The Columbia's mouth was spectacularly difficult for European navigators to locate. Spanish explorer Bruno de Heceta glimpsed the entrance in 1775 but could not investigate -- illness had thinned his crew, and the current pushed his ship back to sea. Captain James Cook sailed past in 1778 without seeing it at all, blinded by bad weather. George Vancouver dismissed it in April 1792 after a cursory look. Robert Gray, an American merchant captain, noted powerful currents in the same month but could not get in. He returned in May and finally crossed the bar on May 11, 1792, becoming the first non-native to enter the river. Gray made landfall near Chinook Point to trade with the Chinook people, who had been living and fishing along the river's banks for thousands of years. The encounter was brief and commercial -- furs changed hands -- but it formally established an American claim to the region that would shape the next century of Pacific Northwest history.

By November 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition had been traveling for seventeen months. They had crossed the Great Plains, hauled boats over the Continental Divide, and descended the Columbia's rapids on dugout canoes. Chinook Point was one of their final encampments before reaching the ocean. The corps arrived wet, cold, and running low on tradeable goods. The Chinook people they encountered were experienced traders -- middlemen in a vast network that moved goods between coastal and interior tribes -- and they drove hard bargains. Clark noted the dampness, the persistent rain, and the fleas. The expedition did not linger. They crossed the river to the Oregon side shortly afterward, eventually building Fort Clatsop for the winter. But Chinook Point marked the moment when westward travel became a matter of yards rather than miles, when the Pacific was close enough to taste in the salt air.

The military came late to Chinook Point. A reservation was established in 1864 as part of broader coastal defense planning, but nothing much was built. Decades passed. Then 1898 brought two simultaneous anxieties: the Spanish-American War and a simmering boundary dispute with Britain over Alaska. Suddenly, the mouth of the Columbia River -- the Pacific Northwest's main artery to the sea -- looked vulnerable. Fort Columbia went up fast. Three artillery emplacements were installed between 1897 and 1900, positioned to command the river's approach. Thirteen buildings followed in 1902, creating a compact military post on the hilly promontory. The feared attacks never came. No Spanish cruiser tested the guns, no British warship challenged the passage. The fort served through both World Wars but saw no combat, its batteries pointed at an enemy that remained theoretical. By the time the military decommissioned the site, the guns were obsolete and the geopolitical threats had shifted to places far from the Columbia's mouth.

Chinook Point was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961, recognition that its significance lies not in any single event but in the accumulation of them. Fort Columbia State Park now occupies the headland, preserving the 1902-era military buildings, the gun emplacements, and the views that drew Gray, Lewis, Clark, and the Army in turn. The park is part of Lewis and Clark National Historical Park, a network of sites stretching from the Oregon coast to the hills above the Columbia. Walking the trails at Chinook Point, you pass through coastal forest to clearings where artillery once pointed downriver. Below, the Columbia slides past -- the same river the Chinook people fished, Gray entered, and Lewis and Clark descended. The headland itself is modest, a hilly bump on the river's north bank, easy to overlook from the water. Perhaps that is fitting for a place whose story is about what people saw -- or failed to see -- when they looked at the mouth of the greatest river in the West.