The Columbia River bar is a fierce, yet beautiful body of water, spanning across Oregon and Washington. With over 2000 shipwrecks reported since 1792, it is also known as “The Graveyard of the Pacific.”
In 1855, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began the construction of a jetty system, as a means to tame the dangerous ocean currents from the Pacific.
Oregon filmmakers Brett Eichenberger and Jill Remensynder’s new documentary “Taming the Mouth,” chronicles this history and how it reverberates today on this vital waterway in our region.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Geoff Norcross: This is Think Out Loud. I’m Geoff Norcross. Charles Wilkes, a commander in the U.S. Navy, once wrote, “Mere description can give little idea of the terrors of the bar of the Columbia River, one of the most fearful sights that can possibly meet the eye of the sailor.” The Columbia Bar is a system of sand and shoals where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean. It is exceedingly hazardous and hard to navigate. There are over 2000 shipwrecks in the vicinity of the bar that we know of. There’s a new documentary film about the treachery of the Columbia Bar and the attempts to tame it. It’s called “Taming the Mouth.” Brett Eichenberger is the director and the founder of Resonance Productions in the Portland area. Jill Remensnyder is a producer and writer on the film, and they join me now in the studio. Welcome to Think Out Loud. It’s good to have you.
Brett Eichenberger: Thanks for having us.
Jill Remensnyder: Thanks for having us.
Norcross: Let’s start with a clip from the film, and it gets kind of at the danger of the place. Let’s hear that first.
Speaker 1: This is the most dangerous bar in the world. That’s why it’s called the graveyard of the Pacific. There are more than 2,000 shipwrecks within 50 miles of where we’re sitting right now.
Speaker 2: Here at the museum, we marked over 2,000 wrecks on our large wall map that have happened on the Columbia River Bar and even to this day, it’s all the modern technology that’s available and weather warnings, it’s still a very dangerous place for mariners.
Speaker 3: From the first recorded crossing in 1792 to the present day, the Columbia River Bar has claimed hundreds of vessels and lives, leaving behind a legacy of wreckage and warning.
Norcross: Brett, how did you balance the beauty of the Columbia River with the destructiveness of it when telling this story?
Eichenberger: That’s a great question, Geoff. We kind of let the camera do the talking. I mean, growing up here in Oregon and being familiar with this region, we went out there and we took what Mother Nature gave us. And I think that the beauty of it is deceiving because it lulls you in, it pulls you in, it hypnotizes you, and I think that especially, how storms will roll in unannounced, and we talk about that in the film, there’s definitely a deception that is involved in the Columbia River Bar.
Norcross: Can you talk about the practical challenges of filming in such a treacherous place?
Eichenberger: It’s funny because we kept praying and hoping for poor weather because we needed it and for whatever reason during the two years that we’re producing and shooting this documentary, we got some incredible weather and some calm seas and you’ll see some of the calmest Pacific Ocean you’ll ever see in this documentary.
And so we were on call for storms and king tides, if you will. So that was a little bit of a challenge to get, we just didn’t really have some of the classic windstorms and crazy storms that you’re used to in the Pacific Northwest. We just didn’t really get them like we needed them to tell the story properly. Fortunately, we were able to get them towards the tail end of production.
Norcross: Oh, well, that’s lucky.
Eichenberger: Yeah.
Norcross: So what is your understanding of why this place is so hard to navigate and so treacherous and so destructive?
Eichenberger: Basically, what it comes down to is there’s no delta, and the Columbia River goes right into the Pacific Ocean.
Norcross: It doesn’t spread out. It’s like a channel that goes right into the ocean.
Eichenberger: Exactly. It just doesn’t slow down. And that moves sediment fast and it builds sediment up, which means that they’re constantly dredging, and we talked about this in the film. And so that just really creates an area there in that bar that is always changing, hard to navigate. And I don’t think a lot of people know that the big ships, the cargo ships that are going in and out of the bar have to be piloted by a bar pilot.
Norcross: Yeah.
Eichenberger: These captains are not able to take their ships in and out of the Columbia River.
Norcross: These are pilots that board these ships and their one job is to navigate through this area.
Eichenberger: Yeah.
Norcross: OK. Jill, you grew up in Seaside, Oregon. What stories did you grow up hearing about the Columbia Bar and the mouth of the Columbia and how treacherous it was?
Remensnyder: I had a lot of classmates and friends who either, they themselves would go out fishing or they had fathers that would fish or shrimp or crab. So I would hear stories growing up. And some of them – gosh, in second grade, I had a friend whose, she and her father were on a sailboat that started to go down in the Columbia, and right there in the mouth, and I want to say it was actually on the National Enquirer. It actually made that news.
So, I’ve heard these stories. I’ve been aware of the danger my whole life. But I will say, and I’m embarrassed to say, I didn’t fully understand what the jetties were and what their purpose was. I just took them for granted, just thought they were this naturally occurring pile of rocks, for lack of a better term.
Norcross: OK, and we’ll talk more about the jetties and more of the efforts to try to tame the bar a little bit later on. But I’d like to get a little bit more into personal history of the Columbia Bar, and you bring a lot of examples into the film of people who feel and live there and have observed the stories throughout their entire lives. Let’s hear a little bit more of that.
Randall Sullivan: I’ve been hearing stories of the Columbia River Bar since I was a young boy. In fact, the first one I ever heard was from my father who was in the merchant marine as a young man. And said that the most frightening moment he ever had aboard a ship was the first time they crossed the Columbia Bar. I could hear the fear in his voice, and he rarely showed fear of anything. First time I remember reading the newspaper, a crab boat called The Mermaid needed to be rescued and three Coast Guard boats were involved in that rescue. There was something about reading all these guys who were like in their twenties, they were young men who died out there heroically.
Norcross: That’s Randall Sullivan, who is the author of “The Graveyard of the Pacific,” one of the experts in a new documentary called “Taming the Mouth.” It was made by director Brett Eichenberger and writer and producer Jill Remensnyder. Brett, can you talk more about the personal stories of the Columbia bar that you uncovered in the making of this film?
Eichenberger: Yes, and a lot of those stories just came from Randall Sullivan, who we just heard. And then we were able to talk to some of the community members, Dan Todd is someone that we feature in the film who talks about how they had 110,000 pounds of fish on board and they started taking on water. What was interesting was how many people we weren’t able to feature that had had issues with the bar, and we’re talking about year-round.
In fact, during the production of this film, there was a father and son who were in a small craft crossing the bar. I believe it was in July or August of 2025, and they succumbed to the bar. So we were constantly hearing stories of people who said things from, “I almost lost my life,” to “I’ll never cross the bar again,” to “I’ve never been so seasick.” But very rarely did we hear stories of people who said, “Oh yeah, it was fine.”
Norcross: Yeah.
Eichenberger: And we talked about this in the documentary as well. There was this guy who came from the East Coast. He talks about, oh, yeah, yeah, the Columbia Bar, I’ve heard about it, it’s nothing. And he went out there and they hit a swell and they ended up hitting the bottom of the bar and he took it seriously after that. So it’s definitely dangerous. We heard many stories.
Norcross: Yeah. And Jill, you spent some time with an important character in your film. What role did Captain George Flavel play, not only on the bar, but for the entire Astoria seaside area?
Remensnyder: Well, he’s a critical player in the Astoria region. I mean, just that he helped build up the entire city. I believe MacAndrew Burns referred to him as the octopus at the mouth of the Columbia, with his tentacles and everything. But I think that had a positive impact. I mean, he helped with the first fire department in Astoria. Also with hotels and lodging, warehouses for all the industry that was coming through on the boats and whatnot. But also just, I mean, even today, the Flavel House Museum, I mean, growing up in the coast, that’s something every kid goes to on a field trip.
Norcross: Were there any stories that you uncovered that you hadn’t heard before?
Remensnyder: Specifically tied to Flavel or…
Norcross: To the bar.
Remensnyder: To the bar in general?
Norcross: Yeah.
Remensnyder: Brett touched on this a little bit, but during filming, just interacting with the community, people coming forward and asking us like, oh, what are you doing? And when we tell them that we’re making a documentary about the jetty restoration and the mouth of the Columbia, so many people would come forward and start sharing stories from their childhood about being out on boats or fishing off the jetties and either what fish they caught or how dangerous it was. So it’s really interesting to see just what a critical role, and what a connection it is for everyone in the community.
Norcross: Your film is called “Taming the Mouth” after all. So let’s talk about efforts to make the Columbia Bar a little less treacherous. What kind of infrastructure was put in place to make that happen? And when was it put there?
Eichenberger: So the construction of the initial jetty started in 1885.
Norcross: And these are just like lines of rocks.
Eichenberger: They’re essentially lines of rocks and honestly, Geoff, that’s kind of the way I thought of them when we were approached to do this film. I thought, oh yeah, lines of rocks. How do you tell stories about lines of rocks? And what’s so interesting about the jetties is when Congress funded them, it was the largest civil engineering project in U.S. history by the Army Corps of Engineers. And they had to go through phases because they were learning on the job, if you will.
And when we first went out there to see the South Jetty, which is the most prominent jetty, I was blown away by the scale of it. This is a jetty that at one point was 4 or 5 miles long, and the jetty has such an impact on the bar that it’s changed the land around the area. So the area around where Fort Stevens is, and even across the mouth of the Columbia, near Cape Disappointment, a lot of that sand has built up because of the jetties and the way that the water flows now.
But going out there and actually getting on the jetty to film some of the construction taking place on the refurbishment of the jetties, these rocks are 30 to 40 tons. And you would see an entire semi-truck, an oversized load bringing one rock, and you’ve got tens of thousands of rocks built into these jetties.
Norcross: Is it working?
Eichenberger: It’s absolutely working.
Norcross: How?
Eichenberger: It’s working by changing the flow of the Columbia. I mean, it’s obviously, it’s not completely taming the mouth, that’s impossible, we’re doing the best that we can. But it’s working and keeping $24 billion of commerce a year going in and out of the Columbia River. Of course, like I mentioned earlier, it’s not safe enough yet to let the captains pilot their own ships in and out. There’s still that, but this is a mouth that used to be 6 miles wide. It’s now 2.5 miles wide, I believe.
Norcross: You mentioned that it’s changing the land around the mouth as well. Is it changing it in a good or a bad way?
Eichenberger: I would say that it’s changing in a good way. It’s creating the beaches that we use for recreation, for our enjoyment, and we talk about that in the film a little bit. And the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, we’ve got to give them all the credit in the world, because they’re the ones that are out there dredging. They’ll go out there two weeks at a time to dredge. And so they take care of a lot of the replacement of that sand and that sediment.
Norcross: Let’s talk a little bit more about the river, not just as a method and a channel for commerce, but just as an important part of the landscape. Let’s get some thoughts on that from your film right now.
Speaker 4: The Columbia River to me symbolizes life. It was life for the Indian people for thousands of years. It connected them all together. The Columbia was the main trade route and the main source of food and that had the biggest runs of salmon, and they were very dependable, and they fed the Indians for thousands of years. It’s this beautiful latticework of interconnected people.
Speaker 5: There were many, many generations for thousands and thousands of years that honored the river and took care of it and appreciated everything about it, and I would hope that that continues.
Speaker 6: I think that modern generations, we get a little disconnected. We can just go to a store and get food and not think about, where does it come from? You don’t have that food that you want unless you make it or catch it yourself. This river connects us to the world and for a lot of people we just don’t even think about that.
Norcross: I love that clip, and it brings up an important point. This river has been a lifeline for Indigenous communities for thousands of years, and it only became a problem when we tried to put ships on it, right? So do you keep that in mind as you made this film?
Eichenberger: 100%. Absolutely. I mean, we absolutely wanted to feature the Indigenous story and how this river factored into their livelihoods, how it brought communities together, how it was essential for their lifestyles. And this goes all the way down the river, from, especially at the mouth of the Columbia, because you had a lot more going on with the Pacific Ocean coming in. But many of these tribes, whether it was the Clatsop or the Chinook, they were traveling way down the Columbia River to trade and to do things. So like we say in our documentary, it did so much good and it continues to do so much good in a modern way.
Norcross: And Jill, last question is for you, since you grew up in this area, I’m wondering if your experience working on this film has changed your relationship to the Columbia, be it a lifeline for people or a destructive force.
Remensnyder: I took it for granted. And there is an awareness now of just how much it connects everyone and what a vital role it is, whether, as we discussed, the commerce or people’s livelihoods, or just recreation and enjoyment. There’s just so much more than I realized growing up.
Norcross: Yeah. Well, it was a beautiful film. I really enjoyed watching it and I enjoyed talking to you about it. Thank you both.
Eichenberger: Thank you, Geoff.
Remensnyder: Thank you.
Norcross: Brett Eichenberger is the director of the documentary “Taming the Mouth,” and Jill Remensnyder is a writer and producer on the film. You can see it streaming now on Prime Video and Apple TV.
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