Walk a living, earth-covered span where the Klickitat Trail once ran to the Columbia — a Confluence Project landmark crowned by Lillian Pitt's Welcome Gate, with the heir of what's believed to be the region's oldest apple tree waiting at the far end.
You are standing at the north landing of the Vancouver Land Bridge, an earth-covered walkway arcing over the highway. For a century, rail and road severed these village lands from the Columbia; this bridge, dedicated in two thousand eight, re-stitches the old Klickitat Trail down to the river. Architect Johnpaul Jones designed it for the Confluence Project, with Maya Lin, the project's lead artist, consulting. The climb passes native prairie, forest, and wetland plantings; at the crest, Lillian Pitt's Welcome Gate holds cast-glass faces watching the river again. If you cross, the far landing is Old Apple Tree Park. The story goes its namesake tree grew from seeds carried west from a London dinner party. Planted around eighteen twenty-six and believed to be the Pacific Northwest's oldest apple tree, it died in twenty twenty at about one hundred ninety-four. From the same roots, a genetically identical heir is growing.