Facts & Fables_

Discover the Columbia River Gorge through a blend of fascinating facts and timeless fables...where history, nature, and storytelling meet

The Columbia River Gorge has drawn people for more than 10,000 years. Indigenous peoples built complex societies along these riverbanks, sustained by salmon runs that made the Columbia one of the most productive salmon rivers in the world. Their oral traditions offer explanations for the Gorge's dramatic features that often align with geological evidence. The Bridge of the Gods legend, for example, describes a natural land bridge that once spanned the river and later collapsed—a story that matches what scientists have confirmed about the Bonneville Landslide. The geology itself reads like myth: cataclysmic Ice Age floods that repeatedly scoured the basalt walls between 19,000 and 15,000 years ago, volcanic eruptions that built the surrounding peaks, and the slow, persistent work of the river carving deeper into the landscape over time. When European explorers arrived in the late 1700s and settlers followed in the 1800s, they added their own layers of narrative—sometimes accurate, sometimes embellished for distant audiences. Today, stories about the Gorge circulate freely, mixing genuine history with legend and pure invention.