Ages before any human set foot in Oregon or Washington, the guardians shaped and tended the land while towering over it. What is now the Willamette Valley was barren and dry, but the Guardians reveled in creating life and order. 

Their two-hundred-foot stone bodies were powerful and over many years they perfected the tools of their trade. The mother went to the distant Rocky Mountains and dug a massive trench from a spring high above sea level south and then west until she reached the pacific. The flow began with a gurgle but over the months it built to a strong flow. She sent her children, still in their adolescence, to Eugene and Wyoming and ordered them to dig new rivers to join the one she’d made with her own hands. 

These became the Willamette and Snake rivers who joined their flow to the original. With so much more water, the strong flow became a mighty roar. The Columbia was born, a swift and tempestuous river that would one day help create the Graveyard of the Pacific which every sailing vessel would fear. It split what became Oregon and Washington in two and destined them to separate fates. 

Perhaps more important, the Willamette brought irrigation to the Willamette Valley and turned it into some of the best agricultural ground on earth. First the American Indians, and then those who killed and displaced them, found bountiful soil and created a land of plenty.

Content they brought life to a barren land, the three mighty guardians lumbered off and found a gap in the Cascades. There they lay down until they’d fused the with the earth they tended. There they still stand watching over us and all who come after.