For at least the past 230 years, the Columbia River Slough has been an integral part of various commercial communities. Native Americans traded wapato from the swampy sloughs for upriver salmon and beargrass. Early white settlers logged where massive firs once rose high above the banks of the slough, first moving the logs to Portland markets and then constructing sawmills along the waterway. By the turn of the century industrialists recognized the slough’s value not only as a commercial waterway, but as a dumping ground for industrial debris. Throughout the twentieth century, the slough increasingly supported the major economic infrastructures of the Portland Metropolitan area; shipyards; the Portland International Airport; and the Port of Portland, among the most valuable U.S. west coast ports.
This section highlights the early industrial history of the Columbia Slough. To learn more about recent history on the slough at the Port of Portland, Swan Island, and the Portland International Airport, see the:
