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Published by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1915, this large sea-chart traces the straight reach of the Pacific Northwest shoreline from Cape Lookout, Oregon, to the bar at Grays Harbor, Washington, capturing one of the most treacherous but commercially vital stretches of the American coast on the eve of the First World War. The plate integrates more than half a century of federal fieldwork: triangulation carried out as early as the 1850s, successive hydrographic soundings, and topographic sketches that extend inland far enough to show the forested headlands, river mouths, and emerging mill towns that powered the region’s lumber and salmon trades.
Along the right margin, the beach and dune line is drawn with a continuous, sinuous delicacy, punctuated by the rocky promontories of Tillamook Head, Cape Disappointment, and Point Grenville. The entrance to the Columbia River is depicted in exacting detail, from the south jetty to the serpentine ship channel across the shifting bar; upstream, the grid of Astoria and the finger piers of its canneries are rendered at the same scale as the shoals that threatened their outbound vessels. Further north, Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor (then the centres of a booming timber export trade) are shown with dense clusters of depth figures, range lights, and tidal benchmarks, a testament to the Survey’s determination to make these once-difficult harbours safely navigable year-round.
Two large compass roses, set well offshore, orient the mariner and provide magnetic variation; subtle curving isobaths delineate the outer edge of the continental shelf; and a table of tides, heights of lights, and storm-warning stations conveys the practical information a shipmaster needed at a glance. The open expanse left across the centre of the sheet reflects the Survey’s practice of reserving space for later overprints of Notices to Mariners, ensuring that a working chart could be kept current without redrawing the shoreline.
![[ Lewis & Clark ] Carte Pour Servir au Voyage des Cap.es Lewis et Clarke, à l'Océan Pacifique](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/110922.jpg)