Beacon Rock - Skamania, Washington
Posted by: 
Hikenutty
N 45° 37.729 W 122° 01.297
10T E 576263 N 5053273
Beacon Rock, named by Lewis and Clark, was formed between 12 and 15 thousand years ago when the Missoula Floods eroded away the softer outer material leaving visible the harder olivine basalt plug that Beacon Rock is composed of.
Waymark Code: WM1GWC
Location: Washington, United States
Date Posted: 05/06/2007
Views: 66
The following excerpt is from
Washington: A Guide to the Evergreen State and can be found in driving tour 3.
BEACON ROCK (L), 68.8 m., with fluted, almost perpendicular sides of columnar lava that rise about 900 feet from the edge of the river, is the second largest monolith in the world. Its summit is strewn with great blocks of red cinder and cloaked with stunted, deformed trees. From the entrance, a trail winds upward in zigzag fashion, leading over precarious-looking wooden bridges to the top of the conical-shaped rock. A defiant challenge to climbers, its "inaccessible" heights were conquered in 1901, when the banner of a Columbia River steamship company was raised as an advertising stunt. p. 405
Between 12 and 15 thousand years ago the Missoula Floods eroded away the softer outer material leaving visible the harder olivine basalt plug that Beacon Rock is composed of. It rises 840 feet above the Columbia river and has a trail (with handrails) leading to its top. The wooden bridges mentioned in the excerpt have been replaced with safer metal ones, although some of the railings and metal bridges are original ones from when the trail was in its early years.
The first Caucasians to see and name the rock were Lewis and Clark. They named the rock "Beaten Rock" on their trip down river, appropriate considering how the rock we see today looks this way thanks to the beating it took from the Missoula floods. On the way back up they renamed it "Beacon Rock". It was at this point that the expedition first noted tidal influences on the Columbia river.