According to the Clark County, Washington, website (2014):

"... There's a natural boat landing that played an important role in the Oregon Trail about a mile downstream from Cottonwood Beach, next to the Port of Camas-Washougal marina in present-day Washougal.

Many pioneers coming out west would arrive near the Dalles, Oregon, and make rafts to float down the Columbia River. A natural eddy at the landing would wash barges and rafts up against the north bank. From there settlers could avoid the British at Fort Vancouver by traveling to the interior of what would become Washington state or cross the river to the Oregon bank.

Two men came out on a wagon train, floated down the river, and arrived at the landing in 1845. One was George Washington Bush, the first free African-American man to make a home in Washington. He would found a community near Tumwater.

The second man, David Clark Parker decided to stay put at the landing and took a Donation Land Claim in 1846 that became Parker's Landing, a thriving little community in its day. Other settlers who followed Parker included Joseph Gibbons in 1847, J. Duncan in 1850, and J.E.C. Durgan in 1854. ..."

Today a floating dock provides a panoramic view of the Columbia River Gorge, Cottonwood Beach, and Mount Hood. A two-mile Columbia River dike trail starts at Steamboat Landing and continues upstream to Steigerwald Lake National Wildlife Refuge. The pilings visible are remains from the old paddlewheel boat dock which extend across the highway to the Pendleton Woolen Mill.

"The first settlers near the mouth of the Washougal River arrived in 1845. By 1880, the community was large enough to support a dock; therefore, one was constructed a few hundred yards upstream from here. Some of the pilings are still visible. This dock became homeport for the steamer Calliope and later, the Jessie Harkins. Steamship passange to Portland was available dailty for both passengers and freight. In 1908, the Seattle Portland and Spokane Railway opened the North Bank Line, providing rapid transport to Vancouver and Portland. This action, and the gravel surfacing of the wagon trail to Vancouver, forced the steamboat business to decline. By 1916, regularly scheduled streamboat trips no longer existed. A few years later in the 1920s the Pendleton Woolen Mill switched from wood to oil heat. Pendleton constructed a separate dock to enable oil barges to tie up and unload. This dock was used through the 1950s, and you can identify the dock pilings and pieces of the pipeline immediately upstream of this rock fill. In 1945, after Pendleton Woolen Mills deeded this piece of shoreline property to the City of Washougal for "street and public dock purposed" the rock fill upon which you stand was constructed." Source:    Clark County Heritage Site information sign at Steamboat Landing Park, visited 2004.

• Columbia River Dike Trail ...
• Ough Reef ...

"Ough Reef is located directly above the Port of Camas/Washougal on the WA side of the channel. If you have a chart of the Columbia it should be labled on there. It essentially runs from just above the Port to just down river of the end of Reed Island. (Directly off Steamboat Landing.) "