Samuel C. Lancaster

Robert W. Hadlow, Columbia River Highway Historic District, National Historic Landmark Nomination

[Sam] Hill proclaimed his gospel to more influential groups, including the University of Washington Board of Regents. In 1907, he convinced its members to establish a highway engineering curriculum at the University with Lancaster as its chair. The position was the first of its type in the country, and interestingly, Lancaster was one of three faculty members without any collegiate credentials, and a full professor at that!

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Lancaster was one of 52 professors, associate professors, and assistant professors at the University of Washington. He was one of three who had no collegiate credentials. Many lecturers and instructors held no college degrees.

As part of his plan, Lancaster employed the “Lying Lightly on the Land” philosophy a decade before the term had been coined and before the National Park Service had put the policy in place.

Clarence E. Mershon, East of the Sandy: The Columbia River Highway

Certainly, part of Lancaster's inspiration to build such a magnificent highway resulted from a visit to Europe in 1908 with Samuel Hill, Major Henry L. Bowlby and Reginald H. Thomson, Seattle Parks Department Commissioner. Both Bowlby and Lancaster were on the staff at the University of Washington, participants in its new highway engineering program. Lancaster had completed Lake Washington Boulevard in Seattle for Thomson the previous year. Hill, past-president of the American Roadbuilders Association and a visionary with a passion for good roads, took Lancaster and Bowlby to the First International Roadbuilders Congress in Paris, to which Hill was a delegate.

The group took an opportunity to view some of the outstanding highways on the continent.

Their tour took them along the Rhine River, where, between Koblenz and Wiesbaden, they viewed the Ruedesheim Burg. This castle overlooks terraced vineyards supported by dry masonry walls built on the steep slopes above the Rhine. These stone walls, built during the era of Charlemagne, became the inspiration for the rock walls of the Columbia River Highway.

In Italy the group found Italian workmen who continued to practice the rock-laying skills of that earlier era.

A visit to Switzerland took them to the famed Axenstrasse and its three-windowed tunnel carved through solid rock that provided an outstanding view of Switzerland's Lake Lucerne and the mountains surrounding the lake. Certainly, this model provided the inspiration for the five-windowed tunnel at Mitchell Point.

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In making his original survey, starting in the fall of 1913, Lancaster described as a "brilliant engineer with the soul of a poet," clambered through the forest, beneath the palisades, along the precipices and around the natural buttresses of the Gorge. He found himself surrounded by unsurpassed beauty. After the highway was completed, he remarked: "My love for the beautiful is inherited from my mother. When I made my preliminary survey here and found myself standing waist-deep in ferns, I remembered my mother's long ago warning, 'Oh, Samuel, do be careful of my Boston fern.' And I then pledged myself that none of the wild beauty should be marred where it could be prevented. The highway was so built that not one tree was felled, not one fern crushed, unnecessarily."

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Completion of the work [on the CRH] brought national and international attention and honors to Samuel C. Lancaster, Consulting Engineer in charge of its design and execution. A plaque at Crown Point honors Lancaster with these words:

"Samuel C. Lancaster, 1864-1941. Chief Engineer, Scenic Columbia River Highway 1913-1915. Pioneer Builder of Hard-Surface Roads. His Genius Overcame Tremendous Obstacles, Extending and Replacing The Early Trail Through The Columbia River Gorge With A Highway Of Poetry And Drama So That Millions Could Enjoy God's Spectacular Creations."

"In order to have all of these counties act in unison and the work done to one standard it was thought best to have Multnomah County take the lead and place the surveys and location of the entire highway under the supervision of the State Highway Commission, the writer having been retained by Multnomah County as consulting engineer and by the State Highway Commission as assistant highway engineer."

Clarence E. Mershon, East of the Sandy: The Columbia River Highway

In the forward of his book, The Columbia, America's Great Highway (1915), Lancaster pays tribute to Sam Hill:

"Who loves this country and brought me to it. Who showed me the German Rhine and Continental Europe. Whose kindness made it possible for me to have a part in planning and constructing this great highway.

There is a time and place for every man to act his part in life's drama and to build according to his ideals.

God shaped these great mountains round about us, and lifted up those mighty domes into a region of perpetual snow.

He fashioned the Gorge of the Columbia, fixed the course of the broad river, and caused the crystal streams both small and great, to leap down from the crags and sing their never ending songs of joy.

Then He planted a garden, men came and built a beautiful city close by the wonderland. To some He gave great wealth – to every man his talent, - and when the time had come for men to break down the mountain barriers, construct a great highway of commerce, and utilize the beautiful, which is 'as useful as the useful,' He set them to the task and gave to each his place.

I am thankful to God for His goodness in permitting me to have a part in building this broad thoroughfare as a frame to the beautiful picture which He created."

In the "Preface" to his book, Lancaster states:

"While engaged as Consulting Engineer in fixing the location and directing the construction of the Columbia River Highway from Portland east through the Cascade Range in Multnomah County, Oregon, I studied the landscape with much care and became acquainted with its formation and its geology. I was profoundly impressed by its majestic beauty and marveled at the creative power of God, who made it all.

"The ever changing lights and shadows from morning until night made pictures rare and beautiful, which always charmed me... As I climbed about the steep slopes of the mountains, where in places it was necessary to use ropes for safety, I thought of the many hardships endured by the early explorers when they came into Oregon country.

"To every man who had a part in the construction of the Columbia River Highway through the Cascade Mountains to the sea; from the humblest laborer, to the Governor of the Great State of Oregon, I say with all my heart, 'I thank you for the help you gave; we could not have succeeded without you.'"

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