Maryhill State Park History

Maryhill State Park provides recreational opportunities on a landscape that has hosted a wide diversity of human endeavors over the ages. The park is located in the eastern gateway to the Columbia River Gorge, which features some of the most dramatic scenery in Washington.

The Columbia River Gorge

The Columbia River Gorge is a product of geologic processes that have affected much of today’s Washington State.

The walls of the gorge are a “layer-cake” of basalt lava flows that erupted from vents in southeast Washington during the outpourings that created the vast Columbia Plateau of eastern Washington millions of years ago.

The Cascade Mountains continue to rise due to upwelling molten rock beneath the surface of the Earth caused by subduction of the Juan de Fuca oceanic tectonic plate underneath the North American continent. The uplift has visibly tilted the basalt lava flows on the flanks of the Cascade Range, and this tilt can be viewed at Maryhill State Park.

The height of the still-rising Cascade Mountains creates a barrier to moisture, known as the “rainshadow effect,” that ensures many days of sunshine at Maryhill State Park. Atmospheric pressure differentials due to climate differences through the gorge, that are accentuated by the height of the Cascades, create strong winds in the area.

In the final stages of the most recent Ice Age, masses of glacier ice repeatedly blocked meltwater drainage, creating huge bodies of impounded water in northern Washington, Idaho and Montana. When the ice dams melted or were breached by the sheer weight of water behind them, gigantic Ice Age floods swept over the landscape. In the Columbia River Gorge, the floods scoured the landscape, revealing stark rock features in and around today's Maryhill State Park that have impressed the area's Indigenous peoples and newer arrivals alike.

Indigenous Lands

Maryhill State Park lies within the traditional territory of Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation, Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, and the Nez Perce Tribe.

Today’s state park lies just upstream of a stretch of the Columbia River that featured a series of massive rapids and cascades. Celilo Falls and the Long and Short Narrows caused migrating salmon and other fish to pass through these restrictions in densely packed groups that numbered in the millions. They provided a resource for one of the most productive fisheries in the Pacific Northwest for thousands of years. All of them were flooded by the reservoir behind The Dalles Dam in 1957.   

Local tribes ceded ownership of the area to the US federal government under duress in the Yakima Treaty of Camp Stevens and the Treaty with the Tribes of Middle Oregon in 1855, keeping rights to harvest natural resources in their usual and accustomed places, including the developed treaty fishing access site at the west edge of today’s Maryhill State Park.

After government land surveys were completed in 1862, the land in today’s park was conveyed into private ownership under various federal land disposal laws. The earliest was a cash sale of public domain lands to Amos Stark in 1865, which included today’s park boat launch and swimming beach.

Columbus

Amos Stark was a US Army veteran of the US-Mexico War. After his discharge, he “wandered over the western states for several years, searching for the right place to stake his land claim,” according to his grandniece Lois Plotts. In 1852 he traveled up the Columbia River on a small steamer, asking to be put ashore near today’s Maryhill State Park. He stayed for a few days, until the boat stopped to pick him up on its return journey. He claimed land at the site, but did not return until seven years later, after working in the California gold fields.

Stark acquired other land in the vicinity under terms of the Homestead Act of 1862, which authorized the transfer of public domain lands to individuals after they “proved up” their ability to develop the land by building a residence and beginning agricultural use of the land.

Stark established the town of Columbus on his original land purchase, and stores, schools and other services were soon available. A post office was opened at Columbus in 1872. Some residents made a livelihood supplying wood to fuel steamboats that provided transportation on the Columbia River. Others utilized natural springs to irrigate fruit orchards and other agricultural enterprises.

After a ferry was established to connect Columbus with railway transportation across the river in Oregon in 1883, farmers from throughout Klickitat County passed through Columbus to bring their agricultural goods to market.

Sam Hill

Sam Hill was a railroad manager, lawyer, financier, road builder and Quaker philanthropist who visited the Columbia River Gorge looking for investment opportunities. After traveling through Columbus, he wrote to his brother Richard: “We have found the Garden of Eden…It is the garden spot of the world—the most beautiful country I have ever seen.”

Enjoying the sunshine in contrast to cloudy weather just a few miles to the west, he coined the slogan “Where the rain and sunshine meet” to describe the area in promotional materials.

Sam Hill envisioned a prosperous planned community in the area and began to purchase land in 1907, eventually acquiring over 7,000 acres. He platted a townsite, “Maryhill,” using the common name of his wife, daughter and mother-in-law.

Many of the original residents of Columbus were wary of the extravagant plans that Sam Hill was promoting and refused to sell their property. Ultimately most of the lands that were acquired for Hill’s project were not maintained; the orchards and farms returned to grassland.

In 1911, Hill purportedly spent $100,000 to build 10 miles of paved roads on the property, including the 3.6 mile “Maryhill Loops” snaking 850 feet up into the canyon above. The roads were built to demonstrate the best types of crushed rock and binding to withstand wear and temperature variations.

Another reminder of Sam Hill’s project is the large concrete “castle” built between 1914 and 1940. In 1926, the unfinished building was dedicated as a museum with an eclectic collection of fine art. The Maryhill Museum retains ownership of most of the lands acquired by Hill in the area to support the museum operations.

The iconic legacy of Sam Hill is the life-size Stonehenge Replica, located about a mile northeast of the state park. It was built with reinforced concrete between 1918 and 1929 to honor Klickitat County service members who lost their lives during World War I.

Despite resistance from long-time residents of Columbus, the town post office name was changed to Maryhill in 1922.

Isami Tsubota

The Tsubota family, immigrants from Japan, began farming the land in today’s Maryhill State Park after they were displaced from their previous home by the construction of Bonneville Dam about 60 miles downriver in 1937.

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 9066, authorizing the forced relocation of Japanese immigrants and US Citizens with more than 1/16 Japanese ancestry from states on the west coast.

Isami Tsubota avoided incarceration at a relocation camp by volunteering to harvest sugar beets and other agricultural commodities deemed essential during wartime. After the end of WWII, Tsubota returned to Maryhill and established fruit orchards and gardens on much of the land that is now Maryhill State Park.

The land was sold to the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1955 during the construction of The Dalles Dam.

The Dalles Dam

After World War II, the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) proposed the construction of The Dalles Dam on the Columbia River 17 miles downstream from today’s Maryhill State Park. Tribes opposed the dam on the grounds that it would abrogate treaty rights by inundating usual and accustomed fishing sites including Celilo Falls and the Narrows. The USACE and its supporters advocated for construction by raising Cold War fears about national security, saying “substantial amounts of additional power are needed to meet the increasing requirements of defense industries… at the lowest possible cost.”

Other opposition came from people who felt that breaking the treaties would harm the reputation of the United States as a leader in the Cold War contest between democracy and authoritarianism. In 1951 the US House of Representatives blocked funding of The Dalles Dam until the USACE negotiated a financial settlement with the treaty tribes. Individual settlements were reached with each of the four represented tribes, totaling over $36 million, or slightly more than $3,000 per tribal member.

In 1952, the USACE began construction of the dam. The project created a 200-foot-high dam with 22 electricity generation turbines, locks to allow vessel navigation and fish ladders for salmon passage. The damming of the river at that point resulted in many impacts to the regional landscape.

Despite fish ladders and other systems to help anadromous fish pass The Dalles Dam and others on the river, salmon and steelhead runs on the Columbia River declined from 10-16 million returning fish annually to less than 1 million.

Making a Park

The US Army Corps of Engineers developed initial park features on the property in 1963, to fulfill a requirement to provide recreational facilities as a mitigation for the impacts of The Dalles Dam.

The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission entered into an agreement with the US Army Corps of Engineers on September 12, 1972, to establish Maryhill State Park and expand recreational opportunities at the site. The park was dedicated on September 18, 1972. The park’s boat dock and launch ramp were constructed by 1978.

Maryhill State Park remains a popular place to bask in sunshine at the place where the rain meets the sun.