In 1792 the Yankee seaman Captain Robert Gray crossed the bar guarding the Columbia River and entered the broad bay within its mouth, a feat greatly furthered American claims to the land that became Washington. Late in 1805 the Lewis and Clark expedition arrived at the river mouth. Five summers later, Bostonian traders Nathaniel and Abiel Winship opened an abortive fur-trading station at Oak Point, 40 miles upriver from today's Astoria. The following year New York John Jacob Astor founded the Pacific Fur Company, which he signed over to the Canadian North West Company in 1813. It, in turn, was forcefully amalgamated to the Hudson's Bay Company in 1821. Four years later Fort Vancouver opened at a new location 75 miles upriver from Astoria and on the opposite bank of the Columbia. It became the headquarters of a trading empire that reached as far north as Alaska. East of the Rockies the forty-ninth parallel had already been established as the boundary between the United States and Canada. Extending that line west, however, would bisect the Columbia River and, rather than accept that, British and American interests agreed to joint occupation of what is now Washington and British Columbia. In 1846, however, land south of the forty-ninth parallel became American.

    Seven years later, settlers gained enough strength to establish Washington as a territory separate from Oregon (although few non-native people were living here at the time). A gold rush in California created insatiable San Francisco demand for Willapa Bay oysters and lumber, and subsequent rushes in the northeastern Washington, Idaho, and British Columbia brought miners through the region. Some returned and settled down. Subsistence farming augmented by logging and fishing sustained the economy.

    By the 1880s gillnetting, seining, and fishtrap operations on the lower Columbia produced annual salmon catches of 30-40 million pounds, which fed the clanking machinery of 39 canneries. By that time Portland, Oregon had grown large enough to provide summer tourists for the 28 miles of sand beaches west of Willapa Bay, and resorts form simple camps to elaborate hotels dotted the Long Beach Peninsula. Tourism continues today, as do fishing and, to a lesser extent, logging.

    Like an incredible thumb of forests, wild beaches, deep river valleys, and ice mountains, the Olympic Peninsula holds onto the sense of isolation that made it one of the last regions in the nation to be homesteaded. No road linked the communities of its lowland perimeter until completion of US 101 in 1932, and no electricity reached places like the Hoh Valley until the late 1960s.

    In 1792, while exploring for England, George Vancouver wrote: "To describe the beauties of this region will, on some feature occasion, be a very grateful task to the pen of a skilled panegyrist." By his time, Spanish mariners had already raised the cross of possession on the peninsula beaches and built a short-lived fort at Neat Bay. Sixteen years after Vancouver, a Russian Expedition sailed from Sitka, Alaska, looking for a suitable place to establish a colony on the Washington Coast, but their ship wrecked near LaPush and their plan was never implemented.

    On today's peninsula Native American villages still resound with the rhythms of ages-old drumbeat and songs as well as with the blare of compact disc players and the throb of diesel fishing-boat engines and outboard motors. gigantic half burned stumps--and modern clearcuts--stand as monuments to the conquering of the forest in favor of farms and profits, and fish runs are regulated by a host on interacting agencies and tribes. Even so, logging and fishing still provide the region's economic lifeblood, now augmented by recreation.

    Olympic National Park is listed as both a World Heritage Site and an International Biosphere Reserve, and a 5-mile floating bridge across Hood Canal turns yesterday's remoteness into today's respite from city pressures.