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History

Mossback's Northwest

The Columbia’s Graveyard

True tales from the most interesting place on earth.

The Columbia’s Graveyard

Season 10 Episode 6 | 6m 33s | CC

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?

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Mossback's Northwest

Watch more episodes

Mossback's Northwest

The Columbia: Beginning and End

Locating the Columbia River’s remote origins in British Columbia proved difficult.

Mossback's Northwest

Ice, Fire and Those Dam Floods

Lava, glaciers and epic floods reshaped the Columbia River before the Grand Coulee Dam.

Mossback's Northwest

Horseless Carriages, Ho!

Pioneers navigated the Northwest wilderness with a newfangled invention: the automobile.

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