These photos were taken at Cape Disappointment, located on the Long Beach Peninsula of Washington State. We were treated to a clear (but cold!) December day. This area is quite frequently socked in  by fog rolling off the Pacific.

It was named in 1788 by  an English sea captain named John Meares, who was looking for the passage over the Columbia River bar and missed it. He named the nearby headland Cape Disappointment in a nod to his feelings about the situation...

The river was later explored in 1792 by Robert Gray, who consequently named it after his ship the Columbia Rediviva. Lewis and Clark reached Cape Disappointment in 1805, making it the westernmost reach of their expedition.

The lighthouse was built in 1856 to warn ships of the dangerous river bar at the Columbia River and is now the oldest lighthouse still operating on the Pacific coast of the United States. From 1862 until World War II,  the cape was also a military installation, used to protect the mouth of the Columbia River.