The Willamette River Ghost Ship
Posted: 07.14.2024 | Updated: 07.14.2024
As rain paints the mountainous slopes just south of Eugene, Oregon, trickling waters flow into the near-200 mile-long Willamette River. The river is a fixture of Oregon, once serving a practical purpose that helped some of the state’s busiest cities blossom and thrive. While trade up and down the river is mostly just a memory these days, its past continues to cut through the waters, its ethereal form just barely visible in the light of a full moon. Though the dead may still traverse the waters, Willamette is a place of life. Crops grow off its banks, awaiting harvesting and distribution across the country. Further north, the river cuts through Portland, dividing the city in half before eventually emptying into the Columbia River. You can admire the stretch of waterway from the city’s shores or at key points along the way. It’s at these lookouts and vantage points that the Willamette comes into full view, and where, on calm nights when the moon casts its glow against the shimmering waters, you may spot a spectral ship sailing the river’s great length.The Willamette River has seen each of Oregon’s many milestones, from its first settlers to its induction into the United States. All those memories and the darker, morbid pieces of history locals may often try to skirt around remain preserved within the river, occasionally making themselves known to hapless passersby.Why is the Willamette River Haunted?
You may be used to hearing about spooky churches or psychically charged abandoned hospitals, but a haunted river? As a conductive substance, it’s believed water can serve as a flowing current of the dead, offering them a seemingly endless source of energy to manifest as they please. Could that be what allows the Ghost Ship of the Willamette to appear to observers? Discover haunted tales like these and more on a thrilling ghost tour with Portland Ghosts!Developing Along the Willamette River
For generations, Native American tribes had direct access to the flowing waters of the Willamette. Disinterested in changing its landscape, they used it to source salmon and travel between segments of the long waterway. For over 10,000 years, tribes like the Yamhill, Tualatin, and Santiam resided within the Willamette Valley, making use of the river’s resources while having a limited impact on the ecosystem. That changed during the mid-17th century when Euro-American colonies spread across the otherwise pure land. As these pockets of settlers made their homes in the Willamette Valley, the river started to change. By 1873, commercial and industrial traffic required alterations to the river, opening it up further for various vessels. Steam-powered “snag-pullers” cleared the river of its obstructions, allowing a clear pathway for wheat transports.Unfortunately, the presence of a more modern civilization presented challenges that diminished the purity of Willamette. The budding river cities dump waste in the valley’s waters, a practice that continued well into Portland’s contemporary age. For nearly a decade in the mid-1900s, Willamette steamed with toxic waste, resulting in hauls of dead fish and an increasingly troubling ecosystem.The Flood of 1964
In the 21st century, decades after the Willamette was deemed polluted to a dangerous degree, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initiated remediation to clean up the river. More than 40 years before the cleanup began, though, the Willamette River sent a message to the people of Oregon, warning them against their carelessness. Already prone to flooding, exceptionally heavy rainfall and rising temperatures caused the river to experience a 100-year flood event in December 1964. The rushing waters caused over $71 million in damages, devastating crops and livestock across the valley. Portland’s industrial and commercial complex suffered significant losses while the water took hundreds of homes in Salem. By the time the flooding had quelled, upwards of 18 people had died, lost to angry waters. Was it only the river showing its rage that holiday season? Or could there have been another presence responsible for the tragedy? Perhaps the Indigenous tribes were pushed from their land or, possibly, even the crew of the infamous and haunting Ghost Ship of the Willamette. A shadow moves along the river, occasionally caught by keen and perceptive eyes and identified as a lost vessel. The ship’s origins remain a mystery, though at least one potential culprit takes us back to just over 100 years before the flood.The Tragedy of the Gazelle
Before the modernization of the Willamette Valley, steamboats sailed up and down the river, ferrying supplies between the isolated villages. On April 8, 1854, in the settlement of Canemah, which now sits at the southern edge of Portland, a crew was loading supplies onto the Gazelle. Just as the sun started to bathe the valley in its morning glow, a pair of boilers in the steamboat exploded. Sixty workers were aboard the boat as it burst into flames. In the aftermath of the tragic incident, 24 were found dead and succumbed to the fire and initial blast. Nearly everyone who wasn’t killed suffered significant injuries. Among the many casualties, one man was known to have escaped: Chief Engineer Moses Toner. According to the coroner’s jury, Toner was responsible for the explosion. They blamed his negligence for over-filling the vessel and failing to keep the boilers filled with enough water to keep them from oveheating. Witnesses of the incident claimed to have seen someone escaping the Gazelle moments before the disaster—Moses Toner himself. The chief engineer never faced the reality of that morning, as he was believed to have escaped Oregon before he could be apprehended and prosecuted.The Gazelle’s Ghost?
One could reason that the Willamette River Ghost Ship is none other than the Gazelle, manned by the 24 ghostly individuals who never again stepped off the steamboat. However, boating accidents and deaths aren’t uncommon along the Oregon waterway. Witnesses of the ghost ship describe hearing an old-timey foghorn or seeing a silhouette of a shadowed vessel hidden within the dense fog. There’s only one real way to identify the infamous ship, and that’s by seeing it yourself. After embarking on your Portland ghost tour and hearing of the city’s mischievous specters and pesky poltergeists, stop along the Willamette River and see the ethereal ship making way. Be sure to follow our blog for more Portland haunts and catch up on your West Coast apparitions by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Sources:https://www.willamettevalley.org/indigenous-communities/https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/willamette_river/https://www.outdoorproject.com/articles/brief-history-willamette-riverhttps://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/willamette_flood_1964_/https://offbeatoregon.com/1307c-boiler-explosions-in-willamette-steamboats.htmlhttps://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/gazelle_disaster/Book A Portland Ghosts Tour And See For Yourself
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