Coalca Redux, and More Basaltics

I can’t resist posting the entire piece: the one-page article on Coalca’s Pillar and its “legend.” Published in the Southern Pacific Company’s travel-and-booster magazine Sunset in March 1900, “Coalca’s Pillar” is the only telling I have ever seen of this tale, which features a Clackamas chief called Chelko, his daughter Nawalla, and a Molalla chief named Coalca. My inference is that this is a fabrication of ca. 1899, by author unknown; I’d love to know more about it. You might also want to see the earlier posting on Coalca’s Pillar and our once-robust fascination with basaltic plugs.

“Giant Head Rock,” somewhere in the Columbia River Gorge

“Hell’s Smoke Stacks,”better known
as the Twin Sisters, at Wallula Gap
on the Columbia

Two views of Cape Horn, the one on the Washington state side of the Columbia