Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 18.djvu/98

 lowing reasons: The completion and popular use by tourists of the Columbia River Highway eastward from Portland and particularly the building of a public resort at Crown Point on that highway serves to bring to the attention of people from all parts of the world the wonderful scenic stretches of the Columbia river both above and below that Point, and it is very fitting that Point Vancouver be generally known as a landmark of historic interest. No recent map, official or commercial, of either Washington or Oregon or of the River, designates such a Point, and no chart of the river issued by the U. S. Government indicates it as such, and most of the steamboat men now using the river have never heard of it and know the place merely as Cottonwood Point. Also histories and historical narratives are being frequently published showing a strange ignorance of the proper location of this Point, confusing it with the site of the former Fort Vancouver of the Hudson's Bay Company and the present city of Vancouver, twenty-five miles down stream. The latest histories of the State of Washington, edited by C. O. Snowden and Edmond S. Meany, contain this error. Point Vancouver has in fact been allowed to become unknown, physically, geographically and historically.

This prevailing ignorance may be attributed primarily to lack of careful research, but incidentally to two other conditions: the minor physical prominence of the Point—low and sandy and submerged during high stages of water—in the immediate vicinity of well-known and prominent land-marks, and the faulty record left by Capt. Vancouver. The latitude and longitude being given, the location of the Point would seem to be very easy of determination, but unfortunately the recorded latitude would place it in the tall timber of Clackamas County, about nine miles south of the Columbia river. The longitude also is too far East, and nearer correct as to a promontory five or six miles to the northeastward. Capt. George Vancouver was one of England's noted navigators and his work of discovery was of great value, especially that in the