For miles the river has cut deep into the plateau, and the rocky walls glow in the sunshine or fade into opalescent shadows as twilight falls. At the foot of the canyon the green waters swirl in slow eddies or flow, smooth and turgid, in the deeper parts of the channel. At one time Beverly had a short street where in summer the dust, swept in by small-scale simoons (a hot, dry, dusty wind), was ankle deep. Here the Columbia River has chiseled a passage through the Saddle Mountains, whose bold bluffs guard both shores.
In the heyday of river navigation, this was a busy shipping point; today it is a distribution point for dairy and poultry ranches.
