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| Beaver Falls Splash Dam |
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| Fred Yanz photo |
Beaver Falls is now an unimproved county park along Beaver Creek in Columbia County, Oregon between Rainier and Clatskanie (on Beaver Falls Road to be exact). Before the days of roads, or even railroads one of the methods of getting timber to market was splash dam log driving. The general theory was that you built a temporary dam in a creek. Filled up the pond with logs and then broke the dam and flood of water was suppose to carry the logs down stream hopefully where the river would be large enough for them to float and then you could raft them and move them to market.
It is reported that this splash dam failed to achieve the goal of transporting the logs to market and that the logging company went broke.
The photo on the right is from a collection taken by Fred Yanz who moved into the area around 1920 and lived there the rest of his life. It clearly was not taken at the same time as the first photo as the bridge decking is in disarray in the Yanz photo. One can assume that the time lapse between the two photos wasn't a lot, but the difference in the brige is interesting. A special thanks to Mr. Yanz's grandson for making the photo available.