Klickitat State Park Trail History

The 31-mile Klickitat State Park Trail hugs the meanders of the Klickitat River and its tributary, Swale Creek, revealing stories of massive volcanic flows, bubbling mineral springs, timeless Indigenous subsistence traditions, ephemeral attempts at wresting profits from the land, and a delightful environment of oak and pine woodlands and grasslands. The trail stretches from a windswept plateau 1,600 feet above sea level to the river’s confluence with the mighty Columbia River barely 100 feet above sea level.

The Klickitat River’s headwaters rise on the high peaks of the Goat Rocks and the glaciers of Mount Adams (Pahto, in a local Indigenous language) on the Yakama Indian Reservation. The river is the second-longest free-flowing river in Washington, after the Chehalis River. In its final 2.5 miles, the river drops into a narrow-walled gorge that is an important area for subsistence fishing, especially for spring Chinook salmon, by members of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation.

Lava Flows

The entire route of the trail passes through deep valleys eroded into the layered basalt of the Columbia Plateau. Hundreds of basalt lava eruptions have flowed over most of eastern Washington, creating the Columbia Plateau, and many continued to flow along the valley of the Columbia River toward the Pacific Ocean. Called flood basalts, these flows erupted from fissures in the ground located over a plume of molten magma from deep in the Earth’s interior. The stationary hotspot formed by the plume is now located beneath Yellowstone National Park, as the North American Plate has slowly inched toward the northwest over millions of years.

The first eruptions of lava began about 16.7 million years ago, producing nearly three-quarters of the total volume of the Columbia River Basalt over the course of about the first 400,000 years. Eruptions were not continuous—about 100 eruptive episodes during the period were separated by thousands of years in between each one. The mass of rock formed by the cooled remains of these eruptions is now known as the Grande Ronde Basalt and forms the terraced cliffs seen along the Klickitat Trail from above the lower gorge into Swale Canyon. The Wanapum Basalt, which includes flows forming the lower gorge of the Klickitat River as well as the columns and talus slopes found about 300-500 feet above the valley floor upstream, erupted sporadically during the next one million years.

Impervious layers within the Grande Ronde Basalt are responsible for natural mineral springs that rise in the Klickitat River Canyon. Groundwater enriched in CO2 bubbles to the surface in several locations near today’s trail between Klickitat and Wahkiakus. Though mineralized, the water is not especially hot, at around 80° F (27° C).

Folding of the layers of basalt caused by the uplift of the Cascade Mountains has tilted the layers seen in the canyon walls today. During the uplift, the Klickitat River has carved its canyon into the layers, revealing them to today’s travelers along the Klickitat State Park Trail.

Indigenous Lands

The river and trail take their name from the first people of this land, Sahaptian and Interior Salish Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Klickitat Band of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, and the Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde.

Ancestors of today’s tribal members traditionally followed a seasonal round throughout areas of central and eastern Washington, maximizing access to necessary resources by spending time in each area at the optimal time for harvesting the resources featured in each ecosystem, from fishing sites on the river to the huckleberry fields at higher elevations.

Of special significance along this route is the lower gorge of the Klickitat River, where the rushing waters are squeezed into a rock-walled gap narrowing to a mere eight feet in places. For thousands of years, Indigenous people have used dip nets to harvest anadromous fish from this stretch of the river as they return to their birth streams to spawn.

This traditional fishing station gained even greater importance with the drowning of Celilo Falls and other fishing sites on the main Columbia River by construction of The Dalles Dam in 1957.

Dispossession and Land Disposal

Representatives of numerous Indigenous people with traditional territories in what is now central and eastern Washington negotiated and signed treaties with Territorial Governor Isaac I. Stevens at Walla Walla on June 9, 1855. The treaties were not ratified by the US Senate until 1859, and in the interim, the benefits promised by the treaties were not available to the tribes that had signed.

The discovery of gold in the Colville area resulted in numerous Euro-American propsectors entering onto unceeded Indigenous land, sometimes coming into conflict with residents. A government agent sent to investigate the incidents, Andrew Bolon, was killed by a party of Indigenous warriors in the upper watershed of the Klickitat River.

In response, the US Army unsuccessfully sent soldiers into the area to apprehend those involved, initiating what came to be known as the Yakama War. After several skirmishes and a widening of the conflict into the Puget Sound area, Colonel George Wright was ordered to “attack All the hostile Indians you meet, with vigor; make their punishment severe and persevere until the submission of all is complete.”

Armed with new, highly accurate rifles, Colonel Wright’s forces engaged the allied tribes at the Battle of Spokane Plains on September 5, 1858.

The lands taken from Indigenous residents became federal public domain lands. The lands were surveyed by government surveyors over the next few decades following the pattern established by the Land Ordinance of 1785, with the land divided into one-square-mile (640 acres) units called “sections” grouped into 36-square-mile units called “townships.”

Surveys were completed in the Klickitat River Canyon between 1861 and 1872, and lands began to be transferred into private ownership. Interestingly, many Indigenous residents were able to obtain ownership of tracts of land they had occupied for many generations, in spite of being outside of the treaty boundary of the Yakama Indian Reservation, under terms of the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887, which was designed to fracture tribal land ownership into small tracts of land owned by individual families. Notably, Sallie Wahkiacus, renowned for her basket artistry (pieces of which are in the collection of the nearby Maryhill Museum), obtained an allotment of 80 acres near today’s Swale Canyon trailhead. Emma Dave secured title to the traditional dip net fishing station at the river’s lower gorge, ensuring that the traditional subsistence fishery would continue into the future. In a 1911 court case, Emma Dave was successful in retaining Indigenous fishing rights on the river against attempts by hydroelectric power companies to wrest the land and water rights from her.

Building a Railroad

Non-indigenous colonization and settlement in the region brought development of ranching and wheat farming enterprises centered on the nearby town of Goldendale, spurring proposals for a railroad line to provide access to distant markets for local products.

In 1889, the Columbia Valley & Goldendale Railroad was incorporated and a route along the Klickitat Valley was surveyed, but construction languished until a group of Portland investors bought out the project and renamed the route the Columbia River & Northern Railway. Construction began in the summer of 1902 and was completed by May 1903. The line provided transportation to a dock on the Columbia River, where goods were transferred to steamboats of The Dalles, Portland & Astoria Navigation Company for the onward journey. In 1908, the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railroad completed its rail line along the north bank of the Columbia, spelling doom for the steamboat operation.

In the absence of good roads, the railroad offered the best access to the growing towns and farms along the route, and its passenger and freight operations prospered.

The first sawmill in the town of Klickitat was built in 1909 by the Western Pine Lumber Company, three brothers and a partner from Portland. Timber was supplied to the mill by means of an incline railway that accessed the more heavily wooded plateau above the mill site in the Klickitat River canyon. A spur railroad was built farther up the Klickitat River to access more timber in 1916. This railroad was noted for its continued use of steam-powered locomotives until its closure in 1964, the last working line to do so in the United States. The mill was vulnerable to repeated fires, but the operation was profitable enough to allow rebuilding and expansion. In 1922, the mill was purchased by the J. Neils Lumber Company from Minnesota, which moved its main operation to Klickitat, becoming the primary shipper on the railway.

Bubbling Waters and Dry Ice

The Indigenous people of the area communally utilized the Klickitat Valley’s carbonized mineral springs for medicinal and ceremonial purposes for thousands of years. Newcomers attempted to profit from the resource. In 1890, James A. Rusk (father of mountaineer-conservationist Claude Rusk) constructed the Mineral Springs Spa near today’s trail, and beginning in 1902, a series of entrepreneurs operated a bottling plant and marketed local mineral waters with added sugary syrups as “Klickitat Mineral Water,” “Klickitat Pop,” “Merry Mix,” “Whistle,” “and “Mineral Ale.” In 1928, Warren Langdon purchased the plant and built a larger plant, some of which is still visible at the site, across the river from today’s trail. The product continued to sell, utilizing the railroad for shipment to regional markets until the Great Depression, competition from other producers, and the death of Langdon by his own hand, shuttered the plant.

In the early 1930s, Ray Newbern invested $200,000 in the plant, converting it to manufacture dry ice from the CO2 in the spring water. He found a ready market for the product during World War II, as applications included inflation systems for lifeboats, pontoons, and life jackets, as well as food preservation, firefighting and gasoline tank stabilizers. The plant continued to operate until 1957. Remains of the operation are visible beside the Klickitat Trail route, and the chimney of the remaining stucco building from the plant, now on property owned by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, hosts nesting Vaux’s Swifts.

Decline of the Railway

The development of good quality roads, wide ownership of cars and trucks by farming families, and the eventual closure of manufacturing businesses in the Klickitat Valley diminished the profitability of the railroad, even after its incorporation into the Burlington Northern Railway (it became known as the “Goldendale Branch”) by 1970. When the J. Neils Lumber Company mill (having merged with the St. Regis Paper Company in 1957) closed in 1990, the Goldendale Branch railroad ceased operations. By 1992, the tracks and ties had been removed.

Making a Park

In 1983, concern over the rapid abandonment of thousands of miles of US rail corridors like the Goldendale Branch spurred the US Congress to pass an amendment to the National Trails System Act to preserve rail corridors through a process called “railbanking.” Corridors that would otherwise be abandoned and converted to other uses can be preserved for future rail use by converting them to interim trails.

The Goldendale Branch was railbanked through the efforts of the Rails to Trails Conservancy, a national organization with a mission to acquire rail corridors as they were being abandoned, holding title to the right-of-way until they could be transferred to a public agency capable of managing the route for trail use. Ownership was transferred to the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSPRC) on November 23, 1993.

The US Forest Service, manager of the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area and the Klickitat National Wild and Scenic River (both designated in 1986), began planning for development of a multi-use trail on the right-of-way, but discontinued the effort in 1997 after opposition to the plan was expressed by some adjacent landowners and their representatives on the Klickitat County Commission. Trail opponents felt they were entitled to ownership of the right-of-way adjacent to their properties when the railroad was abandoned but lost a court case testing that assertion.

In May 2002, a landscape architecture student at the University of Oregon was verbally and physically assaulted by a trail opponent while conducting research along the undeveloped park trail property. He was also arrested for “trespassing on private property,” even though he was traversing publicly owned lands. The case was dismissed, but the incident galvanized a group of local residents who favored the development of the trail.

The trail supporters began organizing monthly group hikes and rides along the right-of-way, introducing more people to the beauty and potential of the route while challenging attempts to restrict public use. WSPRC Director Rex Derr recommended that the Commission should seek to transfer the Klickitat Trail property to another agency in 2003. A show of support from local trail advocates and a promise of a $5,000 donation towards trail maintenance and operation convinced the Commission to retain the property.

The Klickitat Trail Conservancy was incorporated as a non-profit cooperating association in 2003 to advocate for the trail. As improvements to the trail have been developed and its popularity has increased, it has become a valued community asset.

Legislative capital budget appropriations, combined with the property donation and bequest of trail neighbor Irvin Mitchell, have provided funding toward the construction of a suspension bridge to close the last “gap” in the continuous Klickitat State Park Trail, bridging the Klickitat River just downstream from the old mineral spring water bottling and dry ice plants as well as trail surface improvements and replacement of several deteriorating trestles in the Swale Canyon section of the trail, with work to be completed in 2025.