Mossback's Northwest

The Columbia’s Graveyard

For European explorers, finding the Columbia River wasn’t easy, and frustrating (see Cape Disappointment). Even once they did, the place where the river joins the Pacific turned out to be anything but pacific. Thousands have died at the Columbia River’s bar and adjacent coast. Why is the river so deadly? And what evidence can you see today?

The Columbia’s Graveyard

6m 33s

  • The Mighty Columbia River: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    The Mighty Columbia River

    28m 46s

    Host Knute Berger mines the Pacific Northwest’s historical and cultural nuggets. This season's Mossback Special reintroduces viewers to the history of our region-defining Columbia River. From gigantic floods to thousands of shipwrecks to the bucolic lake in the Canadian Rocky Mountains where the journey of the Columbia River begins. “Roll on, Columbia” from a whole new perspective.

  • The Columbia: Beginning and End: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    The Columbia: Beginning and End

    S10 E8 - 7m 20s

    If finding the river’s mouth was difficult, so too was locating the river’s remote origins in British Columbia. It wasn’t followed from headwaters-to mouth by explorers until 1811. The river has been tamed by dams.  Fed by rain, ice and snowmelt, one wonders with climate change, will the Columbia “roll on” in more than song?

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