Page:The Pacific Monthly vol. 14.djvu/749

THE COLUMBIA RIVER JETTY

By Kathryne Wilson

Editor's Note.—The public improvement most urgently demanded on the Pacific Coast to-day is the opening of the Columbia River to any ship that floats. The cry is for a forty-foot channel over the bar at the mouth. This can be obtained effectively only by a system of jetties which break the current and the force of the waves along the shore, giving the river an opportunity to scoop out a channel for itself through the sand accumulated at its mouth. The present interest in pushing the work already well along has been aroused in the people of Portland by James J. Hill, president of the Great Northern Railway, who said at a dinner given in his honor at the Lewis and Clark Exposition, that he would send a fleet of vessels up the Columbia when there was a channel there of forty feet. Mr. Hill's interest is real, for he can only get the most out of the railroad he is building down the north bank of the Columbia River by having it connect with his own boats in the Oriental trade.

FOR twenty-three miles on either side the mouth of the Columhia Eiver the ocean beach, bed and spits are of exceedingly fine sand, readily susceptible to the shifting action of winds, currents, surf, tides and the flow of the river. In another locality, this fact might not be especially significant, but at this particular spot it means much, for the Pacific Ocean is a violently turbulent body of water, agitated

What Causes the Bar

for many days at a time by the heaviest and severest of storms, which, coming largely from the southwest in the winter, are accompanied by extremely heavy seas, probably equaled on few of the coasts of the world. In fact, the sea that is rated "smooth" by coast pilots here, is rougher than that of the Atlantic under half-gale conditions. The lighter summer winds from the northwest, on the other hand, usually degener-

Hoisting rock upon flat cars.