History
The story of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area and the Columbia River Gorge Commission began long before Congress passed the National Scenic Area Act.
Indigenous peoples have stewarded the lands and waters of this region since time immemorial. In the early 1900s, people in Oregon and Washington began talking more about how the land in the Columbia River Gorge should be managed. Some of these early ideas and reports are saved at the Oregon Historical Society.
In the 1950s, both Oregon and Washington created their own versions of a Columbia River Gorge Commission. These two commissions gave advice on planning and set legal boundaries for the areas they covered. The commissions worked closely together and shared staff.
In the 1980s, the commissions and their staff played a big role in helping to create the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area and the bi-state Gorge Commission.
There were several federal bills between 1981 and 1986 that differed in their approaches to managing land in the Columbia River Gorge. The final bill created the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. It also gave Oregon and Washington the power to work together through an interstate agreement to form the new bi-state Gorge Commission and established a structure of co-management of the National Scenic Area involving the federal government, the new bi-state Gorge Commission, states, counties, and tribal governments.
If you want to learn more about how the law was created, a detailed article was published in 1987 in Environmental Law, a journal published by Lewis and Clark Law School. The article is called, “The Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area: The Act, Its Genesis and Legislative History,” by Bowen Blair Jr. You can find it on many legal or academic websites, or in public, university, and law school libraries.
Many of the Pacific Northwest senators and representatives who worked on this law in the 1980s have donated their papers to local libraries. These collections include original notes and documents about the National Scenic Area. An internet search will help you locate these collections.