Long before guardrails and parking lots, long before social media and tour buses, this basalt promontory rising 733 feet above the Columbia River stopped people in their tracks. Native people knew it. Early settlers noticed it. And when engineers began carving a modern scenic highway through the Gorge in the early 1900s, Crown Point demanded something extraordinary.
Leaving Latourell and returning to the vicinity of the Chanticleer Inn she acquired a site on a promontory of land that would soon be the site of the Vista House, and a very popular stopping point for automobile tourists. It was here she decided to build The Crown Point Chalet.
From 1884 until World War II the ORNCo Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company operated a train stop at Multnomah Falls. It was around this time that the “bow string truss” bridge across Multnomah Creek was built.
Here’s a series of photos from 1927, ten years after the opening of the Historic Highway, showing a young man and his Harley Davidson motorcycle. It must have been in the Winter as there seems to be snow and rock fall in the photos.
It was 1915 and a lot was going on just east of Troutdale Oregon in the beautiful Columbia River Gorge. Planning was taking place for the construction of the now Historic Columbia River Highway.
