Multnomah Falls is a waterfall located on Multnomah Creek in the Columbia River Gorge, east of Troutdale, between Corbett and Dodson, Oregon, United States. The waterfall is accessible from the Historic Columbia River Highway and Interstate 84. Spanning two tiers on basalt cliffs, it is the tallest waterfall in the state of Oregon at 620 ft (189 m) in height. The Multnomah Creek Bridge, built in 1914, crosses below the falls, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Look straight up the throat of it. That's the upper falls — five hundred and forty-two feet of water coming down at you off a sheer black wall. Now lean over the rail at your feet: that's the lower falls, dropping sixty-nine more beneath your boots. You're standing in the exact gap where the two meet, the whole six hundred and twenty feet stacked above and below you on one slim stone arch. Feel that cool drift on your face? That's the falls breathing on you.
This bridge is a gift inside a gift. Simon Benson — the lumberman who owned this waterfall, then handed it to the public so nobody could ever fence it off — paid in nineteen fourteen to bring stonemasons out here and hang this arch a hundred and five feet above the lower pool. The reason: so any ordinary person, you, today, could walk to the middle and look straight up at all of it. Run your hand along that cold rail and picture laying it, swinging off this cliff with nineteen-fourteen tools.
Now watch the wet rocks in the spray a minute. There's a chunky slate-gray bird that lives right here — the American dipper, the only songbird on the continent that swims. It walks straight into the whitewater, feeds along the bottom, and nests on ledges tucked behind the falling water, raising its young in the roar and the mist. See a gray bird bobbing on a wet stone? That's him, and he's the soul of this place.
Stand here a breath before you turn back. And stay put right where your boots are — because Boone Merrick has a tale about this very bridge, and it happened right here, on these boards.
Photo: John Fowler from Placitas, NM, USA · CC BY 2.0
