Fort Stevens:
Front-Row Ocean Action-
Front-Row Ocean Action-
- Fort Stevens State ParkFort Stevens was named for General Isaac Ingalls Stevens, first Governor of Washington Territory, who died a hero of the Civil War of 1862. The fort was built in 1846 and decommissioned in 1947. Some 3000 acres of sandy waste land known as Clatsop Sand Plains were stabilized here in the 1930’s by the planting of beach grass, shrubs and trees. This park area was donated to the public by Clatsop County in 1955.
The Columbia River to the north was discovered by the American fur trader, Captain Robert Gray in 1792 and was named after his ship. Lewis and Clark, the first Americans to make an overland expedition to the Pacific Coast, camped at Fort Clatsop in 1805-06 four miles east of this point. - For military buffs, Historical Fort Stevens (military: built in 1863; Civil War to WWI to WWII). Site of a Clatsop town noted by Captain Clark. Interpretive center on military life and trails. At this former military fort you can walk through the fort ruins. From there, you can get a good look at the mouth on the Columbia and imagine what crossing the bar has meant to seafaring men over the past 200 years. You can also take a tour underground through a rare gun battery that also served as a World War II command center, ride in the back of a period military transport truck and see the fortifications from a whole new perspective, and get a feel for what the inside of a military jail was like as you walk through one of the last brick constructed guard houses in the country.
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- And see the rusted 1906 shipwreck of the Peter Iredale (pictured right; VIDEO), one of the 2000 shipwrecks of the graveyard of the pacific. Offers a spooky, memorable, sandy photo op. The fort was built to defend the mouth of the Columbia from potential British attack during the ongoing Pig War which started in 1859; and it came under attack from the Japanese during WW2. See pictures, #
- Historical Fort Stevens