So, at Hill’s urging, they hired Lancaster as well as Olmstead’s son, John Olmstead, to design and create an elaborate network of scenic parks and boulevards to spruce up their city. It was a huge success, of course. The economic benefits that Seattle reaped were big, measurable, and — unlike Portland’s — lasting. Portland leaders could see what a big opportunity they’d missed. Then Washington hired Lancaster to design a system of access roads in Mount Rainier National Park, which are still legendary today — following Lancaster’s aesthetic goal of bringing visitors to beautiful scenery with roads and bridges that fit into and enhance that scenery. 
Samuel Lancaster rides in a car with others along the Columbia River Highway shortly after its completion. (Image: Oregon Historical Society)By this time Lancaster had a strong reputation as that rare creature, an engineer-artist — a Vogon poet, if you will. His projects made money, because they attracted people to see them. Meanwhile, Portland civic leaders and prominent citizens like Simon Benson and John Yeon were anxious to get even with Seattle with an even bigger, more spectacular road-and-parks project. So when railroad executive Samuel Hill and engineer Samuel Lancaster approached them to pitch a highway through the Columbia River Gorge that blended first-class engineering with magnificent, scenery-enhancing aesthetics, they got pretty excited.
THEIR TIMING WAS excellent. In addition to Oregon’s desire to score on those pesky Seattle upstarts, the Columbia Gorge was a real problem that needed to be solved. It’s hard to think of this today, but in 1913, Portland and The Dalles might as well have been across an ocean from each other. Traffic between the Willamette Valley and the east was either on a railroad train or a steamboat. Passage wasn’t cheap and the journey wasn’t easy. Everyone could see that a highway would bring great economic benefits to the region. 
Samuel Lancaster rides in a car with others along the Columbia River Highway shortly after its completion. (Image: Oregon Historical Society)Everyone also knew the tourism potential of the Columbia River Gorge would be enormous. By now, most of Portland’s wealthy swells had outfitted themselves with automobiles, and the price of Henry Ford’s Model T had plummeted as he got his factory dialed in, to the point where most Oregon families could probably afford one. But Oregon’s dry summers and famously soggy winters meant that most roads would be pretty unpleasant to drive on most of the year. So, Hill hired Lancaster at his own expense to scout a route and draw up a plan. He scouted a route that threaded past waterfalls and scenic spots like the string in a pearl necklace — a “park to park highway,” as he put it several times. The road would be specially oriented to frame picturesque vistas, and it would harmonize with the scenery in such a way that Sunday driving motorists would find themselves immersed in the scenery — actually being part of the aesthetic effect, rather than just observing it. There would be long stretches of viaduct running right along the edge of the river, elegantly arched bridges spanning gullies and cliff faces, a spectacular windowed tunnel at Mitchell Point with views out over the water. Modern reinforced-concrete bridges would be faced with rocks carefully embedded to make the whole thing look like a rustic craftsman created it. Everywhere possible, drop-offs would be protected by a rustic stone-faced concrete guardrail, to stop cars from tumbling over the edge.
There was some resistance at first. One of the county commissioners dug his heels in, demanding that the project be narrower, uglier and cheaper, and pointing to some earlier surveying work that had been done. Luckily, he was outvoted.
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There also were some property owners who didn’t want to play, or who were hoping to be paid more than their property was worth. Jennie Griswold, the owner of Multnomah Falls, demanded $50,000 for it ($1.6 million in modern currency). She settled for $5,250 after the City of Portland threatened to condemn it under Eminent Domain. In his account, C. Lester Horn tells of a Portland businessman whom he is careful not to identify by name. (I suspect it was Henry Wemme, the textile magnate who owned the first car in Portland.) But, whoever it was, he owned a business that did a lot of trade with hotels in Portland, including the Benson Hotel, owned by the highway’s number-one booster, Simon Benson. So Benson, after trying unsuccessfully to get the businessman to relent, simply canceled all his business with him. The businessman responded by promptly sending Benson a notarized easement to let the highway pass through the property. 
Samuel Lancaster rides in a car with others along the Columbia River Highway shortly after its completion. (Image: Oregon Historical Society)For the most part, though, most property owners didn’t want to be caught dragging their feet on a project that almost everyone was enthusiastically in favor of — both Portland newspapers, almost all Portland civic and business leaders, and a significant majority of Oregon taxpayers were all in. Most landowners donated an easement to the highway without even being asked to do so. Benson famously personally paid for the footbridge that crosses in front of Multnomah Falls personally. While chatting with Lancaster, Benson casually asked him how much he thought a bridge there would cost; when Lancaster came up with a figure, Benson wrote a check for it on the spot.
IF MULTNOMAH FALLS has any competition for the title of “crown jewel of the highway,” it would have to be Crown Point Vista House, which you could think of as America’s first rest area. It perches on the brow of a bluff just outside Corbett, overlooking the most spectacular part of the gorge’s big-picture scenery. It was designed by a German architect, built with cut sandstone, and features bathrooms with marble and polished mahogany walls. 
Samuel Lancaster rides in a car with others along the Columbia River Highway shortly after its completion. (Image: Oregon Historical Society)The scenic part of the highway was built between 1913 and 1915, but crews were still working on odds and ends until 1921 or so. It was, of course, a huge success, both as a conduit for freight and for tourists visiting the waterfalls. Also, it was the first paved highway in the northwest. By the 1930s, the freight hauling aspect had nearly taken over, and the highway was always clogged with heavy trucks. So engineers created a new highway along the water, designed for fast travel; this became, eventually, I-84. Meanwhile, the most scenic part of the old highway was preserved as a tourist route, so that folks could drive from park to park, the way Lancaster initially planned.
THE COLUMBIA RIVER Scenic Highway is undeniably a state treasure, although it never did achieve the Portland leaders’ goal of helping their town eclipse Seattle in West Coast prominence. What it did do, though, was set a tone in Oregon roadbuilding and especially bridgebuilding that would give the state its unique character for the rest of the 20th century and beyond.
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