Beacon Rock.

It was a signpost for the Corps of Discovery as they headed to the Pacific. Today it is a marker but with a different meaning. This rock stands just below the Bonneville Dam, the most downstream obstruction of more than 200 in the whole Columbia River basin. The water that runs in every stream or creek that drains some quarter million square miles of watershed passes by this sentinel. It drives the turbines that light the west. It irrigrates the grain fields and fruit orchards. It floats the barges that carry the raw materials. It flushes our waste and spurts from the drinking fountains in our playgrounds. It is the highway for the salmon fry bound for the saline of the sea and the adult runs returning to spawn and die. From Beacon Rock it is 140 miles to the Pacific. Roll on, Columbia.