 A bronze plaque recognizing various pioneers who have been to Wishram begins with Meriwether Lewis and ends with John C. Fremont.It originally marked the beginning of a path from that monument to Celilo Falls; that path is now covered by the backwaters from The Dalles Dam.The Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway was chartered in 1905 by James J. Hill for the purposes of connecting the two transcontinental railroads owned by him, the Northern Pacific and Great Northern, to Portland, Oregon from Spokane, Washington, in order to gain a portion of the lumber trade in Oregon, a business that at the time was dominated by E. H. Harriman's Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads.