A recently completed Cowlitz Trail Project traces the series of footpaths, waterways, and early wagon roads from Fort Vancouver to Puget Sound. Used since time immemorial, this corridor connects people to food, commerce, population centers, and industry. The Commission documented this corridor of transportation through a grant from the State Department of Archeology and Historic Preservation. Local museums, historians, tribes, and the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site contributed to the project. The resulting multimedia experience includes a series of videos about how local waterways, ports, and history connect us. Some of the stories share personal, transformative experiences along the Cowlitz, Columbia, and Lewis Rivers, which weave across Cowlitz County.
The Cowlitz County Historic Preservation Commission invites you to explore the videos, maps, pictures, graphics and information in Cowlitz Trail project and learn more about the historic trails, ports, and waterways of Cowlitz County at the website: Cowlitz Trails Project
Public Educational Posters and Pamphlets
Check out four large format educational posters
Online, click on each poster to expand it across your screen, or drop by one of our upcoming events* to read it at full size.
•Southwest Washington Geology
•Across the Mountain Connections
•Settler Era
•Pacific Highway
First-person narrations, personal memories
• Saving Salmon on the Lower Columbia
• The Cowlitz at Gearhart Gardens
• The Port of Kalama, History and Future
• Boat building on the Cowlitz
• Diesel Engines on the Water
• Building a Home in 1892
• A Paddle Back in Time
• Columbia River Crisis
Visit Cowlitz Trail Project at upcoming
events, including:
Ryderwood: Celebrating 100 Years of History, July 28–30
Cowlitz County Fair, July 26–29
Castle Rock Fair, July 13–15
sQuatchFest – Jan 27–28