Friday morning we headed out through dense fog and decided to drive on the Washington side of the Columbia River, on Hwy 14, all the way to Vancouver. The Washington side is very peaceful and quiet, compared to the craziness of Interstate 84 on the Oregon side. We had never driven this entire stretch, so it was a chance to cover some new ground.
Upon arriving in Vancouver our stop was Fort Vancouver National Historic Site.
Fort Vancouver was established by the Hudson Bay Trading Company, a British entity, in an effort to cement British control over the disputed Oregon Country. It was the major hub for economic & social policy in the Pacific Northwest, at its time. John McLoughlin was the primary overseer and tasked with maintaining the fort and keeping out American settlers. As more settlers poured over the Oregon Trail, however, this became an impossible task. Great Britain did not want to fight a 3rd war with the United States and eventually ceded the Oregon Country to the U.S. along the 49th Parallel. This left Fort Vancouver suddenly in the center of the United States. The fort continued to operate in subsequent years, but its decline was inevitable. It was ultimately taken over by the military.
Today the fort's buildings and stockade walls have been reconstructed in their original locations. We toured the grounds of the fort, and got some live demonstrations from blacksmiths working with era tools & materials.
The park features more buildings including a small air museum at Pearson Field (which we explored), and other military barracks and buildings (that we didn't have time to check out).
After our time at Fort Vancouver, we continued south to Harrisburg. Amber was attending a Christmas party with her friends Evan & Adrienne and I rolled solo for the night. The next morning Adrienne joined us to make a quick trip over to Newport, on the Oregon Coast.
Our main reason for heading to the coast was to get the stamps in our lighthouse passport book for the Yaquina Head & Yaquina Bay lighthouses. We had visited before, but also never been able to do tours inside. This trip, however, would fix all that. The three of us visited Yaquina Head Lighthouse first. It was first lit in 1873 and had a first order Fresnel lens. While we waited for our tour we explored the Interpretive Center, and then I braved the rain and hiked around on a beach and took some pictures.
When the tour began we were all glad to get out of the wind and rain and be let inside the lighthouse. We started gathered in the old oil storage room, then transferred to the keeper's office quarters, and finally topped it off with a climb to the top of the tower.
When we finished up our tour of Yaquina Head Lighthouse, we headed back into Newport to visit the Yaquina Bay lighthouse. Amber and I had seen it from the outside on our honeymoon, but this time we were able to go inside and do a self guided tour and get our passport stamp.
Yaquina Bay Light was built in 187, and it was decommissioned in 1874, only operating for three years. The bay lighthouse was difficult to spot by ships approaching from the north, so the Yaquina Head lighthouse was the solution. It became obvious pretty quickly that having both lighthouses manned would be a waste of resources, so it was shut down.
Our last stop was downtown Newport to grab a filling late lunch of seafood at the local Mo's, before we drove back inland to Harrisburg. Amber and I spent the evening with Evan & Adrienne again before we drove back to Pasco the next morning.
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