On October 19, 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition's first leg of their canoe voyage down the Columbia River on the western side of the Rocky Mountains took them “S.W. 14 miles to a rock... resembling a hat.” Such a casual note hardly does justice to this hundred foot tall igneous rock formation. The surrounding rock crumbled away more than ten thousand years ago in repeated floods during the last Ice Age, leaving the twelve million year old basalt plug to tower over the surrounding land.

The terrain around Hat Rock consists of desert hills and basalt cliffs, not the coastal rainforest normally associated with Oregon. A thriving fishing industry kept numerous native villages busy, with thousands living along the banks of the Columbia River. When the expedition visited, the Walla Walla tribe had stored over 10,000 pounds of dried salmon as trade goods.

Today, Hat Rock State Park sits on the south shore of Lake Wallula in Oregon and offers numerous picnicking, boating, and fishing spots, as well as a connection to the Lewis and Clark Memorial Trail. Water covers most of the Lewis and Clark sites along the Columbia River, though Hat Rock still rises above Lake Wallula, which swallowed most of the Lewis and Clark sites after the completion of the McNary Dam in 1954.

Researched, written, and narrated by University of West Florida Public History Student Richard Adams.