In the early 1900s, the U.S. Corps of Engineers ignored Beacon Rock as a scenic wonder but saw it as potential rubble for forming jetties near Astoria, Ore. By 1914, they’d chiseled tunnels in and around the rock. A Clark County man born in Philadelphia, Henry J. Biddle (1862-1928), stood in the hard place between the rock and the corps.
Beacon Rock is the core of an ancient, eroded volcano. The Indigenous peoples called the behemoth Che-che-op-tin. In his book “Beacon Rock,” Biddle described finding totems there suggesting perhaps the first peoples held it sacred. He noted no evidence exists they climbed the rock or lit fires atop it for signaling.
On the foul and cloudy morning of Oct. 31, 1805, William Clark journaled about the feature, calling it Beaten Rock. On the expedition’s way back in 1806, Meriwether Lewis corrected the name to Beacon Rock. But names for the rock came and went like the tide. The Astor expedition in 1811 called it Inshoack Castle. When Presbyterian missionary Samuel Parker passed through the area in 1835, he heard it called Pillar Rock. The map in the report filed by the Wilkes expedition in 1841 labeled it Castle Rock, which seems to have stuck until Biddle’s purchase. Within a year of his ownership, the U.S. Board of Geographic Names fixed the name as Beacon Rock.
In the interim, the 848-foot-high column attracted climbers, the first in 1901. Frank J. Smith and two other men made the ascent. Others followed using the spikes and ropes left behind, including Mrs. Frank J. Smith, the first woman to conquer the peak. In 1914, a group of 47 climbed the rock. Portlander Clarence Peddicord, blinded by an explosion, did the climb in 1938 walking Biddle’s trail with his seeing-eye dog.
