Mossback's Northwest

If finding the river’s mouth was difficult, so too was locating the river’s remote origins in British Columbia. It wasn’t followed from headwaters-to mouth by explorers until 1811. The river has been tamed by dams.  Fed by rain, ice and snowmelt, one wonders with climate change, will the Columbia “roll on” in more than song?

Who was the self-professed “Psycho” who inspired Around the World in 80 Days and vowed to beat that record and make Tacoma world-famous? He was an energetic millionaire traveler, writer and activist who believed he could make the “city of destiny” the greatest Pacific port. And he ridiculed “Seattle” by saying it rhymed with “death rattle.”

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?

A trio of weird Northwest noir stories exploring the exhumation of an infamous Seattle madam, the Olympic Peninsula murder victim who turned into a bar of soap by natural forces and the strange beachcombing horror that made world headlines: the mysterious floating feet found on the beaches of the Salish Sea.

Racism in the early outdoors movement — and among early 20th-century progressives — left a long-lasting imprint on Northwest wilderness recreation. Out & Back host Alison Mariella Désir and Mossback’s Northwest host Knute Berger look at the legacy of that phenomenon in light of new information after the airing of an episode that added to the story of an outdoor advocate.

The discovery of bones in the Columbia offered proof of the river’s ancient connections to Indigenous people, trade, and the movement of people. People thrived with salmon, declined with disease and the river was a gateway to colonization from settlers and emigrants. It has been a true lifeline for millennia.

In the early 20th century, a new breed of pioneers pushed into the Northwest wilderness with a newfangled invention: the automobile. One of those was the man who launched the Klondike gold rush, a millionaire named George Carmack.

Long before the Grand Coulee Dam changed the Columbia River, lava, glaciers and epic floods radically reshaped its course. Geology professor Nick Zentner of Nick on the Rocks joins Mossback’s Northwest host Knute Berger to discuss a surprising phenomenon that altered the river ahead of the dam-builders.