Two canoes: one for the sea, one for the river

The two canoes in this post are on display at Fort Clatsop, just outside of Astoria. The top photo is the canoe on display outside the fort's museum, and is a typical ocean-going Chinook Indian canoe. They were made in several sizes to carry various numbers of people. The ocean-going canoes were often used for hunting seals. This canoe is the same style as the burial canoe replica seen in my earlier post. You can also read about Chinook canoes on this interesting site.

From the site linked above, I learned that this canoe is for use on rivers, also called "sweet water." It rests near the end of the trail that leads to the canoe landing used by Lewis and Clark.

For more pictures of Fort Clatsop and the trail in the woods, see this post with photos I took in 2001.

Lewis & Clark's canoe landing

Just about a block down a remarkably peaceful trail through the dense woods from Lewis and Clark's Fort Clatsop replica, the trail gives way to a short boardwalk over the marshy ground. A few paces further, and you emerge at the spot used by the expedition as a canoe landing. They had already camped and traded on other parts of the Columbia River's mouth, so this was not their first stop, but it was the landing they used to access the fort during the wet winter of 1805-1806. Originally named the Netul River, it is now called the Lewis and Clark River. A short distance to our left, the river feeds into Youngs Bay and then directly into the Columbia. In this photo, you're looking south into Oregon.

Stepping out of dense woods onto the river at this point presents a rewarding view, so beautifully contrasted yet integral with the vegetation of the forest. The rigidly regular pilings you see in the distance are the remnants of a large lumber industry in past decades. Kayakers still use the river, and I'm sure it's used by fishermen as well. The day I was there, several people were paddling their way up the river in kayaks, making an interesting continuum to the history that was on my mind.

. For more photos of water, please visit Watery Wednesday and follow the links.

Youngs Bay after the rain

This is not the Columbia River. It's Youngs Bay. This bay and the rivers that feed it are the other half of what makes Astoria a peninsula, and they come together at the point of the peninsula. I took this photo from the Astoria side just before the bay joins the Columbia River. The new Youngs Bay Bridge crosses from Astoria at the confluence of the bay and the river, and is just to the right, out of sight in this photo. The old Youngs Bay Bridge is still used and connects the two sides of the bay further upriver to the left of this photo. The Lewis and Clark River and Youngs River both feed into the bay, which becomes wide here before it enters the mighty Colombia, although it's actually much smaller than the Columbia. Youngs Bay is filled with interesting sights and provides docking for many fishing boats, which fish the bay or pass under the bridges into the Columbia and the ocean.

Young's River was named in 1792 by Lieutenant William Broughton of the Captain George Vancouver expedition, after Sir George Young of the British Royal Navy. Over the years, the apostrophe seems to have been dropped, and also the bay took on the name of the river. When the Lewis and Clark Expedition arrived in 1805, they named this body of water Merriweather Bay after Merriweather Lewis, and they gave Youngs River a long native name. Both have been discarded, and now both the river and Bay retain the name of Young. The camp site of the Lewis and Clark Expedition during the winter of 1806 is not far away. By water, you would follow the Lewis and Clark River (which opens into the bay's far side) a short distance to the picturesque location.