Beebe Bridge State Park History

Beebe Bridge State Park, established in 2026, provides access to Lake Entiat, the Columbia River reservoir created by Rocky Reach Dam. The park’s story goes much deeper than the lake at its doorstep, though. The setting is steeped in the obscured history of Chinese immigration into Eastern Washington, and the development of irrigated agriculture in this arid landscape.

Indigenous Lands

The park lies within the traditional territories of Interior Salish Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation and the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. For thousands of years this area has provided habitat for a diverse community of life that forms the basis of their cultures. Traditionally, the Indigenous people of the region left winter residences along the Columbia River or shore of Lake Chelan in the spring to travel to various river and plateau areas to collect, hunt and fish on seasonal rounds. The river has long served as the primary transportation corridor in the region as well as the source of salmon, a mainstay of Indigenous food and culture.

Some tribal representatives ceded ownership of the area to the US federal government under duress in the Yakima Treaty of Camp Stevens in 1855, keeping rights to harvest natural resources in their usual and accustomed places, including the Columbia River. Other tribes and bands such as the Columbia-Moses (Sinkayuse) and Chelan were subjected to a series of executive orders by US Presidents that first established the large Moses Reservation, only to later dissolve it and relinquish ownership of their homelands to the US federal government. An executive order signed by President Rutherford B. Hayes on July 4, 1884, allowed for resident Indigenous people to receive allotments of up to 640 acres for lands they were occupying within the former reservation.

Chee Saw’s Chinese Store

In the late 1850s, a steady stream of miners from California traveled through the Columbia River Valley, mostly enroute to mining opportunities in British Columbia. Hundreds of them were Chinese immigrants, skilled in the technique of placer gold mining, recovering small flakes of the precious metal from riverside beaches and sand bars. Some found workable claim sites along the Columbia River between Wenatchee and Brewster.

One of the Chinese immigrants, Chee Saw, established a store on the site of today’s Beebe Bridge State Park around 1857, to serve miners working in the area. Historian Richard Steele detailed the establishment:

It was built mainly of cedar boards split from the log, like shakes, pegged against upright posts, and roofed with logs and brush. It was the first business enterprise in the country; the proprietor was a Chinese merchant. To the Chinese workers along the river he supplied goods, and he made considerable money. A pack train of forty horses he owned with which he brought in his miscellaneous assortment of English, American and Chinese merchandise. It is stated that no stranger ever appeared at this store who was not made welcome by the old Chinese merchant.

A rising tide of xenophobia directed against Chinese residents in the United States led to racial riots in many parts of Washington in the 1870s and 1880s. It is likely that Chee Saw and the many Chinese residents he served fled the area due to threatened or actual violence directed toward them. A Spokane newspaper ran an article on May 19, 1892, reporting that Chinese miners had been massacred near Chelan Falls in 1875. The story has persisted, even though no credible documentation has ever been found.  

Chee Saw operated the store at the site until about 1878, when he married and moved with his wife, a local Indigenous woman, to the northern Okanogan Valley. There he became the namesake of the small community of Chesaw. Though his original store was run by another Chinese merchant for a while, Richard Steele noted in 1904 that “now the placer fields of the past are owned by settlers, and are fast becoming beautiful orchards.”

Government surveys were completed in 1887, opening the way for land transfers to American settlers. The map prominently shows the location of a “Chinese Store” at the location of today’s Beebe Bridge State Park. The land in today’s park passed into private ownership as cash sales to Andrew Barron (1891) and J. Howard Watson (1892).

Just across the Columbia River from today’s park, near the confluence of the Chelan River with the Columbia, the map shows agricultural fields just below two springs. These were the homes of Cultus Jim and Chelan Bob (1840-1912).

The Night Water Burst from the Hillside

At 9:40 pm on December 14, 1872, a powerful earthquake jolted the area of today’s Beebe Bridge State Park. The force of the shaking caused a massive rockfall from the face of Ribbon Cliff and Earthquake Point, 15 miles downstream. Indigenous residents reported that just across the river from today’s park, “a great hole opened in the earth and a geyser was blown into the air 20 or 30 feet high. For weeks Indians came from all over the country to watch this geyser. It continued all winter but got weaker and weaker until by summer it was just a spring.”

Cultus Jim and Chelan Bob tapped the dependable spring water to irrigate their fields below, and a county auditor later recorded that between them they cultivated over 40 tons of hay each year.

Attempted Dispossession

In 1889, Alfred W. LaChapelle, an immigrant from Canada, attempted to claim the farms of Cultus Jim and Chelan Bob under the terms of the Homestead Act. LaChapelle sought to take their land by attesting that they had not received a legal allotment after the dissolution of the Moses Reservation. At LaChapelle’s request, Cultus Jim and Chelan Bob were even arrested for continuing to live in their homes, “trespassing” on the claim of LaChapelle.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs intervened in the case in defense of the two Indigenous men, and the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in their favor in May 1897, legally granting them allotments held in trust by the federal government as authorized by President Hayes’ order. LaChapelle patented a homestead in the Swanson Gulch area above Lake Chelan, setting down roots in the growing community.

Chelan Bob passed away in 1912, and some of Cultus Jim’s approved allotment was sold to the Wenatchee-Beebe Orchard Company in 1923, a transaction that required the signature of President Warren G. Harding.

Growing Fish with Spring Water

The earthquake-generated springs were a highly sought commodity in such an arid environment, and the location became the focus of a state effort to stabilize local fish populations when the Chelan State Hatchery was built to utilize the flow from the springs to raise fish for transplanting.

Today, the Chelan Hatchery continues to produce more than one million rainbow, brook, brown, cutthroat and tiger trout plus kokanee, all for stocking lowland and high lakes in the region each year.

The Beebes and the Bridge

James Beebe arrived in Washington from Massachusetts in the 1910s and began building what would become the Wenatchee-Beebe Orchard Company. He acquired water rights to a portion of the flow from the springs that would eventually take his name to irrigate apple orchards across the river from today’s park.

When the Great Northern Railroad spur was completed to Chelan Falls in 1914, the Beebe Orchards were able to sell their product into a much larger potential market and made plans to expand their operations across the river into the area of today’s Beebe Bridge State Park.

To provide sufficient irrigation water to the new orchards, the company needed to create a way to move water from the springs to their properties across the river. On February 28, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson approved a law “granting the consent of Congress to Wenatchee-Beebe Orchard Company to construct a bridge across the Columbia River at or within 4 miles northerly from the town of Chelan Falls in the State of Washington.”

Beebe Bridge, the first large suspension bridge built in Washington, was opened in October 1920, at a cost of $75,000. Purportedly, it was the largest privately-owned bridge in the world at the time. The bridge carried irrigation water from the springs in two 12-inch water flumes. The company defrayed some of the construction cost by charging tolls for public travel over the 12-foot-wide deck. The water lines were removed in 1926 as other water sources were developed, but the toll bridge continued in use until 1963. The Wenatchee-Beebe Orchard Company grew to become the largest apple grower owned by a single family. The operation included a company town that had its own post office from 1912 to 1947.

In 1959, the Washington State Department of Transportation began construction of the present continuous-steel through-truss tied-arch Beebe Bridge on US 97. The bridge piers were completed before their footings were inundated by the waters of Lake Entiat rising behind Rocky Reach Dam. The new bridge was opened to traffic in June 1963, at a cost of $1,120,000. Though the old wood suspension bridge was dismantled, the original concrete supports are still in place.

Rocky Reach Dam

Rocky Reach Dam impounds the Columbia River 30 miles downstream from Beebe Bridge State Park. Chelan County Public Utility District (PUD) oversaw construction of the dam beginning in 1956. The first seven generating units came online on November 1, 1961. Four more turbines were completed on December 1, 1971. Its 11 hydroelectric turbines provide power to residential and commercial customers throughout the Pacific Northwest. The dam’s reservoir, known as Lake Entiat, covers nearly 9,000 acres and is popular for boating and salmon, trout and bass fishing.

Prior to construction of the dam, the shorelines of the Columbia River featured sandbars, backwater channels, and widely varying water depth and velocity. Today’s reservoir is a much less diverse stretch of shallow water and reduced wildlife habitat.

In 2003, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife acquired 162 acres of former Beebe orchards to the north of Beebe Bridge. The acquisition secured water rights for the Chelan Hatchery and the possibility of enhancing wildlife habitat on land that had been intensively used for agriculture for nearly 100 years. Years of planning and restoration resulted in the establishment of the Beebe Springs Natural Area on the property in 2013. Shrub-steppe, streamside and wetland plants were reintroduced to the land. Fish habitat was recreated along Beebe Creek, flowing from the springs. Spawning spring steelhead and fall coho and Chinook salmon have returned to the area.

Making A State Park

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission required the Chelan County PUD to “arrange for the construction, maintenance and operation of recreational facilities” as a condition of approving the license for operating Rocky Reach Dam. Beebe Bridge Park was developed in the 1990s.

In 2024, the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission entered into an agreement with Chelan County PUD to begin managing camping reservations for the park in 2026 and transition to full operation of the park by 2028.