Paradise Point State Park History

A first-time visitor to Paradise Point State Park might wonder why a place so close to the roar of a busy interstate highway was chosen to be one of Washington’s “cherished places.” It is important to remember that this landscape has a story that runs much longer and deeper than the concrete ribbon of Interstate 5.

The East Fork Lewis River, which forms the centerpiece of Paradise Point State Park, owes some of its character to ancient volcanoes.  The medium to dark grey cliffs of Paradise Point that highway engineers chose to serve as the rock-solid abutments for the highway bridges are the remains of an andesite lava flow. These volcanic rocks are part of the earliest foundations of the Cascade Range, a result of the subduction of the Juan de Fuca Plate under the North American continent beginning around 35 million years ago.

The riverbed has also been influenced by volcanic activity of the present-day Cascade Mountains. Mount St. Helens’ Kalama eruptive period (ca. 1480-1647 A. D.) impacted the Kalama River and Lewis River drainages with deposits of pumice and other volcanic material that came from Mount St. Helens’ explosive eruptions and landslides.

Indigenous Land

Paradise Point State Park lies within the traditional territory of Coast Salish and Sahaptin Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and other Indigenous people.  

Three miles southwest of today’s Paradise Point State Park, near the confluence of the Lewis and Columbia Rivers, is the site of the Indigenous village of Cathlapotle. For hundreds of years, the townsite was one of the largest congregations of people on the lower Columbia River with a population between 700-800 people. The large population was supported by plentiful salmon and elk. Plant foods such as the bulbs of wapato, which grows in surrounding wetlands, provided significant nutrients.

Artisans of the Lewis River Valley developed an elk-hide body armor, clamon, which became a highly desired trade item with Indigenous people from as far away as coastal British Columbia and Alaska. A clamon was a double layer of hardened elk hide leather reinforced with cedar bark and hardwood, providing coverage from the waist to neck.

In 1806, members of the Lewis and Clark expedition described their visit to the area in their journals:

“Crossed into the mouth of the Chah-wah-na-hi-ooks River [Lewis River] which is about 200 yards wide and a great portion of water into the columbia at this time it being high. The indians inform us that this river is crouded with rapids after Some distance up it. Several tribes of the Hul-lu-et-tell Nation reside on this river.    at 3 oClock P. M. we arived at the Quath lah pah tle (Cathlapotle) Village of 14 Houses on main Shore to the N E. Side of a large island.”  –William Clark, March 29, 1806

Despite the introduction of smallpox and other diseases, Cathlapotle maintained its role until the summer of 1830, when an epidemic of malaria devastated the population.

The Oregon Treaty between the United States and Great Britain in 1846 established the border between the two countries’ colonial administrations at the 49th parallel, putting the Lewis River under American jurisdiction. Passage of the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850 by the US Congress allowed American settlers to claim land in the territory, even before relationships with the sovereign tribes had been established by treaty.

Many tribal leaders refused to accept the conditions proposed by Washington Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens at the Chehalis River Treaty Council in February 1855. Stevens had proposed that the Cowlitz, Chehalis and other Indigenous people move from their homelands in southwest Washington Territory to the Quinault Indian Reservation on the Pacific Ocean coast. Tribal leaders asked to negotiate for a reservation within their own traditional territories, but Governor Stevens refused.

Subsequently, title to the land was relinquished to the US federal government and the Chehalis Reservation was established by executive order of Secretary of the Interior J. P. Usher on July 8, 1864. The Cowlitz Tribe received federal recognition in 2000.

Donation Land Claims and Homesteads

Today’s Lewis River gets its name not from the famous leader of the Corps of Discovery, but from Adolphus Lee Lewis (sometimes Lewes), a Hudson’s Bay Company employee who was assigned the task of tending a cattle herd that the company maintained on the river to export beef to the Russian-American Company in Sitka, Alaska. After the area became American territory, he became one of the first persons to file a Donation Land Claim on the river.

Gallatin and Nancy Kinder filed a Donation Land Claim at the confluence of the North and East Forks of the Lewis River, including the northwestern part of today’s Paradise Point State Park. Along with homesteader Henry Hobart, they opened the Kinder & Hobart Store on the property in August of 1866. At the time, the rock at the north abutment of today’s I-5 bridges was known as Kinder Rock. The couple divorced two months later; Nancy married neighbor William Davis whose Donation Land Claim was the site of the first ferry crossing on the Lewis River, which came to be known as the Pekin Ferry, just downstream from the confluence.

The land now occupied by the park campground and picnic area was “proved up” under terms of the Homestead Act in 1872 by Willis Powell.

Transportation Nexus

The travel corridor between the reach of the Columbia River stretching between today’s cities of Vancouver and Longview to southern Puget Sound was stewarded by Chinookan and Cowlitz Indigenous people for thousands of years, providing a route for trade and interconnections between families from throughout the region.

American military planners developed a crude “road” paralleling the Columbia River that utilized the Davis-Pekin ferry across the Lewis River in 1861, but the advent of steam-powered sternwheel boats provided the first dependable passenger and freight service to the area. The steamer Rescue stopped at the Kinder & Hobart store on its regularly scheduled run between Portland and Monticello (now Longview).

The Washington Good Roads Association led by lawyer and financier Sam Hill (who later built the Peace Arch on the US-Canada border) lobbied for the construction of the Pacific Highway to tie together the state’s major cities along the ancient travel corridor stretching from the Columbia River to Puget Sound.

The highway was developed in sections and was paved from Vancouver to Woodland through La Center, just upstream from today’s Paradise Point State Park by 1922. The Pacific Highway was completed in 1924, bringing about the end of the steamboat era on the East Fork Lewis River.

The route was re-engineered for faster travel, becoming designated as US Highway 99, and the bridge (today’s northbound lanes of I-5) over the East Fork Lewis River in today’s park was built in 1936. With the advent of the Interstate Highway System, the route was upgraded to a limited-access divided highway when the parallel southbound bridge was completed in 1969.

Making a Park

In 1957, the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSPRC) authorized the expenditure of $6,000 to purchase land for a state park on the East Fork Lewis River. Ultimately, four adjoining parcels were purchased in 1958-59 for a total of nearly $45,000 to secure land for the park.

The park was officially named “Chief Umtux State Park” on February 2, 1959, for the local Indigenous leader whose death under unclear circumstances near today’s Battle Ground Lake State Park in 1855 was deeply mourned. The WSPRC changed the name to “Paradise Point State Park” on October 21, 1974.