MM 3-42 Cape Disappointment Lighthouse

Cape Disappointment lies at the southwest tip of the state of Washington, just a stone’s throw from the state of Oregon. Way back in 2004 my wife and I attended the annual Oregon-California Trails Association (OCTA) convention which was held that year in Vancouver, Washington.  The highlight of the convention was a Lewis and Clark heritage tour to Fort Clatsop, Oregon near the mouth of the Columbia River. On the way back we visited Cape Disappointment State Park and I took this shot. It will be my entry for this week’s Monochrome Madness Challenge.

View of the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse from the North Jetty near Waikiki Beach and the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center.

Click on the photo to see a larger version of the photo.

Cape Disappointment got its name from a British sea captain and fur trader named John Meares. He was looking for the mouth of the “River of the West” but couldn’t find it and sailed back north to what would soon be known as Vancouver Island. This happened in 1788. A few years later Captain George Vancouver of the British Navy explored the area and sent a ship up the river as far as the Columbia River Gorge. The reward for discovering the river’s mouth, though, goes to an American captain named Robert Gray who got there about a year before Vancouver and named the river “Columbia” after his ship the Columbia Rediviva.

Members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition got their first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean when they reached Cape Disappointment on November 14, 1805.

The Cape Disappointment Lighthouse was constructed in 1856. It is the oldest functioning lighthouse on the west coast of the US.

Cape Disappointment is one of the foggiest places in the entire United States, averaging 106 days of fog a year.

I took this shot with my first digital camera, a Canon G2 Powershot. I’ll post some more photos, including the original uncropped color version of this photo,  from our Lewis and Clark heritage tour tomorrow.

Australian photographer Leanne Cole hosts the weekly Monochrome Madness Challenge. Visit her website on Thursdays (Wednesdays in North America and Europe) to see what photographers from all over the word are doing in monochrome these days.