From Washington To You
Cape Disappointment Lighthouse on a rocky headland above the Pacific, with surf in the foreground.
Photograph by the United States Coast Guard. Public domain.

From Washington to you

Cape Disappointment

Cape Disappointment · Pacific County · Lewis reached the cape 1805

A British trader named the headland for a river he could not find. Lewis and Clark later walked it to see the Pacific.

The headland at the mouth of the Columbia was first written down in 1775, when Spanish explorer Bruno Heceta called it Bahia de La Asuncion. In 1788 British trader John Meares named it Cape Disappointment after he failed to find the river.

On November 17, 1805, Meriwether Lewis walked from the expedition's camp around Haley's Bay to the cape and some distance up the sea coast. The next day William Clark and eleven others who "wished to See more of the main Ocian" made the same trip. The National Park Service lists the cape as a High Potential Historic Site on the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. The land itself is a Washington state park, not a unit of Lewis and Clark National Historical Park.

Cape Disappointment Lighthouse was built in 1856 to mark the river mouth. NPS calls it the oldest operating lighthouse in the Pacific Northwest. An interpretive center now sits on the cliffs about 200 feet above the surf. The sources below are the National Park Service record of the cape and the Corps of Discovery's arrival.

  • Geography & Geology
  • History

Sources (3)

Last reviewed: September 20, 2026

Keep wandering

  • nearby

    Dismal Nitch

    A November 1805 storm pinned the Corps of Discovery to a rocky Washington cove for six days — Clark called it “that dismal little nitch.”

  • same arc

    Fort Vancouver

    A Hudson's Bay Company depot on the Columbia became the colonial capital of the Pacific Northwest — then an Army post.

  • nearby

    North Head Light

    The Coast Guard lists this white conical tower as first lit in 1898, with a first-order Fresnel lens, still operational and automated in 1961.

Cape Disappointment · From Washington To You