The Vista House with a view

CORBETT, Ore. – It’s a cupola, a rotunda, a crown sitting on Crown Point.

The Vista House at Crown Point State Park – just east of Corbett and 24 miles east of Portland in the Columbia River Gorge – was built 88 years ago for $100,000, and refurbished during the past five years for $4 million.

“That was big money back then (1918),” says Sally King, an assistant manager with Friends of Vista House, the volunteer group that keeps the architectural wonder humming along.

“They called it the $1 million outhouse,” she says, acknowledging the $900,000 exaggeration. “Now, they call it the $4 million outhouse.”

Of course she’s kidding.

Although it does have bathrooms, most motorists wending their way east on the twisting, turning, tree-shaded Historic Columbia River Highway stop for more than that.

They stop for the view.

They stop to gaze at the mighty Columbia and the verdant forests and ridges that cover everywhere you look.

Crown Point, designated as a National Natural Landmark in 1971, is a basalt promontory shaped by the same volcanic lava flows, floods and winds that created the breathtaking gorge.

Vista House, also known as “the jewel atop Crown Point,” is a 55-foot-high structure originally built between 1916 and 1918 as a memorial to Oregon pioneers who made their way along the mighty Columbia.

It was constructed after the old gorge thoroughfare, U.S. Highway 30 – now known as the Historic Columbia River Highway – was completed in 1916.

The octagonal stone structure, which sits 733 feet above the river, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

But its place atop Crown Point for almost nine decades left it exposed to inclement weather and desperately in need of repair. Without extensive renovation, it would not last, according to a mid-1990s study.

After a grassroots fundraising campaign, spearheaded by the Oregon State Parks Trust and the Friends of Vista House, that raised about half of the needed money, Multnomah County came up with the rest. The Vista House then closed in 2001 and reopened last summer.

The renovation replaced some of the rotunda’s aging gray sandstone, restored the roof to its original surface of matte-glazed green tiles and the windows to their original barred and opaque stained glass, among other repairs.

The structure, designed by Edgar Lazarus, was built as an “isle of safety to all visitors who wish to look on that matchless scene,” according to the highway’s chief engineer of the time, Samuel Lancaster, who suggested the name Vista House.

Standing on its balcony and looking east, you can watch swallows soaring above the waters of the Columbia River. Cars and RVs look as tiny as ants on Interstate 84 below. And the green forests and ridges on both the Oregon and Washington sides of the river are visible.

Looking west, you see the islands in the middle of the Columbia and smoke billowing from smokestacks near Camas, Wash.

Inside Vista House, the original Tokeen Alaska marble used to surface the floors and stairs is still under your feet as you descend to ground level or the basement below.

In the basement, you’ll find picture boards filled with history, a plastic bank filled with donations of $1 bills, a gift shop and a cafe.

There are photographs that show the Vista House and surrounding sights between 1912 and 2003.

While Crown Point is situated at the western end of the highway, there are many other sights to behold on a 13-mile stretch – between Corbett and Dodson – heading east.

There are Latourell Falls, Shepperds Dell, Bridal Veil Falls, the city of Bridal Veil, Wahkeena Falls, Multnomah Falls, Oneonta Gorge, Horsetail Falls and Ainsworth State Park.

By far, the most spectacular attraction, of course, is Multnomah Falls. The nation’s second-highest year-round waterfall drops 620 feet.

And although you can get there without passing the Vista House, by taking I-84 past the Corbett exit, it’s not recommended here that you do so.

As Lancaster, the engineer, profoundly said all those years ago, Crown Point was the ideal site for “an observatory from which the view up and down the Columbia could be viewed in silent communion with the infinite.”