Lewis & Clark's Columbia River - "200 Years Later" "Columbia Hills (Ortley Anticline), Washington"

Includes ... Columbia Hills ... Ortley Anticline ... Ortley Gap ... Columbia River Basalt Group (CRBG) ... Yakima Fold Belt ... Missoula Floods ... Horsethief Butte ... Haystack Butte ... Maryhill ... Stonehenge ... Campsite of April 21, 1806 ...

Click image to enlarge Columbia Hills, Washington. View from old Oregon Highway 30, from between Celilo and the Deschutes River. Image taken September 26, 2004. Columbia Hills/Ortley Anticline ... The Columbia Hills, also known as the Ortley Anticline, is an expansive section of hills rising over 2,000 feet above the Columbia River, extending from the Klickitat River on the west to Rock Creek on the east, and overlooks such areas as the Maryhill Museum, Stonehenge Memorial, the John Day Dam, and the Haystack Butte area where Lewis and Clark camped in 1806. The Columbia Hills is the western edge of a much larger region called the Yakima Fold Belt. Yakima Fold Belt ... The Yakima Fold Belt is a section of lava flows of the Columbia River Basalt Group (CRBG) extending along the northern banks of the Columbia River east of the Cascade Range. The Yakima Fold Belt consists of a series of generally east-west-trending anticlinal ridges (high points) and synclinal valleys (low points) that were produced under north-south regional compression. These folds extend from the southern Columbia Plateau into and through the Cascade Range. Folding was initiated during middle to late Miocene time (17 to 5.5 million years ago) and has continued to this day. The Columbia Hills, also known as the "Ortley Anticline", are in the western part of the Yakima Fold Belt. Further upstream are other named ridges such as Alder Ridge, Canoe Ridge, and Paterson Ridge, which are anticlines within the Columbia Hills Uplift. Furthest east in the Yakima Fold Belt lies another anticline, the Horse Heaven Hills. [More] Lewis and Clark and the Columbia Hills ... Lewis and Clark's campsite of April 21, 1806, was in the Columbia Hills near Haystack Butte, at an Indian village. The route map (Moulton, vol.1, map#77) shows the camp to be on the Washington side across from and downstream of the mouth of the Deschutes River and across from the downstream end of Miller Island. [More] Click image to enlarge Columbia Hills, Washington. View from old Oregon Highway 30, from between Celilo and the Deschutes River. Image taken September 26, 2004. The Columbia Hills and the Missoula Floods ... The massive Missoula Floods covered the Columbia Hills area to an elevation of 1,000 feet, with a nearly one-mile-wide bench being carved into the basalt flows at the 800 foot level. The Maryhill Museum and the Stonehenge Memorial sit on that bench. At the western end of the Columbia Hills is the Rowena Gap, also known as the "Ortley Gap", a constriction of the Columbia River which backed the waters of the Missoula Floods for miles. [More] Click image to enlarge Stonehenge Memorial, Maryhill, Washington, perched on the banks of the Columbia River. Image taken April 24, 2004. Colors ... Click image to enlarge Spring, Columbia Hills near the John Day Dam. Image taken May 24, 2005. Click image to enlarge Spring, Columbia Hills near the John Day Dam. Image taken April 24, 2004. Click image to enlarge Spring, Columbia Hills near the John Day Dam. Image taken May 24, 2005. Click image to enlarge Spring, Columbia Hills near the John Day Dam. Image taken May 24, 2005. Columbia Hills, etc. Goodnoe Hills ... Haystack Butte ... Mount Adams ... Rock Creek ... Rowena Gap ... Sand Spring Canyon ... Goodnoe Hills ... The Columbia Hills stretch across Klickitat County from the Klickitat River on the west to Rock Creek on the east. The Goodnoe Hills, west of Rock Creek, lie in the southeast part of the Columbia Hills. [More] Click image to enlarge Goodnoe Hills, Columbia Hills, Klickitat County, Washington. Image taken June 6, 2012. Click image to enlarge Goodnoe Hills homestead, Rock Creek vicinity, Columbia Hills, Klickitat County, Washington. Image taken June 6, 2012. Click image to enlarge Goodnoe Hills schoolhouse,Rock Creek vicinity, Columbia Hills, Klickitat County, Washington. Image taken June 6, 2012. Haystack Butte ... [More] Click image to enlarge Haystack Butte, Washington, as seen from the Celilo Park, Oregon. Image taken February 8, 2013. Click image to enlarge Haystack Butte (Columbia Hills) downstream of Maryhill, Washington. View from Oregon Interstate 84. Image taken June 6, 2012. Mount Adams ... North-south running Interstate 97 leaves the Columbia River and climbs the Columbia Hills, heading to the Washington communities of Goldendale and Yakima. Views of Mount Adams can be had from the top of the Columbia Hills. Click image to enlarge Mount Adams as seen from the top of the Columbia Hills, Klickitat County, Washington. View from Interstate 97 near Goldendale, Washington. Image taken April 24, 2004. Rock Creek ... Rock Creek forms the eastern boundary of the Columbia Hills. Rock Creek merges into the Columbia River at Columbia River Mile (RM) 229, in T3N R19E, Section 32. [More] Click image to enlarge Rock Creek, Klickitat County, Washington, at mouth looking upstream. View from Washington State Highway 14 bridge crossing Rock Creek, at the backwaters of Lake Umatilla (the reservoir behind the John Day Dam) flooding the Rock Creek drainage. The eastern edge of the Columbia Hills rise on the left. Image taken April 24, 2004. Rowena Gap ... The basalts of the Rowena Gap (also known as the Ortley Gap) are the western edge of the Columbia Hills/Ortley Anticline where it is truncated by the Columbia River. [More] Click image to enlarge Rowena Gap basalts, Washington side, view from Mayer State Park, Oregon. The Rowena Gap is where the Columbia River carved a channel through the Ortley Anticline. Image taken November 11, 2004. Sand Spring Canyon ... Sand Spring Canyon meets the Columbia River at Columbia River Mile (RM) 225, in T3N R18E, Section 26. Sand Spring is approximately two miles up canyon. [More] Click image to enlarge Sand Spring Canyon, looking south towards Oregon and the Columbia River, from the Columbia Hills, Klickitat County, Washington. Image taken June 6, 2012. From the Journals of Lewis and Clark ... Clark, October 20, 1805 ... Clark, October 22, 1805 ... Clark, April 22, 1806 ... Return to Menu

*River Miles [RM] are approximate, in statute miles, and were determined from USGS topo maps, obtained from NOAA nautical charts, or obtained from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers website, 2003 Sources: Allen, J.E., and Burns, M., 1986, Cataclysms on the Columbia, Timber Press, Portland; Carson, R.J., Tolan, T.L., and Reidel, S.P., 1987, Geology of the Vantage area, south-central Washington: An introduction to the Miocene flood basalts, Yakima Fold Belt, and the Channeled Scabland: IN: Hill, M.L. (ed.), 1987, Cordilleran Section of the Geological Society of America, Centennial Field Guilde Volume 1, Geological Society of America, Inc.; Washington State Department of Natural Resources website, 2004; All Lewis and Clark quotations from Gary Moulton editions of the Lewis and Clark Journals, University of Nebraska Press, all attempts have been made to type the quotations exactly as in the Moulton editions, however typing errors introduced by this web author cannot be ruled out; location interpretation from variety of sources, including this website author.

/Regions/Places/columbia_hills.html June 2012