J. Malcolm and Louise Loring, 1990 COLUMBIA GORGE INTERPRETIVE CENTER MUSEUM EXPLO RATIONS

J. Malcolm and Louise Loring, 1990 COLUMBIA GORGE INTERPRETIVE CENTER MUSEUM EXPLO RATIONS A PUBLICATION OF THE GORGE CENTER ASSOCIATES COUPLE’S FOUR-DECADE PURSUIT OF NATIVE AMERICAN ART PRESERVES TIMELESS TREASURES Authors and petroglyph experts J. Malcolm Loring and Louise Loring recently gave the Skamania County Historical Society 90 petroglyph rubbings and some 29 petroglyph replicas. These will go on exhibit in the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center when it opens in 1990. In 1971 the Oregon Historical Society presented the couple with its Annual Heritage Award recog- nizing them as Conservors of J. Malcolm Loring and Louise Loring on a petroglyph field excurstion ni 1970. Ancient Oregon Life. site, the first he had ever seen. roglyphs, pictographs and petro- More than 40 years ago, J. “The petroglyphs, carved in graphs. Petrographs are pecked Malcolm Loring was a forester red sandstone, depicted human or incised. Pictographs are based in Denver with the U. S. figures in costume with face painted with color pigments, Forest Service, Region 2.* masks. Soon, on my own,” and a petrograph includes both While on a routine trail inspec- Loring recalls, “I encountered pictographs and petroglyphs. tion in Wyoming, a colleague others and began to photograph Exact dates of these ancient showed Loring a petroglyph them.” art forms are unknown as are Thus Loring and his wife the meanings of the drawings. *Region 2 of the U.S. Forest Service con- Louise began what has become “It is generally accepted,” says sists of Colorado, eastern Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska. a four-decade commitment to Loring, “that the carving is locating, photographing and much older than the paintings. recording petroglyphs and pic- Carving, of course, lasts longer. tographs. Petroglyphs might be several “They are part of the cultur- thousand years old and the al resources left in our steward- paintings several hundred of ship,” says Loring. “Time, natu- years.” ral forces, and man already In 1946 Loring was trans- have changed, damaged and ferred to Okanogan, obliterated many. We felt an Washington, part of the Forest obligation to preserve all that Service’s Region 6. Eight years we could.” later the Lorings moved to John Loring defines the terms pet- Petroglyph; Rayed Concentric Circle Day, Oregon. There, in 1956, rayed-arcs above their heads, the couple joined the Oregon great numbers of concentric Archaeological Society. rayed-circles suggesting the Another transfer took them sun, owls, eagles (or condors), to Portland in 1960 where they big horn sheep, deer, bear track, served on an OAS committee and many objects we term whose task was to survey abstract, although they certain- Oregon petroglyphs and pic- lyhad meaning for their cre- tographs. ators. “In time,” says Mrs. Loring, “When man and his technol- “the committee dwindled to ogy discovered how to harvest just us two. We continue the the Columbia’s vast powers,” project on our own, using vaca- Grant continues, “the most tan- Petroglyph replica; Memsloon Bird tions and weekends to pursue gible records of prehistoric this engrossing challenge.” Fellow rock art expert man’s long occupation of the Loring retired from the Campbell Grant wrote the for- river gorges began to disappear Forest Service in 1963. “This ward to the Lorings’s 1982 vol- under rising water. gave us time,” says Loring, “to ume, Pictographs and “Dam after dam arose. Most experiment with photographic Petroglyphs of the Oregon destructive to rock art were The and rubbing techniques and to Country, Part 1, The Columbia Dalles, John Day, Priest Rapids, perfect our recording methods.” River and Northern Oregon. Wanapum and Rock Island be- “It also gave us time,” adds He writes: “By far the richest cause they coincide with rock- Mrs. Loring, “to track down trove of prehistoric designs on art concentrations.” known pictographs and petro- the Columbia River’s basaltic Goal of the Loring’s original glyphs and to follow up clues cliffs from Wenatchee to project was to catalog sites and about unrecorded ones.” Bonneville Dam. Especially record information on pic- From 1964 through 1967 abundant areas are those where tographs and petroglyphs locat- they traveled more than 43,000 the river narrowed to form falls ed throughout Oregon and on and rapids. both sides of the Columbia and “Examples of these sites are Snake rivers along the common the Long Narrows (or Dalles) boundaries in Washington and and Celilo Falls. Both attracted Idaho. large numbers of people “A pictograph or petroglyph because of bountiful salmon- site,” says Loring, “may be one netting opportunities. The area isolated rock face or panel, or it was a trading crossroads for may include many faces in prehistoric man, as well. close associations with one Penutian-speaking tribes who another. Usually only a few feet dominated the country created separate one from another. some of the most fascinating Along the Columbia and in northern Oegon, sites are gener- Petroglyph replica; Flying Hare pictures.” Grant describes the draw- ally small areas with the miles — searching, photograph- ings: “Large human heads and designs relatively close to one ing, and recording sites. The masks, stick men fantastic another. couple spent a good deal of “In southern Oregon, howev- time in isolated areas, some- er,” he continues, “we have fol- times seeing no one for several lowed a continuous rim for sev- days. eral miles and recorded the rim “Often,” Loring recounts, as one site.” “we left our camper early in the The Lorings’s visual records morning and returned well combine photography, rubbings after dark from sites that were or tracings, and sketches. many miles from passable Fining the best way to pho- roads.” tograph the design was a trial- Petroglyph replica; Two Chiefs and-error procedure. Eventually become reality when the Loring Loring, Louise, 1982. Loring found that color slides collection becomes part of the Pictographs and Petroglyphs produced better results than Columbia Gorge Interpretive of the Oregon County, Part. 1, black-and-white film. Center displays. The Columbia River and “As a method of supplement- Northern Oregon. ing the photographs,” Mrs. If you interesting in further I Loring, J. Malcolm and Loring explains, “we made reading, the Lorings suggest: Loring, Louise, 1983. exact replicas of many figures I Cressman, Luther S. 1937. Pictographs and Petroglyphs or series of figures by tracing Petroglyphs of Oregon. of the Oregon Country, Part 2. pictographs and rubbing petro- I Gebhard, David, 1969, Rock Southern Oregon. glyphs.” Art of Dinwoody, Wyoming. I Nesbitt, Paul Edward, 1968. In a 1970 interview in the I Grant, Campbell, 1937. Rock Petroglyphs of the Lower Oregon Journal, Loring predict- Art of the America Indian. Snake River. ed that their pursuit of petro- I Heizer, Robert F. and I Seaman, Norman G. 1946 & glyphs and pictographs would Baumhof, Martin, 1967, 1967. Indian Relics of the evolve into “a record for the Prehistoric Rock Art of Pacific Northwest. state. Someday,” he mused, Nevada and Eastern I Strong, Emory. 1959. Stone “somebody will want it. California. Age on the Columbia River. That elusive “someday” will I Loring, J. Malcolm and Columbia River Oregon traveled to the Pacific. In basaltic cinder cones completed gorge geologic the present Gorge cliffs we can construction of the Range. count 16 of the 270 flows. The second series of major cat- history When this second-from-the-last astrophies began 15,000 years ago, provides many Columbia Valley was filled by the near the end of the Ice Age, when possibilities for Crown Point basaltic lave flow an ice lobe from Canada moved streaming through the Cascades across Lake Pend Oreille and up exploration near Bull Run, the Columbia was Idaho’s Clark Fork Valley. It formed shifted to the north. There it cut a an ice dam 2,500 feet (762.5 By John Eliot Allen new next-to-the-last Bridal Veil meters) high, resulting in a lake in Professor Emeritus of Geology Canyon. Montana containing one-fifth the Portland State University The Bridal Veil deep canyon, amount of water in Lake Michigan. which lay ten miles south of the As the lake rose, and then When we examine the rock forma- present Gorge, was choked with undermined or overtopped and tions of the Columbia River Gorge 1,000 feet (305 meters) of river washed away the dam, 500 cubic we can see the story left by three sands and gravel washed down miles of water scoured across east- of the most catastrophic and cata- from Canada. ern Washington, carving out Grand clysmic series of events ever to It too was topped off by lava Coulee and hundreds of miles of occur on the North American con- flows which, during the final other now high and dry coulee val- tinent. seven million years, built up the leys. Cascade Plateau’s surface and During the next 3,000 years, The first long series of events moved the Columbia River to its new ice dams reformed and broke began 30 million years ago when present course. These thin lava between 40 and 100 times. Each Western Cascade volcanoes erupt- flows now make up the upper time the lake refilled, and calami- ed and for 12 million years built 1,000 feet (305 meters) of the cliff tous floods recurred. up a three-mile-thick (5 kilome- south of the Gorge. At The Dalles, flood water ters) pile of volcanic ash, lava, and For much of the last two mil- reached as high as 1,000 feet (305 mud flows. lion years, abundant meltwater meters); atop Crown Point, 750 feet In the lower cliffs of Table from Canadian ice sheets fed the (229 meters); and at Portland, 400 Mountain and Greenleaf Peak Columbia River, and river erosion feet (122 meters).

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