Ever Wild: A Lifetime on Mount Adams

Darryl Lloyd
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the horizon and played a prominent role in Native cultures. Yet Mount
Adams remained a mystery to non-indigenous people, because there
were no written accounts of the area until well after the mid-nineteenth
century.
It was not a mystery to Pacific Northwest tribes on both sides of the
Columbia River, who had for millennia witnessed eruptions of the St.
Helens, Adams, and Hood volcanoes (referred to as the “Guardians of the
Columbia” in John Williams’ popular 1912 book). Legends explaining the
mountains’ origins were passed down orally from generation to generation
and survive to this day. Well-worn ancient trails led to all sides of
Mount Adams, and for thousands of years, large groups of Indians trekked
to the high country for food and necessities.
The name Pátu eminently deserved to be on nineteenth-century
Anglo-American maps, but early geographers rarely considered Native
names for great peaks of the West that Euro-Americans claimed they’d
discovered. Tahoma (or Tacoma) for Mount Rainier might have been
one of the few exceptions, but unfortunately the Native name didn’t
stick.
In 1826, Canadian explorer David Thompson produced a rare map of
western North America that showed a large peak (Adams) in a range of
lower hills north of the Columbia River and the town of The Dalles. The
mountain was positioned correctly in latitude and was labeled simply as
“Mount.” When Thompson explored the Columbia River, the conical south
face of Mount Adams would have been prominent from the bluff above the
town. Sadly, it was a missed opportunity for Thompson to learn the Indian
name of the mountain and put it on the map.
The sprawling, multi-summit
Mount Adams dominates the
eastern horizon from Mount
St. Helens.