A Columbia River salmon label for the Pillar Rock Packing Co. depicts a fleet of sailboats encircling the rock.

Near Altoona, Washington, some 20 miles upriver from the mouth of the Columbia, sits a quiet basalt column called Pillar Rock.

Now standing about 25 feet high, early accounts tell that the rock once rose 75 to 100 feet, depending on the tide, before it was flattened for the installation of a navigation marker and light nearby.

The subject of Wahkiakum legends, the rock was once named “Taluaptea” and was seen from a summer village accessible by canoe.

In 1792, the name Pillar Rock was recorded when Lt. William Broughton, who explored the lower Columbia region with the British Vancouver expedition, referred to it as “… a remarkable pillar rock.”

In November of 1805, the party of Lewis and Clark camped twice near this and other surrounding offshore rocks, first in anticipation of reaching the ocean’s edge, then later en route to Fort Clatsop.

Decades later, the landmark lent its name to the Pillar Rock Canning Co., which packed salmon between 1877 and 1947. It also appeared on one of the cannery’s namesake salmon labels in an image of the rock encircled by sailboats.

Despite the cannery’s changing hands and eventual closure, the Pillar Rock image is still in use. Ocean Beauty, a Seattle-based seafood company, still cans wild Alaskan salmon featuring that label.