregon Lumber Company, which chose to place a road where the highway had first been sited.

This is the beginning of the Beaver Falls Corridor, the longest unbroken, drivable portion of the original highway, running for approximately ten miles from Delena to Clatskanie.

When the State Highway Engineer chose the route of the highway through the Beaver Valley, he characterized it as "a great experiment promising to yield great rewards." An area which had been almost completely isolated before the advent of logging camps, Beaver Valley was described by Henry Bowlby as "very fertile and capable of supporting a large population, if provided with transportation facilities."

Other officials agreed. "It opens some more of God's own country for settlement," Julius Meier said in 1915.

...

During grading and while waiting for the construction of the permanent bridges, wooden-trestle spans were thrown up to accommodate the builders. Obstacles included vertical rock cliffs, thick stands of virgin timber, and the operations of the Oregon Lumber Company, which chose to place a road where the highway had first been sited.

"An indication of the character of the country through which the highway runs is shown by the cost of making the surveys, the average cost per mile of the located line being $239.15," journalist Fred Lockley noted. "Some of the heaviest standing timber of the Northwest was encountered in this section."

...

[The Beaver Creek Bridges] are among [State Bridge Engineer Charles H.] Purcell's first efforts and although small in scale, represent some of the earliest extant examples of reinforced-concrete short-span highway bridges in the Pacific Northwest region. Although these spans are of a typical and uncomplicated design, some of them required offsetting to accommodate the meandering creek.

As late as 1917, the Beaver Creek Bridges had not been completed (the last would not be finished until 1920). Temporary timber spans served to carry road workers back and forth. While traveling over the route with Herbert Nunn, Simeon Benson was greatly disturbed by the difficult Inglis detour.

"The first effort of the commission in finishing the highway," Benson said in 1917, "will be in putting in the bridges across Beaver Creek so that the grade between Delena and Inglis can be used."

Benson backed up his words by donating $21,000 of his own money to get the ball rolling. The impetus was just what the state needed, and an additional $50,000 was quickly budgeted toward macadamizing the Clatskanie-Delena section.

...

"His experience while traveling Beaver Creek Road sowed the seeds for his later deep interest in improving Oregon's roads," wrote his daughter, Alice Benson Allen. "During the rainy seasons, travel was often a triumph over mud; wagons needed strong wheels. There was also the constant threat of being thrown from the wagon while going down the rough canyon past Beaver Falls."

...

The Beaver Falls Corridor, stretching from the Delena exit to Clatskanie, was abandoned by a resolution of the State Highway Department in May of 1953, when the recently completed new alignment of Highway 30 superseded it. Then it became a county road.

The rest of Beaver Falls Road [westbound from the waterfall] is bucolic. Notice the names of roads branching off reflecting the early Finnish nature of many of the people who settled in the valley. Reaching the bottom of the valley, the road turns west as the views open up in this section of the lower Columbia. You return to US 30 in the small town of Clatskanie.

CLICK HERE to continue exploring the highway