Page:Columbia - America's Great Highway.djvu/11



While engaged as Consulting Engineer in fixing the location and directing the construction of the Columbia River Highway from Portland east through the Cascade Range in Multnomah County, Oregon, I studied the landscape with much care and became acquainted with its formation and its geology.

I was profoundly impressed by its majestic beauty and marveled at the creative power of God, who made it all.

The everchanging lights and shadows from morning until night, made pictures rare and beautiful, which always charmed me, and I wondered if it were possible for some of them to be preserved by the new process of color photography. This proved to be entirely practical, and with the assistance of three friends, Mr. Frank I. Jones, Mr. Henry Berger, Jr., and Dr. N. L. Smith, we were able to accomplish this. I am greatly indebted to these gentlemen for their assistance in this work, which required many days and nights of tireless labor.

While going back and forth over the Columbia River Highway during its construction I carried my camera in a rain-proof bag in all kinds of weather, that I might be ready when God painted the pictures.

As I climbed about the steep slopes of the mountains, where in places it was necessary to use ropes for safety, I thought of the many hardships endured by the early explorers when they came into the Oregon country.

Having made a careful study of a number of their diaries, and acquainted myself with the early history of this region, I decided to write a simple story, beginning with the creation of the mountains and ending with the completion of America's Great Highway through the Cascade Mountains to the Sea.

There were three ways of entering the Oregon country from the East in pioneer days. I studied carefully to find out who had written the most interesting accounts, and have quoted from three of them verbatim. Their experiences were similar to many others whose hardships were no doubt as great. I chose Mrs. Whitman's story of the trip down the Columbia by Indian canoe to Fort Vancouver, and Mrs. Elizabeth Dickson Smith Geer's